When a stone monument by the Nigerian artist Olu Oguibes was placed on the Königsplatz in 2017, the people of Kassel asked themselves “What is this obelisk doing here?”. When they read the inscription “I was a stranger and you took me in” – a message of Christ in four languages – they had to position themselves in relation to the sculpture. The drama began. In this program we look at gestures – of people and of sculptures, of institutions and artists. Artists who either gift a monument to a city – or take it away, destroy it, leave it dangling in the air. (Azin Feizabadi)
Duque shows us a rehearsal for a theatrical performance of Medea by an amateur theater group. The spontaneous gestures, the glances, sometimes vague, sometimes complicit, or defiant, express a tense calm that gives a new dimension to the narration of the text of Medea by Chantal Maillard. Are they, are we all Medea's children?… >>>
FOUR SCULPTURES IN FIFTEEN PIECES reflects on issues relating to creation and destruction. The sculptures seen in the film are excavated fragments from the ruins of an Art Museum of Estonia destroyed during the bombing of Tallinn in the spring of 1944. The fifteen pieces are originally from four different classical marble sculptures sculpted by Amandus Adamson (1855-1929) and August Weizenberg (1837-1921). The work provides a montage of destruction and creation as it makes a connection to the role of museums preserving more than just the objects and artifacts. The institutional element of the museum is embodied in the actor of an actual professional art conservator operating the sculptures in the staged space of a film.… >>>
CLOSE UP MARX is a cinematic investigation of the fossilized beards of the great prophet of modernity, the founding father of political economy. Across the formerly ideologically divided republic, the experimental collage traces the history of the creation of new and old Marx monuments.
Just recently, one came to Trier as a gift from the People’s Republic of China, to now serve as a model for the walking figure on pedestrian traffic lights. In Jena, another one is gathering dust in an archive. In Neubrandenburg, the Marxplatz was renamed the "Marktplatz" (marketplace), and in Chemnitz, the monumental head has inscribed itself in the collective memory as a site for political confrontations of all kinds. The film traces these political traces and superimpositions.
What should we do with all the statues and other monuments from the colonial era that proudly rise above the squares and parks of European cities? You could do what the Colombian artist Iván Argote did: hire a crane, don a boiler suit, and simply remove them from their pedestals. That is what he did in Paris, where he temporarily removed a statue of military officer Joseph Gallieni and, in the same gesture, transformed the site itself into an arena for (re)negotiating history in the middle of public space. With actions in Rome, Madrid and Paris, the video work LEVITATE is not only a documentation of Argote’s practice, but also an autobiographical reflection on its conditions, based on his own arrival in Europe.… >>>