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The Radek Community
(Moscow)
Manifestations, 2002
6’
In a series of interventions on the streets of Moscow the Russian artist collective unfurl banners bearing familiar protest slogans in front of small crowds of people waiting at a tram stop or crossing the road. Unsuspecting commuters are implicated in a spontaneous demo with a jumble of demands written in English; “one solution revolution”, “they cut back we fight back”, “another world is possible”…
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Ivan Moudov
(Sofia)
Traffic Control Experiment, 2001
6’
Commissioned as part of Never Stop the Action in Graz, Traffic Control Experiment witnesses Moudov dressed as a Bulgarian police officer, conducting traffic at a busy junction despite fully operational traffic lights. Gesturing and whistling, the artist plays upon the Austrian’s respect for the law despite the foreign uniform and Cyrillic lettering on his jacket.
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Esra Ersen
(Istanbul)
Brothers and Sisters, 2003
23’
Ersen spent over six months hanging around in coffee shops on the backstreets of of Taksim in order to establish trusting relationships with the illegal immigrants featured in this short documentary. The film opens with Steve from Somalia standing in front of the main train station in Istanbul, a building designed a century ago by a German architect and a familiar location for scenes in old Turkish films about those who left the provinces in search of a metropolitan lifestyle. As Steve takes in the scene we learn how he was deceived and delivered there by a man he paid to smuggle him into Hamburg. Brothers and Sisters describes the aspirations and reality of a fractured African community in Istanbul.
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Fikret Atay
(Batman)
Rebels of the Dance, 2002
10’ 57”
Central to Atay’s practice is his native town of Batman in eastern Turkey. This film documents two boys inexplicably chanting a Kurdish folksong in front of an ATM in a deserted bank. Self-conscious at first, they gradually pick up the rhythm, pacing the booth, tapping their feet and clapping until the final cry “Who is the Pasha? Who is the Valet?”
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Part 2
Selected by artist, Matthew Noel-Tod
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Redmond Entwistle
Social Visions, 2000
15’
Distributed by Lux
A myriad of histories and futures that constitute Los Angeles; a city whose public image has been used as cover for the abuse of its population but also a city where one senses the potential for radical social change. Los Angeles is suffering from all the worst side effects of America's social and economic reforms. Industry, commerce and the middle classes have all jumped ship and left a husk of a city. Social Visions is about the impossibility of adequately representing a city when whole sections of the population are excluded from the channels of power.
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Paul Garrin
Man With A Video Camera (Fuck Vertov), 1990
6’
Distributed by Lux
Garrin’s tapes toy with our notions of public and private space, using both original and pirated news footage to make a tantalising form of electronic collage. Man With A Video Camera (Fuck Vertov) shows Garrin being caught up in police brutality in New York which he tapes with his camcorder. The footage is subsequently broadcast on every major network news channel in the USA, exposing illegal police practices and sparking public debate.
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Duncan Campbell
Falls burns Malone fiddles, 2003
30’
Courtesy of the artist
Built up from material from Belfast community photographic and film archives, footage is manipulated and broken down by Campbell to form a complex structure of psychodrama, documentary and animation. The monologue voice-over by Ewen Bremner switches between frustrated socio-political commentary and a Beckettian speech of spiralling melancholy and sadness... |
