Melvin Moti (NL, 1977), Texas Honky Tonkin’, 2003.
Melvin Moti’s video investigates the myth of Texas as created by the media, noting European influences in this ultra-patriotic state, such as the fact that Texan music is peppered with European influences. Moti reveals that besides differences there are also similarities between the two continents.
Pourbusstraat 5, B-2000 Antwerpen - BELGIUM +32(0)3.226.06.30
It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium was reworked in 1987 as a made-for-TV movie, titled If It’s Tuesday, It Still Must be Belgium.
When a tour bus driver plans to save his daughter from her captors, a Belgian circus performer, the Americans on his European bus tour lend a help hand. (All Movie Guide)
Werner Herzog (GER, ° 1942 ), How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck, 1976.
It is a documentary capturing the World Championship of Livestock Auctioneers in Pennsylvania. The almost unintelligible speed, skill and repetition with which the auctioneers conduct business fascinated Herzog because it seemed to be “the real poetry of capitalism”, a form of language pushed to the extremes of efficiency and (literal) economy.This system is juxtaposed with the pre-modern Amish farmers who come to watch the auction.
John Bock (GER, ° 1965), Palms, 2007, 60 min
The first of John Bock’s films to be produced in America, it leads us through an empty, indefinite landscape. Two killers have arrived from Germany. They are wearing white shirts under black single-breasted suits, narrow ties, and black sunglasses, as we have come to expect from countless films. They have a job to do in America. The stations of their business trip are framed by two icons of architectural history: homes by Richard Neutra and Rudolf Schindler represent the starting and ending point, respectively; between them the odyssey follows the trail of strange signs along the highways of Los Angeles, through the desert, a lot where a house has burned down, a strange, small open-air stage with a band, and the bar that provides the film’s title: the Palms. It remains uncertain whether the killers will find the mysterious unknown man. And if so, what is in store for him?
Screening : February 23, 2008 - Cabinet Wally Hope, Antwerp.
Courtesy the artists, Klostefelde (Berlin) & Stella Lohaus Gallery (Antwerp)
Other articles in this chapter
Nous pouvons tous entrer dans un devenir-noir, dans un devenir-indien, ce qui fut d’ailleurs justement l’intuition humoristique et géniale des Indiens Métropolitains à Rome. (...) Indiani metropolitani est le nom adopté par des groupes d’étudiants et de jeunes travailleurs précaires du Mouvement de 1977 en Italie, point culminant du mouvement de l’Autonomia. Le nom se réfère au fait que ces groupes s’autodéfinissaient comme les habitants d’une sorte de "réserve culturelle" par rapport à l’ordre établi (du travail). Les Indiani metropolitani ont surtout existé à Rome où ils organisèrent des performances au printemps de 1977, et à Bologne, où se forma le groupe analogue Cellule mao-dadaïste. On pourrait dire que ces groupes étaient sous influence situationniste avec une matrice ouvriériste.
Felix Guattari *
in Felix Guattari/Suely Ronik, Micropolitiques, Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2007, pp 111 & 475.
* (le titre est de la rédaction)
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Brief Synopsis : The Disappointment : Or, The Force of Credulity is a documentary/musical/fairytale by media artist Brian Springer that explores the legacy of 19th century U.S. anarchism, treasure hunting and spiritualist folk lore through the story of the Springer family’s decades-long search for buried Spanish treasure in the caves of Missouri. The video project grounds the family’s personal history of treasure-hunting into an expanded social/post-colonial context by exploring the repressed histories of a series of atrocities as they reappear transfigured, displaced and disguised in contemporary notions of "discovery." The Disappointment places pressure not just on notions of documentary truth but also on the contested line between legitimated and non-legitimated ’popular’ knowledges and beliefs.
Look at the film here
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