European Social Forum 2010 / Radical Aesthetics

1 – 4 July 2010

PROGRAM

Thursday, July 1
16.00 – 18.00
Seminar: Radical Aesthetics
Presentation: Pelin Tan and Önder Özengi
Participants: Burak Delier, Hale Tenger, Mürüvvet Türkyılmaz
Discussant: Ayşe Çavdar

Friday, July 2
Film Screening
14:00 Aernout Mik, “Raw Footage,” 2006
16:00 Heidrun Holzfeind, “Mexico 68,” 2007

Saturday, July 3
Film Screening
12:00 Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler, “5 Factories – Worker Control in Venezuela,” 2006
14:00 Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler, “Comuna Under Construction,” 2010
16:00 Oliver Ressler, “What is Democracy,” 2009

Sunday, July 4
Film Screening
14:00 Petra Holzer and Ethem Özgüven, “4857,” 2008
16:00 Nils Norman and Stephan Dillemuth, “I’m Short Your House,” 2007
17:00 Angela Melitopoulos, Möglichkeitsraum II (The Blast of the Possible), “Extra-disciplinary Art and Media Activism” with Brian Holmes, 2010

The screenings will be in English.
The seminar will be held in English and Turkish.

ABOUT THE FILMS

Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler
Comuna Under Construction, 2010
Film, 94′
Courtesy of the artists
Comuna Under Construction, produced by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler, is a documentary about the Consejo Comunal, self-organised community councils on the outskirts of Caracas, Venezuela, whose number exceeds 30 thousand throughout the country. These councils, subsidized partly by the government, make their own decisions about their needs, living spaces and working conditions. Comuna Under Construction is an impartial witness to their efforts and debates.

Oliver Ressler
What is Democracy?, 2009
Film, 118′
Courtesy of the artist
What Is Democracy?, is a film made up of 8 parts. In each part, we see activists and political researchers from 15 different cities talking about democracy under several titles. The film presents a selection of different perspectives and approaches towards the notion of democracy that has been emptied out and needs to be redefined. Some of the titles are: “Is representative democracy a democracy?”, “Secrecy instead of democratic transparency”, “Reclaiming Indigenous politics”, “Should we relegate the Western democracy model to the ash heap of history?”.

Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler
5 Factories – Worker Control in Venezuela, 2006
Film, 81′
Courtesy of the artists
5 Factories is another film by the artists who observe the process of social transformation in Venezuela. The film focuses on the alternative model of self-government and production implemented in 5 self-organized factories (textile, aluminium, tomatoes, cacao, paper). The key question that the film raises is: “How does a company push toward socialism within a capitalist framework?”

Aernout Mik
Raw Footage, 2006
Two channel video, 74′
Courtesy of carlier | gebauer and the artist
Raw Footage is composed of the footage taken during the Yugoslavian civil war and images from the archives of Reuters and Independent Television News (ITN). The images had not been used before on the grounds that they were not “dramatic” or “attractive” enough. The artist arranged this archive without any editing in 2-channeled video. Raw Footage focuses on the war and its experience, but it also reveals how the “normal” and the “extreme” blend under the conditions of war.

Petra Holzer & Ethem Özgüven
4857, 2008
Film, 30′
Courtesy of the artists
This film, produced by Petra Holzer and Ethem Özgüven, owes its title to the Labour Law, no 4857. The film focuses on the workers’ death in Tuzla docks, and also illustrates their living and working conditions. The film demands that the Labour Law 4857 should at least be properly applied in order to end the “labour murders”.

Heidrun Holzfeind
Mexico 68, 2007
Film
Courtesy of the artist
Mexico 68 consists of interviews made with the participants of the student movement of 1968 in Mexico. In 2005-2007, the artist conducted a series of video interviews with the activists of the 1968 student movement. Mexico 68 investigates the significance and the impact of the ‘68 student movement on Mexican society, politics and culture in general, and on the lives of the participants in particular. The film is a documentation of the visions and dreams of a generation that aspired to change an authoritarian political system and transform Mexican society.

Nils Norman & Stephan Dillemuth
I’m Short Your House, 2007
Film, 24′
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Christian Nagel
Stephan Dillemuth and Nils Norman have been collaborating on exhibitions and research projects since the early 1990s. I’m Short Your House brings together their parallel research strands of Bohemia, the ongoing financialization of the city and the role of the artist within today’s burgeoning international art market.

Angela Melitopoulos
Möglichkeitsraum II (The Blast of the Possible) with Brian Holmes, 2010.
Double channel video documentation
Courtesy the artist and Gentili Apri, Berlin
The documentation shows the second part of the three-screen performance Möglichkeitsraum II made with Brian Holmes. Cultural theorists Angela Melitopoulos and Brian Holmes perform four audiovisual regimes that have emerged in the USA since WW II: broadcast television in the Cold War consumer society; video as a subversion of the televisual norm; networked computing and its new forms of “control environments”; and new communication tactics of migration movements.