Eye:Eye

  “I can’t describe it in words. So instead I’ve chosen to photograph it.”

one of Denmark’s leading photographers and a pioneer of modern landscape photography, Per Bak Jensen, explains in a lyrical way the attraction and importance of photography in relation to him and the world surrounding him.

His work features desolate images of nature or industrial sites in where the solitude of the empty field, the vast ocean, the uninhabited landscape are gracefully revealed. Interestigly enough Jensen does not photograph people he states“I find people problematic. They’re much harder to be around and to deal with.” 

My favourite part of the interview is when Per Bak Jensen explains about the importance of photography in his life “ Through photography, I can see that I can see”

Brilliant.

                        1h 30m | United Kingdom | 2016

Peter Middleton’s sobering documentary about theologian John Hull documenting his blindness is an remarkable creative take on the genre of non-fiction. The narrative is driven by the sound recording that Hull captured while he was in the process of losing his sight.

Middleton tackles the subject of representing the lack of vision perfectly in this daring documentary, with one scene of the movie standing out, in which Hull describes the effect of water and how it illuminates his surroundings. This scene was released in 2014 as a short film that went to get awarded an Emmy. A truly incredible film. Here’s the infamous scene below.

                               1h 13m | International | 2016

“ Sailors are like terrorists. They arrive in ports with a bomb called love and throw it. And do you know what happens? The bomb explodes when they go away and they never come back”

Exotica, Erotica, Etc is  A film essay directed by greek visual artist Evangelia Kranioti , in which she embarks on a Greek container ship as it sails around the globe. Visually loaded with metaphors, through Kranioti’s lens, we enter in another realm which is familiar yet distant at the same time.The narrative is portraited through a monologue of a retired seaman, and a monologue of a prostitute in Peru as she awaits for the seaman to come back. An incredible documentary taking the form of an modern tale, found in the memory of water.

*Open Letter by the Artists Against Convictions

To all Documenta 14 Viewers, Participants and Cultural Workers,

We call for your attention, in this immediate moment of “Learning from Athens”.
We are the people who inhabit this city and we are talking to you as our guests.

Your jostling bodies crowd the streets of Athens, your mouths are speaking of our hardship, your feet are pounding the pavements. But this is not enough. Now is a time for carving out a space for all, not a time of culturally archiving crisis. Now is a time of action not blind consumption. We ask you to redirect your limbs into the shadows and the black outs, away from the feast the Mayor of Athens has staged for you.

You say you want to learn from Athens, well first open your eyes to the city and listen to the streets.

One of you laments the discourse of illegitimate bodies. At the same time, by staying silent, he is assisting the eradication of spaces for the thousands of bodies who inhabit this city in autonomous units. These squatted houses are under constant threat; daily we are told we will be evicted through violent means. Not only jeopardizing our basic human needs, but our support networks, spaces of autonomy and unified cultural practices. In these buildings, artists and activists coexist together with thousands of refugees, who have come here from war-torn countries to seek new lives with dignity and freedom.

The silence of Documenta is not acceptable and only goes further to accommodate Mayor Kaminis, the State, the Church and the NGOs who stand against us and force thousands into segregated concentration camps, prepped and ready for the very bodies your director says he’s trying to protect. This violent act is dividing the legitimate bodies from the illegitimate ones by state force and Documenta has so far been silent.

The precursor events of Documenta 14, entitled “The parliament of bodies” spoke of the voices of resistance, transgender voices, the voices of the minority. Well, we are those voices, we are genderless, we are migrants, we are modern pariahs, we are the dissidents of the regime and we are here. We walk with you, we tread the parallel streets, but you don’t see us – you have your eyes trained on the blue dotted lines of your Google map. You have been programmed and directed not to see us, to just miss us, reverse and avoid us – our culture has been censored from you. We ask you to recalibrate your devices, we ask you to get lost, to hack your automation, and rewire your cultural viewpoint.

In the run up to all those budget airlines hitting the tarmac, we have confronted some serious battles.

Only three weeks ago, at dawn on the 13​ th​ March 2017 the state evicted the social
space Villa Zografou. They simultaneously raided Alkiviadou refugee squat and arrested 120 refugees only to release them out into the cold, homeless and without their belongings in the streets at midnight. This is not an isolated incident of oppression. Last summer in Thessaloniki, people faced the violent eviction and bulldozing of refugee homes. In Lesvos, the No Borders kitchen camp was destroyed, amongst others. Immediately after these barbaric evictions and abuses, mayor Kaminis stated that the occupation of municipality owned buildings by migrants is “degrading the city.” The same mayor stood before you on April 6th, presiding with pomp over the Documenta press conference.

The Greek government today threatens to destroy anyone who seeks grassroots solidarity, self-organization and to build spaces for new beginnings. Over 2000 refugees share these spaces with artists and others, and form communities.

This aggressive cleansing will not stop, and we are under threat of losing all autonomous houses by the summer of 2017. These houses are our culture, our homes, and our structures. The mayor of Athens calls them ghettos but what is one man’s ghetto is thousands of people’s home, and site of social expression and interaction.

WE ARE ASKING YOU TO FIRST SEEK ATHENS AND THEN LEARN FROM US. BY PARTICIPATING BLINDLY YOU ARE SUPPORTING THE GOLDEN GHETTOISATION OF OUR NEIGHBOURHOODS, THE EVICTION OF OUR COMMUNITIES, AND THE SYSTEMS OF PATRIARCHY THAT STAND ON OUR FINGERS AS WE TRY TO BUILD OUR OWN, SELF-SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURES.

CONSIDER YOUR PARTICIPATION AND ROLE IN EVENTS THAT IMPLICITLY LEND COVER AND LEGITIMACY TO THE MAYOR AND STATE’S ACTIONS.

YOU ARE CONDONING THE WAR ON GRASSROOTS INITIATIVES FOR ALL IF YOU IGNORE OUR CALL.

WE CALL FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND SOLIDARITY TO:

CLOSE THE CAMPS, NOT THE SQUATS
SOLIDARITY TO ALL SQUATS
AGAINST THE AGREEMENT OF EU-TURKEY SHAME
OPEN THE BORDERS

8th April 2017, Artists against evictions

Richard Mosse: Incoming | Barbican Centre: Curve Gallery  | 15th February- 23th April 2017 

Irish Visual Artist, Richard Mosse, utilizes military reconnaissance technology to create mesmerizing video installations that comment on current political crises. Following his highly celebrated exhibition in 2015  “Enclave”, his newest exhibition reverses the function of thermal cameras and legitimizes .  people that are deemed illegitimate, while they await in Calais Refugee camp.  

In three mesmerizing screens, Mosse unveils to us haunting footage taken at Calais Refugee camp in France before it was dismantled. Mosse’s portrayal of Calais is presented in shades of black and white, emphasizing the camp’s non spacial features and its temporarity. Richard Mosses Incoming creates the visual sphere by which the migrants’ individualized odyssey for a better tomorrow is unveiled.

 2h 42min | Japan | 1986

Ran, is one of Akira Kurosawa’s later films and one of the four films that the master of shadows released in techni-colour. An adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragic tale of King Lear, Kurosawa informs the tale through his directorial gaze and the results are mesmerizing. All of the elements that Kurosawa is famous for are present int he films. But more importantly, the use of colour is evident of Kurosawa’s masterful colour compositions (Kurosawa started as a painter before he became a filmmaker).

A great gem that uses the advantages of Cinema as an artform with a captivating performance of Tatsuya Nakadai as King Lear.

Aurora Films is a production company based in Paris, France. They have released noteworthy independent and films and interesting film essays, mainly of political nature.

A really interesting documentary that encapsules the message of Aurora Films is It’s All in Lebanon.  A documentary ay directed by Wissam Charraf, in which he investigates post-war Lebanon and all its complex facets.