Directors Lounge Screening at Z-Bar

Thursday, 24 March 2011

Seppo Renvall
Times, Songs and Material
16mm films and video

21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

“Never very good technical quality“, "no sharp image“, "no tripod“, "everything kind of shaky“, "mainly things that are not interesting“, "no story“, "no one idea“ – when reading these quotes from Seppo Renvall on his own films, one could think he is practising some kind of anti-aesthetic. However, Seppo Renvall does not want to cause offence or a scandal. Rather, his "negativity“ is set against the grand gestures that predominate media, and the superlatives "most“, "best“ and "highest“ required by the art scene. Theodor Adorno uses the term "negativity“ in conjunction with resistance and connected with a countenance that does not allow reconciliation with the power, or the "wrong“ social situation. Since then, times have changed and this society may not any more require a "life in alert“ (Walter Benjamin) but now urges a life in agitation. Seppo’s negativity seems to be more gentle, and seems to function more as a shield or as subversion against that constant state of arousal the media and the art world expect from the arts and the artists.

"If something interesting is happening, I possibly decide to shoot in the opposite direction“, and often he finds something more subtle, more telling than the spectacle ahead. His sympathy goes to the little things in life, or maybe I should say: empathy. His films thus carry his empathy to the small situations in daily life. As a consequence, part of his work is made of home movies showing scenes with friends, family life, children and travel, shot and shown on 16mm.

The themes of his other films are quite divers but still connected with daily life, even if they seem to embrace the spectacle, like "Nonstoppampam“. In this (in original) 3-channel work, an array of gunshots is fired in rapid succession. We possibly need to know the fact that these people shoot with a real gun for the first time in their life in order to see, what S. Renvall was mainly interested in: the awes, the hesitation, the threat and the surprise on the recoil forces reflected on their faces “Exotique” and “Yötähteni” talk about spaces of in-between, between light and shadow, night and day, unconscious and waking. Combined with the music of Aslak Christianson and others, many of these films, mostly edited on video, become songs, rhapsodies of life and a strong subversion of the mirror, which the TV screen seems to be for us.

Seppo Renvall will be present for Q&A.

Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr
With support from Suomesta Galerie, Berlin

More infos at:

http://www.richfilm.de/filmUpload/1-framesSeppo.html

http://www.z-bar.de/
http://open.fixc.fi/public.php?nid_send=271&uid_send=15
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Suomesta-galerie/117934471569793

Programme:

16mm

Home Movies 4 2:00

Home Movies 1-3 7:00

Private Area 3:49

Video

The Price Of Our Liberty 08:09

Warm Front 5:24

Iris And Nalle 2:53

Planet Earth Encyclopedia 6:13

Dancing Shortly 1:13

Exotique 09:57

Dancing Shortly II 2:45

Drum Zymphony 21:15

Nonstop PamPam 4:20

Yötähteni 2:30

Directors Lounge Screenings in der Z-Bar
präsentiert:
Within Landscape and Time
Video Works by
Elena Näsänen
Mittwoch, 26 Mai 2010
21:00

Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

Elena Näsänen
Video Künstlerin aus Finnland

Die große Leinwand, das große Kino und das Bild von Natur in Cinemascope sind Bezüge für Elena Näsänens Video Arbeiten. Sie ist eine der wenigen Künstler, die ausschließlich mit Video arbeiten, und die zudem selten auf der Kinoleinwand zu sehen sind. Stattdessen findet die Öffentlichkeit die Arbeiten der finnischen Künstlerin in Galerien und internationalen Kunstausstellungen.

Ihre Filme beinhalten Strukturen des narrativen Kinos: zu den meisten ihrer Videofilme hat sie das Drehbuch verfasst, es spielen Schauspieler, es gibt einen Kameramann und manche enthalten den Spannungsaufbau möglicher, unheimlicher Erlebnisse, wie sie die Zuschauer in Horror und Kriminalfilmen erwarten. In “Before Rain“ (Vor dem Regen) benutzt Elena Ausschnitte aus Hollywood Krimis, die jedoch nicht aufgelöst werden; in „Night“ (Nacht) folgt die weibliche Hauptfigur ihrem Drang, das Haus bei Nacht zu verlassen und den nahe liegenden dunklen Wald zu durchstreifen; und in „Wasteland“ (Ödland) ist eine Gruppe von Frauen im Hinterland Australien unterwegs, deren Aufgabe und Schicksal am Ende unbekannt bleiben. Überhaupt sind fast immer Frauen die Protagonisten der Szenen.

Zwei andere Elemente zeichnen Elenas Arbeit jedoch mindestens in ähnlich starker Weise aus: Zeit und Natur. Zeit ist gänzlich verbunden mit dem Bild. .Zeit wird ambivalent, wird zur Filmzeit, die entweder still steht oder endlos dauert, ganz abhängig vom Betrachter. Auf der anderen Seite scheint Natur die Szenerie zu dominieren. Vielleicht ist es so, dass Elene Näsenen hier den Blick auf das erhabene „Andere“ wieder aufleben lässt. Natur, so wie sie das unbekannte Andere für uns Bewohner der Städte wurde.
(Kuratiert von Klaus W. Eisenlohr)

Artist Link:
http://www.elenanasanen.com

Directors Lounge
http://www.directorslounge.net
More infos and video stills:
http://www.richfilm.de/filmUpload/1-framesElenaNasanen.html

———
ENGLISH TEXT:

Directors Lounge Screenings in der Z-Bar
presents:
Within Landscape and Time
Video Works by
Elena Näsänen
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
21:00

Z-Bar
Bergstraße 2
10115 Berlin-Mitte

Elena Näsänen
Video Work

Elena Näsänen’s reference for her work on video is the big screen, the glory of grand cinema, and with that, the picture of nature in cinemascope. She is one of the few artists who work exclusively on video, and who are rarely shown on a cinema screen. Instead, the audience finds her work in art shows, galleries and international exhibitions.

The films of the Finnish artist who lives in Helsinki contain structures of narrative cinema: most of them are written by the artist, are played by actors, and they are building up a suspense of uncanny possible occurrences, which the audience anticipates to happen. In “Before Rain” Elena uses fragments of Hollywood crime movies that stay unresolved, in “Night” a female character follows an urge to leave the house at night searching through the adjunct woods, and in “Wasteland” a group of women are on their way to an unknown task and destiny.

There are two other elements, however, that seem to mark Elena’s work just as strongly: time and nature. Time is strictly connected with images. If her images stay in our memory, their time seems to persist, thus making time ambivalent, a “film time” that stands still or becomes endless, depending on the viewer. Nature, on the other hand seems to dominate the image, and Elena’s characters. Maybe, Elena Näsänen here revives a contemporary view onto the sublime other: Nature as it has become the unfamiliar other for us city dwellers. And this mystery may be contained by the Australian outback, the Chinese yellow mountains, or the Finnish landscape.
(curated by Klaus W. Eisenelohr)

Artist Link:
http://www.elenanasanen.com

Directors Lounge
http://www.directorslounge.net
More infos and video stills:
http://www.richfilm.de/filmUpload/1-framesElenaNasanen.html