Expanded Performance: Life on Film

Thursday 13 December 2012, 8.00-10.30 pm
Location: Het Nutshuis, Riviervismarkt 5, The Hague
Language: performance Dutch, talk English
Tickets: € 7,50 (with discount: € 5,-)
Reservations via Het Nutshuis: click here


Part of Expanded Performance

In Life on Film, Het Nutshuis in association with Stroom goes in search of new boundaries. Performance for film has been around since the 1950s, but today's results are completely unlike anything produced 60 years ago. Come and see for yourself! The program features films by MPA, Mary Reid Kelley, Keren Cytter and Yael Bartana.

PROGRAM (more t.b.a.)

MPA
Excuse Me, I made a mark before asking permission
, 2009
MPA is an exhibitionist following a living art practice. Her Super 8 film Excuse Me, I made a mark before asking permission is a document of an action performed in the Chinatti Mountains on the site of the former Donald Judd Ranch. MPA arranges stones in a triangle and pisses in the center, a comment on Judd's obsession for marking and claiming. The action is an attempt to insert the invisible players-often women- into Judd's historicized narrative of Land and Minimalist art. The film is also evidence for the Native American tribes who recognize the site as sacred and stolen. The entire project asks 'What are the lines of permission?' and 'Who is the occupier/occupied?' (exhibited at: Larissa Goldston Gallery in New York).

Mary Reid Kelley with Patrick Kelley
The Syphilis of Sisyphus,
2011
French history gets an absurdist makeover in this video by Mary Reid Kelley. Reid Kelley plays a working-class woman in mid-nineteenth-century France, a 'grissete', who wanders through an elaborately designed black and white set, waxing philosophically in metered, rhyming verse about beauty, artifice, and the natural world. Jesus, Karl Marx, and Diderot are among figures of intellectual history who appear in this clever satire.

Keren Cytter
Untitled
, 2009
The film Untitled (2009), produced for Venice Biennial, is based on the true story of a boy who shot the mistress of his father out of jealousy. For the making of the film, Cytter worked with both professional (Bernhard Schütz, Carolin Peters) and amateur actors. Inspired by the film Opening Night (1977) by John Cassavetes, Untitled was filmed in front of live audiences at the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin. The main character is a woman who is about to act on stage and at this very moment starts to think about her own life and her own identity—both the real and the "acted" one. In light of the theatre stage and the presence of an audience, the ambiguity of reality and fiction gains a particularly strong emphasis. By help of specific camera settings, Cytter focuses on the psychological moments of the story—the feelings of hatred, fear and anxiety are especially in high gear. In certain moments, the different perspectives of the camera create the impression as if we ourselves are moving with the actors. Sometimes, observation itself is shown to us quite plainly - particularly when the live audience becomes our mirror.
http://www.schauort.com/cytter-untitled.htm

Yael Bartana
Sirens' Song, 2005
In her work Yael Bartana focuses on how rituals and social symbols work to socialise the individual and build a national identity. She takes her homeland Israel as a starting point, and has in many of her videos used Jewish parties or rituals linked to the state of Israel as a starting point. However, in Sirens' Song she has with dazzlingly beautiful images turned the focus on those who rebel against the ideals of national identity. To them these ideals are worn out and no longer represent a modern Israel.

Yael Bartana, 'Sirens' Song', 2005
photo: courtesy the artist
Mary Reid Kelley with Patrick Kelley, 'The Syphilis of Sisyphus', 2011
photo: courtesy the artists
MPA, 'Excuse Me, I made a mark before asking permission', 2009
photo: courtesy the artist
Keren Cytter, 'Untitled', 2009
photo: courtesy the artist
Keren Cytter, 'Untitled', 2009
photo: courtesy the artist

photo: logo design: Niels Berk