By Matthew Rana
Still from Malak Helmy's 'Records from the Excited State – Chapter 3'
Matthew Rana is an artist, critic and poet. In 2014, Torpedo Press will publish his chapbook, ‘The Theory of the Square: A Comedy’. He currently lives and works in Berlin.
Still from Malak Helmy’s ‘Records from the Excited State – Chapter 3’ (2012)
Malak Helmy, ‘Records from the Excited State – Chapter 3’ (2012), 64th Berlinale, Berlin
Shot in different locations along Egypt’s north coast, artist Malak Helmy’s short film is all colour and mood. In it, Helmy trains her lens on the time produced by economies of leisure: lush, empty and unresolved.
Juan Downey, ‘Una utopía de la comunicación’, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City
Downey’s work around systems theory, networks and ideals of connectivity – from his early GRAV-influenced experiments, to the Video Trans America project and quasi-ethnographic fieldwork done while living with the Yanomami tribe – offered a timely antidote to the exhaustion and cynicism that surrounds ‘post-internet’ buzz.
Matthieu Saladin’s ‘There’s a Riot Goin’ On’‘ at CAC Bretigny
Matthieu Saladin, ‘There’s a Riot Goin’ On’, CAC Bretigny
Based on a missing track from Sly & the Family Stone’s 1971 album of the same name, this one-year project dealing with concepts of withdrawal, silent rebellion and ‘immaterial’ forces, instigated a series of agonistic relations; collective spaces can sometimes take shape in confrontation.
Loretta Fahrenholz’s ‘Ditch Plains’ at Galerie Buchholz, Berlin
Loretta Fahrenholz, ‘Ditch Plains’, Galerie Buchholz, Berlin
Filmed in post-Sandy New York and made in collaboration with the Ringmaster dance crew, Fahrenholz’s dark and dystopian work raises uneasy questions about race and privilege within a post-human framework. Among them: what forms of subjectivity are supported in contexts where acceleration and disaster have become the norm?
Looking forward to 2014…:
Audiatur Poetry Festival, 3–5 April, Bergen, Norway
Curated by artist Karl Larsson and writer Paal Bjelke Andersen, the 2014 festival will be organized around interdisciplinary approaches and the question of how a practice of institutional critique might be articulated within the field.
Lisa Robertson, ‘Cinema of the Present’, Coach House Books
Robertson’s 9th book is one long poem, ‘a gate made out of bejeweled barrettes, artificial peaches, a rotary phone.’