Paradocs
The Beautiful Language Mounir Fatmi
France, 2010 video, black-and-white, 17 min Director: Mounir Fatmi Editing: Mounir Fatmi Sound: Mounir Fatmi, Benoît Hénon, Mick Texier Production: StudioFatmi World Sales: Heure Exquise! Screening Copy: Heure Exquise!
Mounir Fatmi:
Fragile (1997), Fragments and Solitude (1999), The Others Are the Others (1999), The Scissors (2003), May God Forgive Me (2004), History of History (2006), Suprematism for Self-Defense (2006-2009), Save Manhattan (20082009), Muhammad Ali, The Labyrinth (2010), Mixology (2010), Architecture Now! Etat des lieux #1 (2010), City of urgency (2010), Technologia (2010), Speed City (2010), The VF Project (2010), Archi Sickness (2011), The Silence of Saint Peter Martyr (2011), The Angel’s Black Leg (2011), a.o.
Excerpts from François Truffaut’s L’enfant sauvage (1970) form the basis of this highly topical reflection on barbarism and authoritarian colonial systems. Truffaut’s film is based on the true story of the feral child, brought up by a doctor in accordance with the dictates of society at the end of the 18th century. The boy, who initially ran naked on all fours through the woods, was forced to wear shoes and eat with a spoon. While the boy, writhing on the ground, attempted to escape from this civilizing process, the reedit by filmmaker Mounir Fatmi poses questions about where the real cruelty lies: in the wild, or in the tightly controlled environment of modern society? The cries of the resisting boy are muffled, to be replaced by an ominous, new sound design by Fatmi. Quotes in Arabic are interspersed with quotes from philosopher Hannah Arendt from her work Imperialism: “Deadly danger to any civilization is no longer likely to come from without. The danger is that a global universally interrelated civilization may produce barbarians from its own midst by forcing millions of people into conditions which, despite all appearances, are the condition of savages.”
Paradocs
C.A.P.E CREW
Belgium, 2010 installatie, color, 20 min Director: Eric Joris Production: Hilde Teuchies & Vicky Vermoezen for CREW Screening Copy: CREW
CREW:
Kaufhaus Inferno (1999), Kammerspiel 1&2 (1999), N.M. (2001), Icarus / Man-O-War (2001), Philoctetes / Man-O-War (2002), Duister woud (2004), Crash (2004), U Raging Standstill (2004), O_Rex 1.3 (2008), W (Double U)(2008), Eux (2008), Line-Up (2009), Bolscan (2010), Terra Nova (2011)
CREW is a company that operates on the border between art and science, between performance art and new technology. Artist Eric Joris develops his live-art projects, hybrid performances with electronic and digital media at their core, in close collaboration with a collective of artists and scientists. Their project C.A.P.E. (Cave Automatic Personal Environment) shifts the user’s presence from one place to another in no time. Users are hoisted into individual, state-of-the-art immersive tech-suits, combining headphones, video glasses, a light shielding mask, tracker, camera, backpack, and laptop. Helped along by a virtual guide, they step into another body and walk around in a faraway city or a faraway time. The C.A.P.E. that is being showcased at De Brakke Grond during IDFA was first presented at the World Expo in Shanghai in September 2010, and will transport users to a fictitious city, a mix between Shanghai and CREW’s hometown of Brussels. In this way, they can experience for themselves what the future of cinema might be like.
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