Cinemaniac > Think Film 2016

FORUM
Jasmina Cibic
Assaf Gruber

MMC LUKA

From 10th to 16th July 2016
Opening: July 10th at 20:00 h

Curated by: Branka Benčić
Organiser: Apoteka_ prostor za suvremenu umjetnost, Vodnjan

This year's Forum is a constelation of independent presentations and it brings us two art postions: Jasmina Cibic and Assaf Gruber. On the exampe of their recent films, similarly to undertaking a “detailed reading”, we will analyse different art positions and practices of working with moving images and we will examine “new narratives”, opened up by different forms of working with film or video, where boundaries and possibilities of representation, language, image, space for political speech, models of production, distribution and presentation are contested. Films made by artists are placed in the space in between, as a form of a critical form and practice that brings forth many questions: from the institutions such as galleries, museums and cinemas, visual art, cinema.

Films and videos by Jasmina Cibic are constructed around the idea of architecture and discourse that she produces. The artist centres her exploration around the manners in which architecture can become an embodiment of national ideologies, identities and power representations. Her creative work is linked to a place and a context. It is performative and it uses a wide array of mediums and stage techniques in order to redefine and reconsider the exitsing environment and its policy. The film Tear Down and Rebuild (2015), shot inside the Palace of the Federation in Belgrade, centres around four female speakers. Each woman embodies a certain ideological position as a variation of the Mother State (nation builder, pragmatist, conservationist, and artist-architect). The films Tear Down and Rebuild and The Nation Loves It are part of the Spielraum trilogy. Jasmina Cibic is an internationally acclaimed artist born in Ljubljana. She lives and works in London.

Assaf Gruber’s film The Right is a part of the complex project The Anonymity of the Night which centres around the questions about the manner in which political ideologies of subjects are intertwined with individual, personal stories and about the way in which they form social relations within private and public spheres. The Right puts art and its institutions in the spotlight. The short length film, structured as a monodrama, is developed around a letter by a retired security guard at the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresdner to the director of the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz. The retired museum security guard is a 73-year-old woman who expresses her attitudes toward art and ideology in a letter by which she applies to volunteer in a Polish museum, an institution with a relevant collection of modern and contemporary art. Assaf Gruber (1980, Jerusalem) lives and works in Berlin.

Cinemaniac > Think Film, established in 2002 as a side programme of the Pula Film Festival, is a long-term research platform questioning the connection between film, moving images and contemporary art. The project provides a systematic exploration of tools and media considerations in terms of contemporary art and curatorial practices, working with moving images, images from the cinema projector, their interrelations and manners of their exploration, contextualization, presentation and reception.

Image credits:
J. Cibic, Tear Down and Rebuild (2015), video. Courtesy of the artist.
A. Gruber: The Right (2015), courtesy of the artist