Berlin

The full programme for the tenth edition of Forum Expanded, entitled “To the Sound of the Closing Door”, is now confirmed. The group exhibition at the Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg consists of 19 installations by 16 contemporary artists as well as the film loop version of a 1971 performance by David Askevold: For Concert C With Door, he used a tuning fork to produce the sounds of a door opening and closing. Canadian artist Michael Snow’s installation Taut takes up an entire room of its own, consisting of a classroom full of journalistic photographs from the Black Star Collection made available by the Ryerson Image Centre.

Two performances and 32 films across 18 different programmes from a total of more than 20 different countries will also be presented at the Akademie Studio and the Arsenal cinema. Last year’s trend also continues to make its presence felt this year, as the medium-length format continues to make inroads against the short film. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the longest film in the programme is the 243-minute Les choses et les mots de Mudimbe by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, in which we watch an autobiographical interview with Congolese literary scholar Valentin-Yves Mudimbe as he takes up clear positions to the various shifts and revolutions in contemporary history.

Three different artists’ portraits carry off audiences into the fictionalised world of art before releasing them into a new reality. In Black President, director Mpumelelo Mcata allows artist Kudzanai Chiurai to flee into a whole other realm following various fractious experiences in the art scene. Oskar Dawicki in The Performer by curators and filmmakers Maciej Sobieszczanski and Łukasz Ronduda enables performance artist Oskar Dawicki to outgrow his own life – the film continues on stage before being analysed as an exhibition format straight afterwards. 22 years after the death of Inuit artist Pudlo Pudlat, Arvo Leo’s Fish Plane, Heart Clock turns its attention to the artist’s home, weaving together Pudlat’s surreal-looking images with footage of his own – both drawings and film can be seen in the Marshall-McLuhan Salon of the Embassy of Canada.

Several films in the programme draw on acting and performance as a documentary strategy. In Out on the Street by Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk, the workers at a Cairo factory grapple with corruption and exploitation across a series of theatre workshops, while Romanian refugees re-enact their experiences before a blue screen in Nicolas Cilin’s Gineva. In Marwa Arsanio’s film Have You Ever Killed a Bear? Or Becoming Jamila, an actress takes an in-depth look at the Algerian resistance fighter she is supposed to play. In Escape From My Eyes, director Felipe Bragança links together documentary images with staged scenes to create a series of accounts about three refugees who lived in the protest camp at Oranienplatz in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin.

Other works offer up the art, film and media world to critical self-reflection. The installation Practicing Live by Yu Cheng-Ta is a reality soap opera. A family is celebrating the father’s birthday, whereby each member of the family works in the art scene and is played by those active in the art market. Je proclame la destruction by Arthur Tuoto consists of two shots from Robert Bresson’s film Le diable probablement(1977) repeated in an endless loop. Martin Ebner’s installation Ein helles Kino challenges the cinematographic setting, while Leila Albayaty steals her very own film images in her film Face B.

One film programme that includes works by Anton Vidokle, Elke Marhöfer and Mikhail Lylov, as well as Florian Zeyfang, Lisa Schmidt-Colinet and Alexander Schmoeger revolves around blueprints for utopia. In This Is Cosmos, Vidokle explores the ideas of Russian philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, who regarded death as a fallacy. Shape Shifting by Marhöfer and Lylov is a cinematic observation of nature and culture in Asian landscapes. Last, but not least, Institute Above-Ground describes a construction experiment created by Vittorio Garrati shortly after the Cuban revolution.

In four keynote presentations, Gertrud Koch, Diedrich Diederichsen, Ekaterina Degot and Haytham El-Wardany (together with Yazan Khalili and Lara Khaldi) debate the theme of this year’s programme “To the Sound of the Closing Door”. Ekaterina Degot will also be talking to Naum Kleiman, former director of the Moscow Film Museum, and Maxim Pavlov, former deputy director of the Moscow Film Museum about the state of the cultural scene in Russia. In various panel discussions, Jasmina Metwaly, Philip Rizk, Oktay İnce, Alper Şen and Angela Melitopoulos will address the ability of images and motifs created at specific historical moments to re-write existing narratives. Similar questions will be discussed with two directors showing films in this year’s Forum programme based on their own work: Akram Zaatari and Kidlat Tahimik.

The Visionary Archive project funded by the TURN fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation will also be presenting the results of film research that has been carried out in Berlin, Bissau, Johannesburg, Cairo and Khartoum. The key question here is what a film archive is capable of achieving for cultures of remembrance and emancipation in the face of social upheaval.

For the second time, Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art and the Cimatheque - Alternative Film Centre in Cairo in cooperation with the Allianz Cultural Foundation will be giving the Think:Film Award to works from the Forum Expanded programme. This year’s jury is made up by Karim Aïnouz, Mohamed Beshir and Ala Younis.

On the opening evening, works by CHEAP, Heinz Emigholz, Friedl vom Gröller, Constanze Ruhm, Michael Snow and Ala Younis will be presented. In Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili’s performance Love Letter to a Union: The Falling Comrades, letters written by two lovers will be read out, which revolve around their everyday lives, historical events and the films they have each seen.

Forum Expanded is curated by Stefanie Schulte Strathaus (head curator), Anselm Franke, Nanna Heidenreich, Bettina Steinbrügge and Ulrich Ziemons.

Film programme

Ruhe auf der Leinwand by Friedl vom Gröller, Austria
Fish Plane, Heart Clock by Arvo Leo, Canada / Switzerland
Into the Hinterlands by Julia Yezbick, USA
Face B by Leila Albayaty, Belgium / Germany
Black President by Mpumelelo Mcata, Zimbabwe / South Africa / United Kingdom
Oskar Dawicki in the Performer by Łukasz Ronduda / Maciej Sobieszczanski, Poland
This is Cosmos by Anton Vidokle, USA
Shape Shifting by Elke Marhöfer, Mikhail Lylov, Germany / Japan
Institute Above-Ground by Florian Zeyfang / Lisa Schmidt-Colinet / Alexander Schmoeger, Germany
Barra Fel Share' (Out on the Street) by Jasmina Metwaly/Philip Rizk, Egypt
Memories for a Private Eye by Rania Stephan, Lebanon
La Dolce Siria by Ammar Al Beik, United Arab Emirates / Egypt
Calamity Qui? by Isabelle Prim, Canada / France
Have You Ever Killed a Bear? Or Becoming Jamila by Marwa Arsanios, Lebanon
Acapella by Islam Safiyyudin Mohamed, Egypt
Escape from my Eyes by Felipe Bragança, Brazil / Germany
Orchard Street by Ken Jacobs, USA 
Cyclops Observes the Celestial Bodies by Ken Jacobs, USA
Les Choses et les Mots de Mudimbe by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Cameroon
From Ramallah by Asem Naser, Palestine / Germany
Untitled (Human Mask) by Pierre Huyghe, France
A Field Guide to the Ferns by Basma Alsharif, USA
Wayward Fronds by Fern Silva, USA
Iec Long by João Pedro Rodrigues, João Rui Guerra da Mata, Portugal
Cancelled Faces by Lior Shamriz, South Korea, Germany
20 Handshakes for Peace by Mahdi Fleifel, Palestine / Germany
Wa Ala Saeeden Akhar (And on a Different Note) by Mohammad Shawky Hassan, Egypt
Gineva by Nicolas Cilins, Switzerland
Vyshybalshitsa (Embroideress) by Lyusya Matveeva, Russia
Dear John by Hans Scheugl, Austria
Three Quarters by Kevin Jerome Everson, USA
Strom by Eva C. Heldmann, Germany

Exhibitions

Akademie der Künste am Hanseatenweg:
Concert C with Door by David Askevold, USA
Viventes by Frederico Benevides, Brazil
Opaque by Pauline Boudry, Renate Lorenz, Germany / France
Hysterics/Autodidact by Jeamin Cha, South Korea
Practicing Live by Yu Cheng-Ta, Taiwan
A Spectacle of Privacy by Roy Dib, Lebanon
Ein helles Kino by Martin Ebner, Germany
What Do You Call This Thing I am Missing? by Antje Ehmann, Jan Ralske, Germany
In Rom by Jeanne Faust, Germany
The Children of Uzai, Antinarcissus by Mireille Kassar, Lebanon 
The Machinist's Lament by Jen Liu, USA
Med Blindpassasjeren Inn I Oljealderen Og Beyond by Eline McGeorge, Norway
The Nameless by Ho Tzu Nyen, Singapore
One Hundred Sinkholes/Inks by Jenny Perlin, USA
Invisible Producers. Kapitel 1: Panoramis / Paramount / Paranormal by Constanze Ruhm, Emilien Awada, Austria / France
Je Proclame La Destruction by Arthur Tuoto, Brazil
Beauty and the Right to the Ugly by Wendelien van Oldenborgh, The Netherlands
Taut by Michael Snow, Canada

Embassy of Canada – Marshall McLuhan Salon:
Fish Plane, Heart Clock by Arvo Leo, Canada / Switzerland

Performances

Love Letter to a Union: The Falling Comrades by Lara Khaldi, Yazan Khalili 
Oskar Dawicki in the Performer by Łukasz Ronduda, Maciej Sobieszczanski

Panels and Discussions

FORUM EXPANDED KEY NOTES: TO THE SOUND OF THE CLOSING DOOR 
Gertrud Koch, Diedrich Diederichsen, Ekaterina Degot, Haytham El-Wardany

NAUM KLEIMAN AND MAXIM PAVLOV IN CONVERSATION WITH EKATERINA DEGOT
Naum Kleiman, Ekaterina Degot, Maxim Pavlov

WHAT IF? REVISITING IMAGES
Jasmina Metwaly, Philip Rizk, Oktay İnce, Alper Şen, Angela Melitopoulos, Akram Zaatari, Kidlat Tahimik, Tilman Baumgärtel

VISIONARY ARCHIVE
Darryl Els, Filipa César, Flora Gomes, Tobias Hering, Marie-Hélène Gutberlet, Sara Gubarra, Nadja Korinth, Stefan Pethke, Katharina von Schröder, Hana al Bayaty, Yasmin Desouki