[spectre] Transmedia postgraduate programme Brussels

[argos vzw]

The Transmedia postgraduate programme in arts +    design + media at the
Sint Lukas Hogeschool Brussel considers the computer as    a working tool
(for editing, design, programming) and/or as a means of    presentation
(for multimedia installations, websites, cd-rom) and encourages    the
creation of contemporary art work based on research. The programme
includes practical, critical, methodological and production studies given
by    an international teaching staff of artists and practising
professionals    collaborating with guest tutors and lecturers. Transmedia
welcomes candidates    practising in any media, from graphic design, visual
arts, architecture and    performance to photography, film, installation
and new    media.

Info:
transmedia@sintlukas.be &    info@argosarts.org




Transmedia & argos present:

Spiritual      Voices
A film by Aleksandr Sokurov
1995, Russia, 327      min.

Tuesday 26 February, 8 p.m.
at argos, Werfstraat 13,       1000 Brussels
Introduction by Craigie      Horsfield


Transmedia & argos present an    exceptional screening of one of Sokurov's
masterly videoworks. Spiritual    Voices, that lasts for five hours, shows
in detail, yet with caution, how    people survive in conditions of war. In
the mid-nineties, the Russian film    director spent three months, both in
summer and winter, with the 11th    contingent of the Moscow army at
Russian positions on the    Tajikistan-Afghanistan border. This diary of
war doesn't show how people are    killed or who is doing the killing.
Instead, it seeks to capture the daily    lives of soldiers and officers
who are viewed not as military professionals    but as men bearing arms.
This haunting film meditation is less a documentary    of actions than of
empty spaces and time between them, and of the physicality    of the
experience. Sokurov is the master of an aesthetic in which the physical
bleeds into the metaphysical, yet in light of the current war going on in
Afghanistan, Spiritual Voices takes on even greater poignancy. By now    it
is common knowledge that the Soviet-Afghan war not only confirmed the
Soviet Union's diminished superpower status but also served as the crucible
for the Islamist movement that led to the September 11 events. Viewing the
film today, one is struck by an absence at its center - the identity of the
enemy in the surrounding mountains. We now realize they must be among the
tribal forces known better as the Northern Alliance, the Taliban as well as
Al    Queda. However, Sokurov is not interested in treating problems of
politics,    ideology or religion: his Spiritual Voices is not about
current topics    and the news, it's about slow history in a place that
appears to mock all    human endeavor.