[rohrpost] Recording Against Regimes Exhibition, 6 - 23 March, 2013, Cairo

[Hartmut Jahn]

http://www.darb1718.com/recording-against-regimes-exhibition/

Recording Against Regimes Exhibition, 6 – 23 March, 2013
Video art and films generated by changes in Poland in the 1980s, Germany
in the 1990s and in Egypt now!
 

EXHIBITION / OPEN AIR CINEMA / OPEN PUBLIC DISCUSSION
 
Recorded images that are created as a personal or collective expression
against political regimes during significant political changes are the
counter-weight for those generated by the official media. They operate
on many different levels. Recording the reality of life under oppressive
regimes may be a matter of personal documentation or a deliberate
attempt to communicate with the wider world. Articulation of the
difference between official information and individual reality is an act
of civil resistance against official propaganda. The documentary becomes
a factor of change: the regimes have no more monopoly on information and
thus lose control. The recorded document remains when the revolution is
over and can often be interpreted not only by its content but also by
the type of device used. On the more sophisticated level, video art and
experimental cinema are continually using new approaches and forms of
presentation. The viewer, shaken from accustomed visual habits,
experiences new forms of perception and becomes more critical. The
geo-political context, the tools and their accessibility to artists and
to the large public, and the means of diffusion have obviously changed
through time and space.
 
In Poland and Germany in the 1980s and the 1990s access to recording
equipment was rare and access to distribution even more difficult. Very
often, artists who did have access to a camera experimented with it
naturally by focusing their lenses on the closest political and social
realities. But twenty to thirty years later in Egypt, everyone could do
it through personal devices and social platforms. Egyptian artists,
filmmakers and ordinary witnesses of events have produced and are still
producing thousands of gigabytes of footage that is becoming material
for documentaries, short films, and videos. Many of them await usage.
Videos and films included in the exhibition are not considered so much
as a genre but more as a means to investigate the changing role and
influence of visual technology and the different ways the moving image
and its perception can be expressions of resistance.
 
Exhibition of Experimental Short Films

Jozef Robakowski – Cinema is Power
Piotr Bikont – Double Stumble
Zygmunt Rytka – Retransmission
Jacek Niegoda – The Dissenter
Antal Lux – Mauerläufer
Egon Bunne – Everything Changes
Hartmut Jahn – A Double German Fantasy
Heba Amin – My love, for you, Egypt, increases by the day
Bassem Yousri – Pulse
Mosireen – The People Demand the Fall of the Regime

Open Air Cinema
Open panel discussion at Bayt al-Sinnari, Sayeda Zeinab Square, Cairo

The event is organised by ARCHiNOS Architecture (www.archinos.com) in
cooperation with WRO Art Center, Wroclaw, Poland (www.wrocenter.pl). The
project is co-funded by the European Union as part of its annual
Cultural Cooperation Programme in Egypt. It is additionally supported by
the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of
Germany in Cairo, and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Cairo.


Project director: Agnieszka Dobrowolska
Curator: Klio Krajewska 

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Hartmut Jahn    Seelingstr.14  14059 Berlin  Tel.: +49.176.48283010