COMMONPLACES OF TRANSITION, Screening and Talk by Joanne Richardson, Thursday 23.10. in 19:00, Youth Center CK13, Novi Sad
The Youth Center CK13 Vojvode Bojovica 13, Novi Sad www.ck13.org Thursday 23.10. in 19:00 COMMONPLACES OF TRANSITION Screening and Talk by Joanne Richardson Joanne Richardson will present the collaborative video project Commonplaces of Transition and discuss some questions raised the project, focusing in particular on the meaning of video activism, strategies of counter-documentary, and the distinction between making a film about politics and making a film politically. The presentation will include a screening in full of In Transit and excerpts from Two or Three Things about Activism. Commonplaces of Transition is a collaborative video project by D Media (Romania), in collaboration with Ak-Kraak (Germany), Interspace (Bulgaria) and K:SAK (Moldova) that seeks to represent transition from the inside, in contrast to the dominant stories told from the outside. The title plays upon the double meaning of 'commonplaces': it explores both the common places (or geographical territories) of transition and the commonplaces (or ideologies) of transition. The aim of the project is to open up a critical dialogue about the meaning of transition and other alternatives than simply “catching up” with the global market. The partners have produced 8 videos on themes including the remapping of borders and identities, the transformation of labour and the evolution of activism. In Transit (30 min, 2008) is a diary of a journey through space and time, composed of subjective impressions of the present and childhood memories of the past. While traveling across Romania in the year of its EU accession, the narrative reflects on the meaning of transition, the re-writing of history and the relation between images and memory. The video criticizes the ideology of transition, which functions through a series of erasures (of the past, of identities and of thought itself), but not from the purity of an outside. In contrast to films that criticize official history and oppose it with authentic private histories, In Transit admits that private histories are themselves constructed and impure. Through the use of various distancing devices, the audience is asked to reflect on the status of documents, history and memory. Two or Three Things about Activism (73 min, 2008) is a counter-documentary based on a distinction once made by Godard between making a political film (a film about a political struggle) and making film politically. Making film politically means questioning the dominant forms of producing images and sounds and one’s own complicity in this system. While 13 protagonists, from anarchist groups and environmentalists to NGOS, discuss activism in Romania and its historical context, the author reflects on her own motivations. The video begins with a richness of sound and image, but becomes increasingly bare and fragmented, preventing an easy identification, and seeking instead to be a tool for self-reflection. It doesn’t represent Romanian activism, but tries to intervene in it from the inside, to provoke change. Joanne Richardson is living and working in Cluj (Romania) as a theorist, artist and program director of D Media (www.dmedia.ro). She is the editor of Subsol (subsol.c3.hu), a webzine on activist art and media theory, and of two books on digital culture. She has written essays on the radical left, experimental film, video activism, tactical media, free software, the myth of authorship and copyleft. Her videos reflect an ongoing interest in the phenomena of globalization, nationalism and postcommunism. Links: - Bio page: http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/richardsonbio.html - Memoirs of a Video Activist (2006) http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors3/richardsontext3.html - Est-ethics of Counter-Documentary (2000) http://www.artmargins.com/content/feature/richardson.html Presentation of Joanne Richardson in Novi Sad is organized by New Media Center_kuda.org (www.kuda.org) Presentation of Joanne Richardson is going to be held in Friday 24.10. in 20h, in KONTEKST Gallery, Belgrade, and it is co-organized by Biro Belgrade http://www.kontekstgalerija.org/html/main_se.htm