49B Studios Presents HOME-LAND: An Exhibition of Middle Eastern Artists

Dear Friends,

Please join me at 49B Studios for the exhibition HOME-LAND, during Arts In Bushwick's one-day event: BETA Spaces, co-presented with ArteEast.

HOME-LAND opens November 14th 2010 from 12pm to 7pm with Installations, Photography, paintings, performances and screenings. My installation, Torture Commissioned By The Emperor For The Good Of The People (2010) (*see below) is part of this exhibition of Middle Eastern artists, curated by Makram Hamdan. All the works in this show were created in response to representations of the idea "homeland."

Participating Artists:
Barrak Alzaid
Omar Amiralay
Faysal Bibi
Rafael Fuchs
Amnon Gutman
Makram Hamdan
Zied Hamdan
Maria Kassab
Leeor Kaufman
Rami Kodeih,
Maryam Najd
Rima Najd
Azadeh Saljooghi
Joseph Shahadi

Directions:
Take the L train to Morgan Ave.
Exit at rear of train at Harrison Pl/ Bogart St.
Turn right out of station, walk one block to # 49 just past Brooklyn Naturals Deli.

RSVP at 49bstudios@gmail.com

* The Torture Commissioned By The Emperor
For The Good Of The People (2010)
Installation detail, Mixed media: Lamb hearts, testes,
straight pins, sewing and upholstery needles

TONIGHT: The Sternberg Project

The Sternberg Project

August 23, 2010, 8pm

Sternberg Park

The Sternberg Project, a site-specific dance film by Zena Bibler of the Dance Film Lab, is a crowd-sourced, multi-media, videodance time capsule of July in Sternberg Park and its surrounding area composed of short videos made on anything from HD camcorders to cell phone cameras.

The final Moviehouse screening of the summer is a screening of The Sternberg Project as well as original work by Itziar Barrios called (Ballad of) Knowville and a live performance.

Shot in abandoned industrial locations in New York City, (Ballad of) Knowville attempts to explain our present world through the murder ballad aesthetic. This aesthetic is a sub-genre of the traditional ballad form (often an American version of an older European ballad), that relays details and often consequences of crimes of passion but with the elements of supernatural retribution removed. In this video piece, the murder ballad is an entry point into a world that conjures tension, intrigue, and mystery and where death is decorative, lyrical, and aestheticized. (Ballad of) Knowville teeters on the edge of a dream-state, repeatedly falling into dance-induced lyricism only to abruptly regain the stark reality of self-awareness.

Details:
Monday, August 23rd, 8pm
Sternberg Park, Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Lorimer + Boerum Streets)
Event is FREE! (So bring your friends)

Zena Bibler is a Brooklyn-based dancer, choreographer, and experimental filmmaker. Her latest projects include The Union Square Experiments, an expanding set of site-specific, geo-tagged, Google-Mapped, public dance performances with Katie Schetlick and Ashley Hannan and Little Dances Everywhere, a series of short, site-specific dance films that function like postcards from particular moments and situations.

Conceived and directed by Zena Bibler in collaboration with Katie Schetlick, Ashley Hannan, Faye Min Lim, Ashley Murray, Jacob Liberman, Malinda Crump, Rishauna Zumberg, Ariel Lembeck, Elaine Carberry, Zavé Martohardjono, Ullani Atkins, Sofia Feria, Jennifer Ruiz, Nico Demus, Peter Roushakes, Trevion Tillman, DJ Tillman, Zanaya Tillman, Davonaisha Tillman, Mia-Lee Betances, Kassandra Matos, Jacqueline Betances, Rian Rooney, Michelle Castañeda, Chris Tabron, Chris Henderson, Clay Franklin, Alice Cox, Gabriel Roldos, and Hannah Krafcik.

For more information visit http://www.brilliantp.com/moviehouse/

Multi-media Installation, Painting, and New Album IX Are Featured in Luis Jacob's First U.S. Solo Exhibition at Art in General

Luis Jacob, Without Persons (2006) by David Frankovich

Luis Jacob: Without Persons

Art in General is pleased to present Without Persons, an exhibition of new and recent works by Toronto-based artist Luis Jacob, curated by Andria Hickey. The exhibition includes video, painting, and a new work from the artist’s Album series that will be on view from September 16 – November 13, 2010. Receiving increasingly wider recognition, Jacob’s work was first exhibited at Art in General as part of the group exhibition Explosion LTTR: Practice More Failure, in 2004. More recently, Jacob’s work has been included in Documenta 12 and has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at the Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; Kunstverein, Hamburg; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

Over the past decade, Jacob’s diverse practice has addressed issues of social interaction and the subjectivity of aesthetic experience. Working in video, installation, sculpture and photography, as well as actions in the public sphere, Jacob’s work is often derived from research on a wide variety of subjects. In bringing together unlikely referents, Jacob invites a collision of meaning systems that destabilize our conventions of viewing and open up possibilities for participation and the creation of knowledge.

In the artist’s words, “what is essential for our experience of art—what is foundational—is the experience of non-intelligibility, a kind of dislocation. Aesthetic experience for us today is first of all an encounter with otherness, with strangeness: but an otherness that, crucially, is there demanding appropriation, intelligibility. What is so constructive about aesthetic experience is that it requires a creative act on the part of the viewer, an act of synthesis that is original through and through.”

The artist’s first solo exhibition in the U.S., Luis Jacob: Without Persons features a series of works that explore absence and authenticity in terms of pictorial representation, the legacy of modern art, and the self and others. These works call on the viewer to consider what may lie beneath the surface of the “empty picture,” and what new forms of real and unconscious knowledge may lay dormant in such minimal propositions.

The central installation, “Without Persons,” for which the exhibition is titled, is an immersive multimedia work that features two computer-generated voices, one male and one female, that talk about “being-in-the-city” and “being-with-others.” The adjacent images project an amorphous, plasma-like liquid, with abstract but seemingly bodily movement, as if animated by the artificial voices. As the liquid finds new forms in formlessness, the voices invite the viewer to consider the discord of the alien world without persons, and the coming to consciousness of an infant who knows no persons.

Jacob’s engagement with abstraction is also reflected in the exhibition through a series of paintings the artist made in response to an early suite of Mark Rothko paintings. Considering notions of authenticity and appropriation, Jacob reconstituted the original works using a staining technique on raw canvas for one series, and a vivid tie-dye technique, with two “eye holes” in the accompanying series of paintings.

Likewise, Jacob’s Album IX, newly created for this exhibition, intuitively reconstructs an uncanny narrative of recent art history. Album IX consists of dozens of images culled from a variety of books, magazines, and other publications. These images are montaged together in plastic-laminate panels, and hung sequentially in the gallery in the form of an “image bank”. Through processes of visual association, the images of Album IX compose a poetic narrative around various themes: reductivism in painting and the modernist tradition of creative rupture; base materialism and the aesthetic sublime; embodiment and the monochrome. Using imagery excised from published sources, Album IX becomes an invitation to construct associative narratives about artistic experience by means of the visual material that surrounds us in the expanded cultural environment. In the fall of 2010, Album IX will be published as an artist book by A Prior (Ghent, Belgium).

About the Artist

Luis Jacob’s work has been presented in numerous international group exhibitions including Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); Animism, Extra City Kunsthal Antwerp; Kunsthalle Bern (2010); Dance with Camera, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2009-2010); If We Can’t Get It Together, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada (2008); The Order of Things, Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp (2008); and Documenta 12, Kassel (2007). His solo exhibitions include the Städtisches Museum Abteiberg of Mönchengladbach (2009), the Hamburg Kunstverein (2008); Platform Seoul, PKM Gallery, Seoul (2008); the Musée d’art de Joliette, Quebec (2008); the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery of the University of British Columbia (2007), and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2005). In June 2010, Jacob presented the first of a three-part touring mid-career survey exhibition, Luis Jacob Tableaux: Pictures at an Exhibition, at the Darling Foundry in Montréal; the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto and to Vancouver. Jacob lives and works in Toronto.

Art in General
79 Walker Street
New York NY 10013
212 219 0473 tel
212 219 0511 fax
info@artingeneral.org

LInk Hokey-Pokey

1) Redefining Punk My Way

This is a great article by Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed from the Taqwacore Webzine about inventing yourself within a subculture. Ahmed discusses the way you can both find yourself in a scene and also still feel excluded. I understand what she means: I love that the Taqwacores exist and I'm a big fan of the scene but the truth is, I don't always feel so at home with them either. That scene is more Muslim than Arab, and it seems dominated-- in my experience-- by South Asian bands and fans. All of that is fine by me, but it isn't my experience any more than a standard (i.e usually white) hardcore show. So I appreciated Ahmed's point that, for her, Taqwacore, isn't about creating new labels and boxes for what punk "is". She writes, "We are defining what it means to be Taqwacore, together. Whether we have different class backgrounds, races, or religiosity, the empathy of understanding commonality amongst this posse is not lost. This empathy translates into a building of bridges with all sorts of communities including those that are not punk/Muslim/brown. And to me, that is how Taqwacore is redefining what it means to be punk, in a whole new brilliant way."

Tags: Music, Culture is Politics

2) UN Inquiry Finds Israel “Punished and Terrorized” Palestinian Civilians, Committed War Crimes During Gaza Assault

Democracy Now posted this interview with Israel/Palestine scholar and activist Norman Finkelstein after the Goldstone Report, which was generated by the United Nations to investigate the possibility of war crimes during Israel's assault on Gaza, was published and summarily rejected by the Israel. Democracy Now's Amy Goodman writes, "The 575-page report came at the end of a six-month inquiry and was based on dozens of interviews and investigations. The inquiry was led by Judge Richard Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor of the international courts for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Judge Goldstone said Israel deliberately attacked civilians and failed to take precautions to minimize loss of civilian life. " The Goldstone Report concludes that Israel committed grave breaches of the Geneva Convention during the assault including, killing "1,400 Palestinians—about a third of them women and children." As usual Finkelstein breaks it down in the video interview (and accompanying free transcript). He writes, "The report basically is consistent with the findings of the other human rights organizations, that Israel targeted civilians, Israel targeted civilians who were carrying white flags, Israel systematically targeted the Palestinian infrastructure. The findings were consistent with those of the other human rights organizations: Israel is guilty of a very significant number of war crimes. And also, the findings which were—other reports, the same conclusions, that the Palestinians were not using hospitals to hide Hamas officials. There’s no evidence that the ambulances Israel targeted were carrying Hamas militants or ammunition. And most significantly, in terms of the coverage during the Gaza massacre, the report found, as did Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, there’s no evidence whatsoever—and I would want to underline that—there’s no evidence whatsoever that Hamas was guilty of human shielding. But on the other hand, there is significant evidence, actually copious evidence, that Israel was guilty of human shielding."

This is essential reading for understanding what the Goldstone report actually says and for dismantling the Israeli objections to its findings.

Tags: Goldstone, Palestine/Israel

3) VIDEO "If we allow Obama to live, then America Dies"

The blog Political Carnival has linked to a YouTube Video of Rev. James Manning of New York's ATLAH Worldwide ministries calling for President Obama's death. For real. He says,

2:28 to 2:40

"If Obama lives, then the constitution, and America dies. Now listen to me very carefully, please hear me, please hear me: If we let Obama live, America dies..."

5:12 to 5:35

"What we need to be focused on, if we allow Obama to live, in his present state as a criminal, then America is torn apart. God knows America is gone. America is gone, if we allow Obama to continue, then the nation is gone, so which, which is it? Obama lives and America dies?

10:08 to 10:43

"Now what's it going to be? What's it going to be? Is it going to be Obama? He will live and ride off into the sunset as America's first African-American....President, which is a lie from the pit of hell. But are you gonna let that lie stand, and then the Constitution and America. I can tell you now. Five months from now America will no longer be. We must take immediate and decisive action now."

Yeah.

Oh, and yes, Rev. Manning is black. Discuss amongst yourselves. I got nothing.

Tags: Conservative Nutjob

4) Clinton faces Pakistani anger at drone attacks: One TV anchor says: "You had one 9/11. We are having daily 9/11s in Pakistan."

The Los Angeles Times reports (via the Associated Press) that Hillary Clinton faced angry and incredulous Pakistanis during her recent visit. She was questioned directly about the use of drones to drop bombs all over Pakistan, a tactic that has resulted in civilian deaths and inspired pointed questions about the US use of Pakistan as a battleground to fight "Islamic extremsim." The AP writes,

"During an interview with Clinton broadcast live in Pakistan with several prominent female TV anchors, before a predominantly female audience of several hundred, one member of the audience said the Predator attacks amount to "executions without trial" for those killed.

Another asked Clinton how she would define terrorism.

'Is it the killing of people in drone attacks?' she asked. That woman then asked if Clinton considers drone attacks and bombings like the one that killed more than 100 civilians in the city of Peshawar earlier this week to both be acts of terrorism.

"No, I do not," Clinton replied.

Another man told her bluntly: 'Please forgive me, but I would like to say we've been fighting your war.'"

Although this article mentions it in passing there has been little comment about the fact that Clinton's most articulate critics during this visit were Pakistani women, some of whom were covered. The US press cannot wait to draw an explicit link between South Asian or Arab ethnic identities, Islam and the repression of women under other circumstances (like in cases of domestic violence, for e.g.). But when confronted with images of politically engaged, plain-spoken Muslimahs who were clearly unafraid to pose difficult questions to a US official in front of international television cameras... nothing. The AP video that accompanies this article only shows Clinton's (rather defensive) response and not the women who first raised the questions in the first place. In order to actually see footage of the female Pakistani journalists interviewing Clinton we must turn to the site PKPolitics, who have posted it here (after the introduction the interview footage is in English).

Tags: Feminism, Politics is Culture

5) Huma Mulji: High Rise

In keeping with the "Pakistani Women Representing Themselves " theme of the above post I am linking to Dubai-based artist and writer Valerie Grove's article (in digital art magazine Nafas) about Lahore-based artist Huma Mulji. Mulji's sculpture and installations have what Grove calls a "slapstick theatricality" that gives it a conceptual edge: In her most recent work Mulji has integrated large scale taxidermy with constructions. She employs the preserved carcasses of actual water buffaloes, which represent Asia and camels, which refer to an Arab landscape. Grove writes, "Merging installation, sculpture and photography, Huma Mulji gleefully manipulates both context and content and juxtaposes unlikely materials to create her own brand of situationist absurdity. Within this process, and underlying the humour and spectacle, are some acute observations on the social and economic realities of contemporary Pakistan."

Her Suburban Dream (2009) Huma Mulji
painted steel pipe, taxidermied water buffalo

The results of using once-living animals in her new work are funny and disturbing. And this work from an accomplished woman artist from Pakistan, working in a contemporary genre with experimental materials, further gives the lie to a Western stereotype about universally oppressed Pakistani women. Even if this sort of art isn't your thing I think this essay is worth checking out. After all, culture is politics. I wonder if Hillary got to see much art during her trip? I'm going to guess no.

Tags: Installation, Photography, Performance, Emerging Artists

SPECIAL HALLOWEEN LINK:

6) According to Pat Robertson & company: the Hate Crime Bill is wrong, plus, there are Demons in Halloween candy

I had to add this link to the great blog The Intersection of Madness and Reality, by a very funny guy who posts as RippDemUpp. Ripp writes,

"The claim about the demonic candy was actually made by in a blog written by Kimberly Daniels (a Black woman) which was posted on Robertson's website. The post itself has since been reedited on Robertson's site, but can be read in it's original content here. Which is kinda funny because it served as a warning for Christians to forego the celebration of Halloween; something I'm sure Robertson is down with, unlike the new Hate Crimes Bill of course.

Here's an excerpt from the post:

During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches."

You realize what this means? Witches are responsible for my ass. ::Shakes fist at sky:: Damn you Witches!

Tags: Conservative Nutjob, Politics is Culture

Taysir Batniji Installation/Performance

Photo: Haupt & Binder

Atelier (22.06.2006 - 07.06.2009)
Color photograph on paper 150 x 100 cm

Hannoun 1972-2009
Installation / Performance

"The red pencil, an artists' tool, is a symbol of an art process that in (Taysir) Batniji's work is constantly interrupted; where as the sea of shavings is an obsession from childhood that he revisits to link the past with the present. The pencils, long associated with drawing, represent art he no longer practices, thereby assuming a poetic function. Their red color, barely visible, is multiplied several folds in the thousands of shavings that create a sea of fragile "petals" reminiscent of the anemones long associated with the Palestinian landscape and celebrated in poetry and song. The work is performative. Created outside a studio, it is a transient confrontation between the artist, his work and his Gaza studio (on the photo in the back) that he cannot reach."

Courtesy of Nafas magazine. Lovely.

I am continually astounded by the cutting edge contemporary visual art and performance emanating from Palestine and its Diaspora (Batniji moves between Palestine and Venice). Pound for pound it is one of the most exciting art scenes on the planet. Even more amazing given its modest size and the neo-colonial hardships endured by its people.

Criminal Identities, Culture and (Street) Art

Photo by Ivan Corsa (2005)

The website Global Graphica is subtitled " Street Art Photos + Videos + More: Daily Pix from New York City and the World." I like the idea of considering street art as a part of the shifting cultural landscape of a city. A couple of years ago I did a photo series that had a similar context when I was performing in Vienna. Instead of focusing on statuary and monuments on my days off I became fascinated with Viennese graffiti, which seemed to me like the city talking-- and sometimes arguing-- with itself. And for a city like Vienna, where anarchists and liberals, and once and future Nazi's rub shoulders on the street, that conversation was complex. In the blocks around my family-run pension there were Indian restaurants and shops, many of which had the words "Fuck Nigger" scrawled on their fronts in angry black pen. I followed this racist graffiti around the neighborhood like breadcrumbs and noted the places where it had been crossed out and replaced with anarchist/anti-racist messages. If the South Asian population whose presence inspired these tags had any reaction to the debate between warring Viennese street factions, it wasn't apparent. But the graffiti --both pro and con-- remained on the sides of Indian businesses the entire time I was there: a fact of life. There was other graffiti too, of course, a lot of which was inspired by U.S. hip hop culture. So I appreciate Global Graphica's project, which traces the shapes in the air left by people as they move through cities, it is culture in action.

We like to put qualifiers on culture like "Pop" or "Street" or "Sub", but that is just another way of saying "High" and "Low", a separation that, like colonialism, is a legacy of the 19th century. Arguably, those separate categories were always an illusion, but never more so than in post-modernity, when a celebrated street artist like Neck Face shows work in galleries and the sides of buildings (as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat did before him). But if culture is a flow that cannot be contained inside museums, theaters and galleries and spills out into the street and all over the walls, then prejudices, ethnic hatreds and social hierarchies are carried along with it. The photograph above, captured on Global Graphica a few years ago, shows a tag that says, merely "Arab." In a city like New York, which is home to many ethnic groups, a graffiti tag like this is not unusual. But this tag merited special attention on Global Graphica not because of its artistry but because it articulated a dangerous, political identity and not a neutral, ethnic one like, say, "Irish".

The caption for the photo, posted by Supercore on July 4, 2005, reads,

"This tag is jarring, not so much for its style or boldness or scale, but because of the moniker itself. Given current events in the U.S. and globally, the tag resonates with New Yorkers and, perhaps makes us pause to think, in a way it wouldn't have several years ago, before the events of 9/11/2005 (sic). Which, whether the intention of the writer or not, is the importance and value of art (whether or not you consider Krylon tags art)."

So, in other words, simply announcing yourself as an "Arab" is enough to make New Yorkers and, by extension, the world, pause and think.

Hm.

Think about... what, exactly?

It is the unsaid here that disturbs. As an Arab/American New Yorker who lived through 9/11, this cocktail of vague nationalism, melancholic nostalgia and barely withheld anti-Arab racism tastes very familiar. After 9/11, we were supposed to excuse and even forgive such biases because of the tragic circumstances. And we still are, these many years later. Of course the fact that 9/11 also happened to Arab and Muslim New Yorkers is always obscured by this demand, as if we exist outside of the pain caused by the felling of the Twin Towers, because we are somehow responsible for causing it. Although if 9/11 is the justification for singling out this tag for its potential to disturb that makes the misstatement "9/11/2005" even more laughable. (Uh, dude? I know your heart is heavy and all, but you are a couple of years off there...) And the timing of this original post, on July 4th, hardly seems coincidental, given the sentiment expressed.

The fact is, this tag could not be more ordinary. It doesn't even have any of the lame, hip-hop boasting that often accompanies ethnic graffiti: It doesn't read "Arabs Rule" or "Arabs Invented Higher Mathematics" (although, how awesome would that be?).

It just says "Arab".

As in "We exist."

But that alone, absent some sort of apology, is "jarring".

SLOW CAPITALISM: SLIME ECONOMY

THE GOETHE-INSTITUT NEW YORK
& ZENTRALE INTELLIGENZ AGENTUR (ZIA)

PRESENT

SLOW CAPITALISM: SLIME ECONOMY (NEW YORK)

A series of three events: May 29, 7pm & May 30, 3pm & May 30, 7pm
Plus a related special-event screening on May 24 beginning at 10:00am

"Capitalism on speed has enjoyed a long night of hearty partying and excess. But now we’ve woken up with the hangover to end all hangovers with most of our economic certainties shattered. Is it time for a new, a slower capitalism? In a series of talks and performances, the Berlin-based socialist-capitalist joint venture Zentrale Intelligenz Agentur (ZIA) [Central Intelligence Agency] will explore ideas for an economy on the slow, looking at new developments in design, collaboration, digital collaboration, and DIY-cultures.

But Slow Capitalism is not simply about deceleration. Rather, it tries to make different, productive use of increasingly compressed time in a global society. ZIA agents will look at the conditions and consequences of today's temporal crunch and experiment with various counter-strategies, and issue their own temporary homemade currency, Slime, which will serve as a symbolic nexus, marking the re-entry of portable power from the sphere of the virtual into a more viscous reality.

Friday, May 29, 2009, 7:00 pm: Faster, Capitalism! Kill! Kill!
Join the Slime Economy: Swap your greenbacks for a pot of Slime currency and start speculating! Waste it on drinks at the bar or try to make a slimy fortune at the casino. But watch out: when the Federal Slime Reserve floods the market with vast quantities of freshly minted slime, the bubble will certainly burst.

In The Hedonistic Company ZIA agents will outline their enterprise as a virtual company. Using their rules, you can learn how to build a socialist-capitalist company and how to work together and still stay friends. On this first evening you can also test your bullshitting skills by participating in ZIA's original PowerPoint Karaoke contest. Are you ready to take the stage for an impromptu presentation of some of the sleaziest and funniest bullet-point-ridden slideshows ever?

Saturday, May 30, 2009, 3:00-6:00 pm: Der Wörkvergnugen
Fed up with your work routine? Lost your job? Try something new! In this afternoon installation, ZIA will put you to work. You can apply and get paid for jobs which are normally not granted any economic value. Our employment program offers diverse activities such as napping, reading, enjoying a conversation over a cup of coffee or playing the video game classic Pong. But before you can start,make sure you fill out the application forms correctly and be prepared for a personal interview with our job counselors. For your work you will receive the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, paid in the equivalent amount of Slime currency.

Saturday, May 30, 2009, 7:00 pm: Slow Capitalism
On their second evening, ZIA will present a string of projects dealing with the new, slow economy: Kathrin Passig will be Putting the Pro into Procrastination, discussing ways to waste your time wisely and how to get stuff done without any self-discipline at all. Holm Friebe will present The Brand DIY, outlining how the selfmade- revolution is changing the rules of work, production, and consumption. Finally, Sebastian Sooth will talk about Hallenprojekt: Connecting Co-Working Spaces in Berlin and Around the World and will explain how co-working enables us to work the way we want to live.

The Berlin-based Zentrale Intelligenz Agentur (ZIA) is a socialist-capitalist network of freelancers. Operating at the interfaces of academia and journalism, marketing and art, Zentrale Intelligenz Agentur develops its own projects and cultural formats, offers custom-made solutions, and takes on special missions for commercial clients. The ZIA agents presenting Slow Capitalism are: Philipp Albers, Martin Baaske, Holm Friebe, Peter Glaser (via video from Berlin-Spandau), Moritz Metz, Jörn Morisse, Kathrin Passig, Cornelius Reiber, Christian Y. Schmidt (via video from Beijing), Sebastian Sooth, and Thomas Weyres.

Visit them at: http://www.zentrale-intelligenz-agentur.de/

Sunday, May 24, 2009, starting at 10:00am
As a special adjunct and introduction to the theme of Slow Capitalism, the Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building is proud to present Alexander Kluge’s monumental 2008 film, Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike: Marx– Eisenstein–Das Kapital. [News from Ideological Antiquity: Marx–Eisenstein–Capital.] Eighty years after Sergei Eisenstein’s plan to make a movie out of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital , trailblazing German filmmaker Alexander Kluge examines this phenomenal project, creating cinematic miniatures about Marx’s theory, which to us now seems as close or as far as antiquity. Kluge’s film features conversations with noted intellectuals Peter Sloterdijk, Dietmar Dath, Oskar Negt, Boris Groys, Rainer Stollmann and many others, offering a multitude of perspectives on the book that changed the world. Kluge, one of the groundbreaking directors of the New German Cinema, has a unique genius for transposing the realm of the intellect into powerful and provocative cinematic imagery. Don’t miss this one-of-a-kind introduction to an extraordinary work. Please note that the film will be shown in German only! 570 minutes.

Location:
Goethe-Institut New York, Wyoming Building
5 E 3rd St (at Bowery)
New York, NY 10003
www.goethe.de/wyomingbuilding
Tel: 212 439 8700
Closest Subway: 6 at Bleecker Street
All events are in English, unless otherwise noted. Admission is free, no reservations required

The Goethe-Institut New York is a branch of the Federal Republic of Germany’s global cultural institute, established to promote the study of German and German culture abroad, encourage international cultural exchange, and provide information on Germany’s culture, society, and politics. The Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building, its new event space, is a cultural venue in the heart of New York’s vibrant downtown arts scene."