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CONTEMPORARY ART RUHR, MEDIA ART FAIR, 26 – 28 OCTOBER 2018

Directors Lounge presents

Leo Kuelbs Collection: Light Year 31: Identity 0.0

Identity 0.0 is a collaborative video and sound program exploring the changing meanings of “self” and “individuality.” Digital reality has allowed for enhanced communication, thus the possibility of easier integration, between individuals from cultures near and far. What was foreign is now only a keystroke away. Gender can be manipulated through science and philosophy, just as intentions for good or ill can be disguised easily through a variety of avatars and aliases. Nationalism and religious identities strain to remain powerful and effective versus the strong tides of this evolution of the self. All heading towards a further integration of humans (the terrestrial) and artificial intelligence, aka “The Singularity.”

Through this increasingly singular appendage, we continually manipulate our identities towards various audiences, as well as encapsulate our ever-changing notions of reality and our place within it. We “block”, we “add”, we “friend”, we “share”, we “filter,” all generating rapid snapshots of some form of our evolution. If one identity doesn’t fit, we are free to tear it down and build a new construct. And we can do it infinitely.

These individual patterns reveal how we wrestle with, and attempt to balance, our desires to be anonymous while simultaneously asserting some form of ourselves – our pasts, our views, our ideas of our future selves. Also, the differences and similarities between identity portrayal patterns of individuals reveal commonalities on multiple demographic levels.

Our own personal series of re-inventions is ironically what pushes us to demand privacy control against a seemingly limitless world of access into our digital histories. We crave unlimited exposure and reach, but want to have the ability to leave no trail to our past selves; so that we may never be interpreted in any other way than as we have deigned in the seemingly infinite moments.

Creators are asked to look back as they look into the future through the lens of the present and explore once important communal identities versus this shift into a more individualistic and digital reality; and how these shifts and their resulting patterns may manifest themselves in the creation and behavior of integrated societies of the foreseeable future.

Curation & concept by Leo Kuelbs with Aaron Riedel.

Featuring new work from: Radka Salcmannova + Alex Hamadey, Sarah Mock + Daniela Imhoff, Thomas D. Rotenberg + Theologian, Sarah Trouche, Naormi Meijia Wang, Mai T. Segura & Harald V. Uccello + Alex Hamadey, Kinga Toth + Normal Gergely, Vadim Schäffler, and Richard Jochum + Xiren Wang.

www.leokuelbscollection.com

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“Light Year 31: Identity 0.0“ will be screened as part of the DL program at the contemporary art ruhr video lounge presented by Directors Lounge.

Find the complete program here.

CONTEMPORARY ART RUHR, MEDIA ART FAIR, 26 – 28 OCTOBER 2018

Directors Lounge presents

Céline Trouillets “SONG” series

Céline Trouillet was born in 1975 in Colmar, France. She graduated from the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg where she now lives. She regularly presents films in international exhibitions and festivals and has received a number of grants from the French Ministry of Culture. Her films have been awarded prizes at the Octobre Rouge Festival in Luxembourg, the Videomedeja Festival in Serbia, the Ozon Festival in Poland and the AVIFF Cannes Art Film Festival in France. The “SONG” series of “singing portraits” involves a continuous close-up of singing heads facing the camera and performing in real time. Growing up in the 1980s, Céline was part of the first generation to be constantly exposed to music video clips in a period that also saw the advent of Karaoke in Europe, which encouraged the notion that anybody could become a pop star, an idea that also led to public interest in amateur TV talent contests. Each portrait contains multiple layers of signification that are open to interpretation. The films are formally similar, yet each portrait is unique and the creative possibilities are only limited by the number of songs in existence and the number of individuals willing to sing them.

SONG N°27 – 4’50 – 2018 (HD 16/9)

Voice: Amini Skhiri
Music: “Un autre monde” (“An Other World”) by Telephone

Amina is a Belgian psychologist and former contestant on the TV talent show The Voice. She affirms her right to freedom of expression both in religious and artistic terms, which she does not regard as mutually exclusive.

SONG N°26 – 3’25 – 2018 (HD 16/9)

Voice: Cathy Beaumont
Music: “La vie en rose” (“Life in Pink”) by Edith Piaf

She was a friend of the late French singer Barbara who gave her the earrings she is wearing in the film. She also regularly performs covers of songs by Edith Piaf, another singer whose work reflects the bitter-sweet struggle of existence.

SONG N°25 – 3’05 – 2017 (HD 16/9)

Voice: Elena GuerinMusic: “Negua joan da ta” by Zea Mays

A Basque girl sings a love song that serves as a link to Dora Maar, the singer’s makeup representing the tears in Weeping Woman, Picasso’s 1937 portrait of his mistress and muse who was behind the creation of Guernica, depicting the bombing of the Basque capital (the anniversary of which is this year). Weeping Woman was derived from a figure in Guernica. Picasso consistently portrayed Maar weeping because, for him, women were “suffering machines”.

SONG N°24 – 4’ – 2015 (HD 16/9)

A young man performs “Wild World” by Cat Stevens. The pictorial aspect suggested by the backdrop evoking nature in terms of fauna and flora, combined with the classical references hinted at by the floral crown worn by the singer, associated with pagan gods, conjure up the savage and Dionysian side of the world. This is echoed by the title of the song and reminds us that the destiny of human beings lies beyond their control, at the mercy of external forces.

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Céline Trouillets “SONG” series will be screened as part of the DL program at the contemporary art ruhr video lounge presented by Directors Lounge.

Find the complete program here.

Directors Lounge Screening
Johnny Welch
Arcane Rhythms

Thursday, 25 October 2018
21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

Johnny Welch, filmmaker and photographer from Sydney, Australia lives in Berlin for more than 3 years and is an active member of Labor Berlin. Since coming to Berlin, his work has become more strongly connected with the aesthetic of analog film, with the possibilities of optical printing. Even if edited and projected digitally, analog compositing seems to allow him to create a richer image of high density and depth.

Based on black and white techniques (mostly), the films seem to explore sheer blackness, instead of a black and white aesthetic. Strongly connected with punk music, dark wave and electronic noise, the filmmaker achieves a stunning quality of deep black color with his films. Experimental techniques of emulsion lifts and cracks, combined with black ink, sometimes with an additional tint of red or toning with blue, are combined with dark images of male and female characters. The driving rhythm of the sound track enhances the impression of blackness. Another connection is Aleister Crowley, a controversial figure, and a British occultist from the beginning of the 20th century who inspired a number of important artists and filmmakers like Kenneth Anger and even Fernando Pessoa. Welch’s film Aurum (super8 / digital) from 2018 is a contribution to Crowley’s Liber 777, a book related to occult or cabalistic games with numbers. For Johnny Welch, the occupation and meditation with occult theory may be a search for liberating ideas, or it may even be used as a release from the haunting personal messages once ago sent by peers. (Discharge Working I and II, 2017/18).

For the viewer, the work has an attracting, maybe haunting quality, tinted with a stunning black color. The black sun (in Aurum) for example is an amazing symbol without the need of occult references, and it is a beautiful image interwoven with blackness of painted film material that may stay in the mind of the viewer as a striking image on its own account.

The artist will be present and available for Q&A after the screening. Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr

Artist Link:
https://www.johnnywelchfilm.com/

Links:
Directors Lounge http://www.directorslounge.net
Richfilm http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/
Z-Bar http://www.z-bar.de

Directors Lounge Screening
Laurence Favre
Digging the Archive
Thursday, 27 September 2018
21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

Laurence Favre from Switzerland and living in Berlin, works with photography, film and video on projects. She creates narratives concerned with collective and individual memories, and how they relate to archives or individuals. Found material, 8mm found footage, was a reason for her to visit places, talk to and interview people. In the case of a hospital in South-Africa, a Swiss mission during the time of racial segregation, the construction of a collective memory become problematic, however, the collection of different stories and divert personal memories may become even more important. The box with films from a missionary working at the hospital, a personal archive in itself, for Favre became a starting point to visit the former hospital in Shiluvane, to find people who were working in the mission or share memories.

Favre’s background in sociology informs her research, her art project shifts towards contemporary ethnographic research with experimental forms that do not attempt to construct an “objective reality”. And she is a member of Labor Berlin. On a first step, she converted the original 8mm films to digital, and created a narrative from it, by repeating images, inverting them, by mixing letters found in real archives with personal comments she writes, in a way her subjective version of the archive. During her first visit, she also collected interviews with local people who used to work at the mission.

And she shoots 16mm (non-sync, in color and in b/w) for her new project: A series of portraits mixed with passages of landscape and combined with fictive letters to the late doctor of the mission by former members of the mission who live in South Afrika. At this screening, Laurence will present “Nwa-Mankamana” the film from 2013, an edited reel called “Shiluvane Talks” and excerpts of “Lettres au Docteur L” as work-in-progress.

The artist will talk about the different facets of working with archives that she became engaged in, and she is looking forward to discuss her work.

Artist Link:
http://lrncfvr.net/
https://dafilms.com/director/9946-laurence-favre

Links:
Directors Lounge http://www.directorslounge.net
Richfilm http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/
Z-Bar http://www.z-bar.de

Julia Murakami | André Werner | Fata Morgana Gallery Berlin

14. – 20. September | Torstr. 170, Berlin-Mitte

Photography, mixed media and installations.

Opening Friday, September 14, 7 pm

Ahead of the Berlin art week the Fata Morgana gallery opens an exhibition of works by Julia Murakami and André Werner that is as subliminal as it is immersive.

What both artists unites is an artistic approach that does not only reflects an existing reality but rather transcends into the imagery of new realities.

The multiverse of Julia Murakami is filled with layers of Greek mythology, Marvel heroes and Hollywood icons, a world unbound to gravity where dreams and Chimeras lure in the dark. Julia Murakami depicts this strange and surreal realm with a casual implicitness that, like old family photographs, triggers a moment of déjà vu. And, in fact, private photographs, self-portraits and memorabilia are often the starting point in the works of Julia Murakami. Images from unknown, yet familiar worlds.

André Werner is rather an observer than a producer of pictures. Like an ornithologist with a camera, he is a hunter and collector in the realm of the images. What get caught in his machinery of TV sets, cameras, printers and copiers, is often already an image of an image of an image. The pictures that are freely floating in the net, constantly multiplying themselves, are frozen in a single moment of their metamorphoses, not to capture them, but to celebrate their autopoietic beauty.

The alchemical process of creating such images is as important as the final output and the interactive video installation “circles” offers the spectator a chance to become part of such a play in a game with his own image. Louise Blissett Julia Murakami und André Werner 14.9. – 20.9. Fata Morgana Opening 14.9. 7 pm Finissage 20.9. 7 pm

Julia Murakami und André Werner

14.9. – 20.9. Fata Morgana

Opening 14.9. 7 pm

Finissage 20.9. 7 pm

Featuring an illustrated lecture by

Cosima Reif

: The Vienna Collection

New stamps by the Austrian Pure Chance Postal Service.

Fata Morgana Galerie Torstraße 170 | Berlin Mitte

Mo – Tues 4 pm – 7 pm
Sa – Sun 4 pm – 8 pm

and by appointment

The exhibition is kindly supported by Z-Bar, Directors Lounge and Bürkle IT

Images from above :

Julia Murakami and André Werner by Joachim Seinfeld

Julia Murakami, from the series Exercises in Levitation I–III, 2015.

André Werner Was vom Kino übrig bleibt | What Remains Of
Cinema. #2 Autopoiesis 2018.

André Werner, Circles | Interactive video installation for 13 monitors and a curious person, 2017

Cosima Reif, 50 Jahre Aktionismus, 50 years of (Viennese) Actionism, stamp from the Austrian Pure Chance Postal Service, 2018

CONTEMPORARY ART RUHR, MEDIA ART FAIR, 1 – 3 JUNE 2018

IN AN ALIEN LAND by Angela Christlieb and Maria Niro

Montages reveal a journey over time and space, as the film builds to evoke a hovering state of hallucinogenic like pictures of the subconscious. The protagonist, moving simultaneously between space and time, is at once in an imaginary dream and at other times in a state of reality. The camera, both observational and voyeuristic, follows her on her journey as she crosses waters. We are lulled into a dream state by the film’s lush colors and its Super-8 film like quality. Then the story pivots as architecture and landscape become actors and interact with one another, the protagonist makes it to her final destination; New York City in the midst of a political crisis. Turmoil has overtaken the beautiful landscape and we are at once awakened into reality. The film is accompanied by a sound collage consisting of a minimalist musical element which build with electronic noise, fragments of shortwave radio, and then live sound of human protests.
The film is a collaboration between filmmaker and artist Angela Christlieb based in Vienna and who also stars in the film, and the New York artist, filmmaker, cinematographer Maria Niro. The concept came about during Christlieb’s visit in New York in the fall of 2016, during the presidential elections in the USA.

IN AN ALIEN LAND will be screened as part of the DL program at the contemporary art ruhr video lounge presented by Directors Lounge.

Find the complete program soon here.

Credits: Angela Christlieb and Maria Niro, Directors, producers, editors and sound design | Soundtracks: Hallicrafters (Eric Hubel, Algis Kysz), Chris Janka.
“Secretly sharing the landscape of the living” by Martin A. Smith.

CONTEMPORARY ART RUHR, MEDIA ART FAIR, 1 – 3 JUNE 2018

“Magnetic Mirror” by Storyboard Artist Isabelle Meyrignac

Isabelle is a qualified, multi-skilled camera operator, Storyboard Artist and video editor. She studied classical hand-drawn illustration, 2D animation and Comic Strip design at Ecole Emile Cohl in Lyon, France, before starting her career in 1999 working as a creative in the advertising industry in London. She taught herself camera operation and video editing since then as well. She then went to the MET film school Berlin in order to further her camera and editing skills. Isabelle is now working as a full-time freelancer in the film and TV industry, bringing all her accumulated skills and life experience together.

Furthermore, her fluency in English, French and German allows her to work efficiently across borders. Her problem-solving and astute communication skills compliment her technical and creative abilities.

Isabelle’s physical fitness and can-do-attitude make her an outstanding camera crew member who can also take a video project from concept to finish.

Her current exhibition at the Contemporary Art Ruhr is an extract of her storyboard for future TV mini-series ‘Magnetic Mirror’.

Isabelle Meyrignac’s storyboard series will be shown at the contemporary art ruhr, media art fair presented by Directors Lounge.

More info about Directors Lounge at the contemporary art ruhr soon here.

CONTEMPORARY ART RUHR, MEDIA ART FAIR, 1 – 3 JUNE 2018

“Transit “by Medienwerkstatt im Kulturwerk des bbk berlin

The program shows recent films from Medienwerkstatt dealing with the subject of identity. In times of transition the works reflect topics from changing housing environments to new governmental regulations of surveillance as the new Chinese point system on so called „good“ behaviour. Thoughts still seem to be free up in the sky where birds take on beautiful abstract formations.

Works by Gabrielle Mainguy, Lucy Powell, Silke Gänger, Bettina Rave, Elena Gavirisch, Sandra Becker, Stephanie Hanna, Thorbjørn Christiansen, Lioba von den Driesch and Nicola Rubinstein

TRANSIT will be screened at the contemporary art ruhr video lounge presented by Directors Lounge.

Find the complete program soon here.

Gabrielle Mainguy, Our Physical Engagement , 7:45 min, 2017

Lucy Powell “Hill Climbing With Random Restarts”
2 synchronisierte Videos (moving in) und (moving out) von jeweils 2 Stunden und 40 Minuten. Ausschnitt aus „moving in“ 7 min, 2017

Silke Gänger, K77, 9:04 min 1997/2017

Bettina Rave, Painting, 5:30, 2017

Elena Gavirisch, The Mirror, 2 Kanal Video 6:47 min, 2011/2017

Sandra Becker YOU ARE A GOOD PERSON, 2 min, 2018

Stephanie Hanna, Mensch Musil, 3:33 min, 2011/2017

Thorbjørn Christiansen, Die Ruine, 9:10 min, 1983/2017

Lioba von den Driesch Echos, 4:30 min, 2018

Nicola Rubinstein DISPERSION, 1:44 min 2017

Directors Lounge at Mitte Media Festival 2018

DO THE MONKEY! YEAH, MONKEY TIME!

Out on the (Fata Morgana) floor, four suspiciously alien creatures (Tristan Honsinger dragging voice and bow across low registers), Moeko Yamazaki (beating a ritual drum to within an inch of its life), Izumi Ose (as silver and silver gets, all a-glitter and a-twitch) and Woody Hoofer (acting up with his body as a sensual weapon) got very close indeed to the gathering one of during DL’s various presentations for the Mitte Media Festival 2018. A slew of unearthly film cuts and an ethereal installation were also part of the mix. Who needs gravity, after all?

Izumi Ose, Tristan Honsinger, Woody Hoofer and Moeko Yamazaki, photos: DL

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MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO (IT UP RIGHT)

Backstage pix from the very strange troupe before their DL performance at Fata Morgana Gallery, which sprang straight out of Hiroki Mano’s film “Spiritual Meetin’”. Part of our presentation at the Mitte Media Festival. If you missed it, well….

Performers of the night: Izumi Ose, Moeko Yamazaki, Tristan Honsinger and Woody Hoofer. Photos: KT/DL