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Opening: Let the real world in, Richmond Art Gallery



(Re)Housing the American Dream: A Message from The Future, 2017, video still


LET THE REAL WORLD IN

January 20 - March 31, 2024


Kirsten Leenaars, Yaimel López Zaldívar, Yoshua Okón, Wapikoni Mobile

 

OPENING: January 20 2-4 pm

Richmond Art Gallery

7700 Minoru Gate, Richmond, BC  V6Y 1R8

Canada Line Station: Richmond-Brighouse


“I take stuff from real life to make something I call a film,”—filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard thus encapsulated his approach. For Godard, the intersection of film and life was an absolute imperative; he insisted that “film should bear witness to the period.”* At times, this meant that he captured the feeling of everyday life by shooting an impromptu dance scene vérité style in a bar without informing any of the clientele. Other times his stance was more overtly political, where he would feature footage of the Black Panthers or show characters reading from revolutionary texts in his films. Sometimes, this desire went beyond the confines of the film itself, spilling over into his own life. During the upheavals of 1968 for instance, he and other directors of the day criticized the Cannes Film Festival for forging ahead with this iconic annual celebration of cinema in the face of student and worker protests across France; the following day, the Festival was shut down.

This persuasive, sometimes polemical appeal to “take stuff from real life” and to “bear witness to the period” of the present day resonates especially with the practices of artists inspired by aspects of documentary traditions. This is the case with Let the real world in, where a documentary impulse runs through a varied selection of videos. Created by Kirsten Leenaars, Yoshua Okón, Wapikoni Mobile, and their subject-collaborators, these videos also share a centring on children and youth.

Young people have long been associated with such qualities as spontaneity and simplicity, authenticity and unpretentiousness, innocence and ingenuity. Indeed in North American society, it is common to attempt to preserve these qualities as long as possible by endeavouring to protect young people from difficult realities. (Certainly, this is a privileged position that not everyone has the luxury of embracing.) In the same vein, children and youth are not always consulted on relevant topics considered beyond the limits of their understanding. In contrast, the videos featured in Let the real world in take seriously young people’s perspectives, ideas, and experiences of the world around them, vividly foregrounding their agency.

Let the real world in also features a commissioned series of screenprints by local artist and graphic designer Yaimel López Zaldívar, created in response to the videos in this exhibition. Educated in Habana, López Zaldívar draws from Cuba’s rich tradition of cultural, social, and political posters from the 1960s to the 1980s. Experimenting with text and image, López Zaldívar brings his vibrant artisanal aesthetic to the exhibition.

*Quoted in Florence Platarets, Godard par Godard, 2023 (film).


Essay by Luis Felipe Fabre: A Letter to the City: "jail is not my home"






A Letter to the City: "jail is not my home,” 2021

Three-channel video / Video en tres canales, 1:04:05


EN:

Last night I set about reading Till My Feet Hit the Warm Concrete: Letters from Young People Incarcerated, and I watched the video where, as part of the same project, A Letter to the City, Kirsten Leenaars and Circles & Ciphers, document the performative transcriptions and artistic translations of those testimonies. And, despite its beauty, I ended up devastated and dejected and overwhelmed. And I felt it irresponsible to have agreed to write something on the subject without having calculated ahead of time what I was dealing with. Like how to add a word to the truth without it ringing as merely decorative. How to add a word to such a painful beauty without lying.

And then, with my computer on and this document open but still blank, I fell asleep. And then, I swear, I swear it’s true, I dreamed that I was escaping from a prison. The dream had the rhythm of an action movie and I looked mighty elegant in a black suit and with my sweaty mess of hair weathering the mishaps of the getaway. When I reached a bridge already outside the prison, I ran into a well-known Mexican journalist who, from the open window of her limousine, told me that hopefully we’ll meet again in another setting where she could get to know me, making it understood that this time she wouldn’t rat me out. And so it was that I too dreamed the dream of freedom. And I woke up happy, like I hadn’t in a long time, as if I had, in fact, freed myself. And I believe that no doubt something in me was freed.

I suppose that where I read captivity, solitude, suffering, something in me, wiser and deeper than me, knew to read also love, life, hope.

The only word, then, that I can add to those texts without betraying them or betraying myself, the only word that I’d really like to say on the subject, is thank you.


Translated by Ryan Greene and Claudia Nuñez de Ibieta







A Letter to the City: "jail is not my home,” 2021

Three-channel video / Video en tres canales, 1:04:05


ES:

Anoche me puse a leer Till My Feet Hit the Warm Concrete: Letters from Young People Incarcerated, y vi el video en el que, como parte del mismo proyecto, A Letter to the City, Kirsten Leenaars y Circles & Ciphers, documentan las transcripciones performáticas y traducciones artísticas de aquellos testimonios. Y, a pesar de su hermosura, terminé desolado y abatido y rebasado. Y me pareció irresponsable haber aceptado escribir algo al respecto sin haber calculado antes a lo que me enfrentaba. Pues cómo agregar una palabra a la verdad sin que resuene meramente ornamental. Cómo agregar una palabra a tal dolorosa belleza sin mentirla.Y entonces, con la computadora encendida y este documento abierto pero aún en blanco, me quedé dormido. Y entonces, lo juro, juro que es verdad, soñé que me escapaba de una cárcel. El sueño tenía el ritmo de una película de acción y yo aparecía muy elegante con un traje negro y el cabello sudoroso y revuelto sorteando las peripecias de la huida. Cuando alcanzaba un puente ya fuera de la prisión me topaba con una conocida periodista mexicana que, desde la ventanilla abierta de su limusina, me decía que ojalá nos encontráramos nuevamente en otro escenario donde pudiera reconocerme, dando a entender que esta vez no me delataría. Así fue que yo también soñé el sueño de la libertad. Y me desperté feliz, como hace mucho no me sucedía, como si me hubiera, realmente, liberado. Y creo que ciertamente algo en mí se liberó.

Supongo que donde leí cautiverio, soledad, sufrimiento, algo en mí, más sabio y profundo que yo, supo leer también amor, vida, esperanza.

La única palabra, entonces, que puedo agregar a aquellos textos sin traicionarlos ni traicionarme, la única palabra que realmente quisiera decir al respecto, es gracias.

– Luis Felipe Fabre


Screening 'Interlude' Eye Film Museum Amsterdam, November 28



Interlude, 2005, film still 16 mm film


EYE Film Museum

Het Filmblik

November 28, 19:15 - 21:15 pm

introductions by curator Simoina Monizza, and followed by Q&A's with the artists.

Address: IJpromenade 1

1031 KT Amsterdam

Website: https://www.eyefilm.nl/en


Filmblik was an initiative by Stichting Filmstad, and ran from 1996-2005. An artist was given a film can containing a 120-metre (10-minute) 16mm film roll and the resources to produce a short film using this, in any way they liked. All of the films screen on 16mm.


Together with the 2023 Programmers of the Future, Eye curator Simona Monizza put together a programme of nine short 16mm Filmblik films. The initiators of Filmblik and the makers talk about the project and about what this can mean for contemporary makers.


For more information:




PROGRAMME

  • 2 FLIES (HEIN VAN LIEMPD & SANNY OVERBEEKE, 1998, 5') Short film based on the poem of the same title by Charles Bukowski. In the lead roles: a deer’s head and a cup and saucer.

  • 1-0 VOOR DE WOLVEN (ARIANNE OLTHAAR & MARJOLIJN VAN DER MEIJ, 1997, 6') Four wolves are cooking sausages above a crackling fire. Things get even stranger when their table companions – two humans – are left behind, dismayed.

  • BACKWARD (ERIK WESSELO, 1997, 4') An extremely physical film in which the maker explores and delineates his relationship to his surroundings while mounted on a horse.

  • YAVAS, YAVAS (JOOST VAN VEEN & ROEL VAN DER MAADEN, 1998, 4') In three and a half minutes, Yavas – Turkish for 'easy does it' – gives an impression of the countryside and the bustling towns of eastern Turkey. The soundtrack plays a particularly crucial role in this film.

  • STRIVING FOR IMPROVEMENT (INEKE BAKKER, 2005, 7') 'Striving for Improvement' is the name of an accordion society in the east of the Netherlands. The accordionists rehearse once a week and perform a few times a year. They also give a performance in the film, but the atmosphere is different. Striving for Improvement!

  • SIESTA, LA TETERA Y LA ROSA (NATHALIE ALONSO CASALE, PAVEL SEMTCHENKO, MAX ISSAEV, 1997, 10') Short tragicomedy in which a married couple make determined attempts to recognise and remind one another using elements such as fire and water. The film was shot in Catalonia and Aragon.

  • STILL LIFE (PIETER MOLEVELD, 1997, 10') Still Life is the first in a series of 'one shot movies' by Pieter Moleveld; films consisting of a single shot. The ideal combination of a starting shot and the end shot, without any editing to distract the viewer.

  • INTERLUDE (KIRSTEN LEENAARS, 2005, 6') Kirsten Leenaars is an interdisciplinary video artist based in Chicago, where she works in performance, theatre and documentary. Interlude is an intimate study of the last years of the artists's grandmother's life: shifting into a new phase of her life in which she started to experience the slippage of time, drifting between memories and the present, creating new forms of care and gestures of love.

  • HET KISTJE (CARINA ELLEMERS & BARBARA HIN, 1997, 4') Small things can have big consequences. This is proven when two bald men get into a laughing fit that they just can’t stop.



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