Chapter #1 The Suspension and Excess of Time
Chapter #2 Performing Words, Uttering Performance

Screenings, discussions

30 June 2018
4 – 8 pm

Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf
Birkenstr. 47, 40233 Düsseldorf

Free Admission

On June 30th from 4 to 8 pm we will present the first two screening chapters of the online video art platform D’EST. A Multi-Curatorial Online Platform for Video Art from the Former ‘East’ and ‘West’ at Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf in collaboration with the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen: Whilst chapter 1, The Suspension and Excess of Time (curated by Kathrin Becker and Jana Seehusen), a collaboration with the Video-Forum at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), explores the role of time within two political systems, chapter 2, Performing Words, Uttering Performance (curated by Creative Association of Curators TOK and Inga Lāce) investigates the changing role and function of language before and after the 1990s.

From July 1st onwards chapter 1 and 2 will be accessible online under www.d-est.com for all registered users.

D’EST: A Multi-Curatorial Online Platform for Video Art from the Former ‘East’ and ‘West’ is an online video platform initiated in the spring of 2018 by cultural scientist Ulrike Gerhardt with DISTRICT Berlin, which will be accessible online until the end of 2020. Between June and December 2018, the online platform will publish a total of six screening chapters reflecting post-socialist transformation. Their thematic focal points delineate post-socialism along post-geographic, horizontal, and gender-critical perspectives. In collaboration with fifteen curators, fifty artists, and other cultural experts, D’EST maps out artistic forms of historiography, especially from the perspective of female and collective production. Questions about the significance of the phase of post-socialist transformation for today’s Pan-European or even global condition have met with unsatisfactory answers. The title D’EST (eng: From the East) borrows from the eponymous 1993 work of recently deceased film-maker Chantal Akerman (1950—2015). In From the East’s sensitive, cinematic travelog of transformation, the artist – the daughter of survivors of the Holocaust in Poland – captures emblematic images of people waiting in a moment of hiatus just after the end of the Cold War. In the six curated screening chapters, the artists here deal with time, language, and semantics, corpo-fictionality and urban rejuvenation practices, indexical reading exercises, retro-utopia and post-genetic families of choice. The curators responsible for the project include Kathrin Becker, Eva Birkenstock, Miona Bogović, Ulrike Gerhardt, Naomi Hennig, Suza Husse, Nataša Ilić, Bettina Knaup, Katja Kobolt, Inga Lāce, Suzana Milevska, Xandra Popescu, Jana Seehusen, TOK (Anna Bitkina & Maria Veits), and Jelena Vesić.

PROGRAM

4 pm – 5.30 pm

Screening Chapter #1 The Suspension and Excess of Time
curated by Kathrin Becker (head of video forum n.b.k., Berlin) and Jana Seehusen (artist/theorist, Berlin/Hamburg)

with works by
Sanja Iveković, Sasha Pirogova, Eglė Rakauskaitė, Józef Robakowski, Ulrike Rosenbach, Clarissa Thieme
guest: Clarissa Thieme (artist/filmmaker, Berlin)

6 pm – 8 pm

Screening Chapter #2 Performing Words, Uttering Performance
curated by Creative Association of Curators TOK (Anna Bitkina (curator, St. Petersburg/Utrecht) & Maria Veits (curator, St. Petersburg)), Inga Lāce (curator, Riga)

with works by
Željka Blakšić aka Gita Blak, Cooperative Shvemy, Coro Collective (Eglė Budvytytė, Goda Budvytytė, Ieva Misevičiūtė), Ira Eduardovna, Gluklya (Natalya Pershina-Yakimanskaya), Polina Kanis, Marge Monko, Katrīna Neiburga
guest: Alla Mitrofanova (critic/curator, St. Petersburg)

The curators as well as two guests will be present and guide through the afternoon and evening.

The event is part of OFF THE RECORD, a series of events of the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf to accompany this years exhibition program. The events open further perspectives on each year’s activities in general and aim to react spontaneously to current discussions during screenings, performances, and lectures.

D’EST: A Multi-Curatorial Online Platform for Video Art from the Former ‘East’ and ‘West’ is a project initiated by Ulrike Gerhardt with DISTRICT Berlin. D’EST is also hosted in cooperation with the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA), the Goethe Institute Moscow, the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf, the Galeria Miejska Arsenał, Poznań, and the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein Video-Forum. This project is made possible through the generous support of the Senate Chancellery Berlin – Department of Culture.