For two full days, SoundImageCulture (SIC) – a workspace for artists, filmmakers and anthologists – is opening a window into its working processes. The focus of this two-day workshop is collectivity. Working collectively is central to the practices of SIC, as it allows artists and anthologists to reflect together about (the aesthetic and formal conventions of) documentary working methods. SIC helps coach artists with collective seminaries, personal advice, group discussions and dialogue. For that indispensable eye of the outsider, SIC regularly invites external artists and critics to participate.
© Julie Pfleiderer
There are different ways to discover how SIC works, from collective observation and listening sessions concerning new works in progress to projects that have been realized in recent years within the workplace.
On Thursday, SIC invites Sammy Baloji. He makes a selection of films made by the Picha! Collective in Lubumbashi in combination with three films from the SIC collective.
While you are here, do not forget to browse through the SIC Media Library and have a look at the films that SIC has completed down through the years!
PROGRAMMA
Wednesday 21.09
► 17:00 Media Library
Continuous
On the monitors in the Red Hall, discover a wide selection of SIC films from 2007 to today.
18:00 Mirador
Presentation + discussion Pieter Geenen
Brussels artist Pieter Geenen was previously hosted at SIC, where he presents his latest film, shot in the Straits of Gibraltar, on looking at Africa and Europe.
19:00 – SIC projects
Several SIC films illustrating the collective practice and discussion with the makers:
► Martina Melilli (SIC 2015): Il quarto giorno di scuola / The fourth day of school (5’) Martina Melilli makes a film with her father. He reminisces about his childhood in Tripoli, while she adds archive material and takes it beyond the individual experience. Il quarto giorno di scuola is a project Melilli took on at one of the workshops at SIC. Meanwhile, she continues to work on her film about the Tripolitalians in which she combines the colonial history of her (grand)parents with the current situation in Libya and Italy.
► Effi Weiss en Amir Borenstein (SIC 2014): Housewarming (33’) Effi Weiss & Amir Borenstein assume the role of Goldilocks and emigrate to Albania, where they occupy the empty and unfinished houses. They fill the desolate emptiness and work together with local actors and an Albanian iso-polyphonic choir which responds to their invasion with words and songs.
► Miguel Peres dos Santos (SIC 2014): There are no Images (14’) An invitation to reflect on the possible link between image and memory, between image and moment, between image and death. A father, a son and a dead child in a dialogue that arises in the moment. “Does an image die?” “and if an image dies” … “what happens to the memory?”
► Margaux Schwarz (SIC 2014): Chacun Sa technique (31’) A common struggle is what connects the characters in this story. Through Pierre-Charles, man of the street in Brussels, a network of contacts, a network of ‘others’ develops.
► Julie Pfleiderer (SIC 2012): Infinite Jetz (18’) Three people together bring one story. All three are, like the filmmaker, akin to immigrants in the same city. By sharing that one story about (at least) three people, a fragmented memory, a fragmented identity comes about.
Thursday 22.09
17:00 Media Library
Continuous
On the monitors in the Red Hall, discover a wide selection of SIC films from 2007 to today.
14:00 - 17:00 Collective Work session
Presentation and discussion of A last piece of common land (SIC 2016), an ongoing collective project initiated by the SIC participants of 2016. The painting Cornard Wood by Thomas Gainsborough: a forest scene in 1748, a period when the English common ground, where everyone could gather wood and food, was abolished by capitalist landowners. Participants work on the themes of Brussels, Europe and cinema (or image in the broadest sense of the word). Where are we in this Europe and its common ground? Where are we with the cinema as a shared heritage of signs, gestures and images?
18:00 Autopia
Presentation of a collective book, initiated by Eva La Cour (SIC2012)
Autopia is the catalogue for XX’s show of the same name, as well as a speculative statement about current conditions for visual production and exhibition-making. The catalogue is part of the Museum’s Common Grounds series, meaning it uses an editorial process characterised by conversations involving different partners.
19:00 - SIC invites Sammy Baloji
SIC invites Sammy Baloji the Brussels-Congolese photographer and filmmaker Sammy Baloji combines some videos realised within the Picha! collective in Lubumbashi with some works from the SIC archives. Or: how narratives direct the imagination.
The idea for the Picha! videos was mooted in 2008 during a meeting between Libr’écrire, a collective of young writers from Lubumbashi, and a group of international video makers. In 2009, a workshop with the same video makers and writers followed. A total of six videos were made, of which we select three this evening.
►Caméléon by Douglas Masamuna (10’)
Like Sammy Baloji, Douglas Masamuna comes from Lubumbashi and has made comic strips before. He evokes the Congolese history with the texts of Ladislas Maliza, a loincloth and the movements of a dancer.
►Sacredieu by Heeten Bhagat (10’)
Heeten Bhagat works in Harare around his Indian-Zimbabwean identity and socio-political tensions in his country. With a text by Fiston Mwanza, he makes a video in which he translates destruction into an expressive force.
►Suite et fin by Dorothee Kreutzfeldt (8’) South African Dorothee Kreutzfeldt draws on a text by Maëline Le Lay, and other texts of the Libr’écrire about the city. Filming in Lubumbashi, where permits to film are hard to come by and the camera is not always well received, she is constantly forced to adapt to the situation.
The three films of the Picha! collective enter into dialogue with three films of SIC participants. Each of the films have a different interpretation on 'working with narratives’:
►Furor by Salomé Laloux-Bard (SIC 2012), 17’ Serge is an actor. Child of the Democratic Republic of Congo, he was a soldier in the war between 1997 and 2001. The evocation of his childhood is mixed with the fury of a theatrical game where reality becomes fiction.
►pepsi, cola, water? by Tom Bogaert (SIC 2014), 9’ Jazz pioneer and philosopher Sun Ra had a deep fascination for anything extra-terrestrial and ancient Egypt. Computer animation, archival footage and music of Sun Ra are intertwined in a commemoration of his legendary visit to Egypt in 1971. The result is as outrageous as Sun Ra himself.
►Yoko Osha by Lazara Rosell Albaer (SIC 2014), 41’ A dip in the heart of the Santeria or Regla de Osha, a syncretic religion from the Caribbean. Using her own story as a starting point, where the origin of her name is closely linked to the cult, Lazara Rosell Albaer searches for her identity which is at the very heart of her artistic practice.
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