Shapeshifts
Eye on Art: Shapeshifts
An evening curated by Canal++ and presented in collaboration with Sonic Acts, with artists’ films by Shambhavi Kaul and Bo Wang. Kaul observes the ecosystems around an ancient ruin and Wang is tracing the material and ancestral ghosts of colonial and contemporary wig trade.
Depicting sonorous stones and shapeshifting hair, they conjure the many forms of sensorial debris that swirl together in the current world, no longer as relics, but as part of a complex assembly of life. As the ancient-future lives of these beings accumulate and conglomerate, the meanings of matter, decay, ruin, and trace all shift and reform in their own ways.
The screening will be introduced by Jo-Lene Ong, and Bo Wang will be in conversation with Rachael Rakes and Julian Ross about his long-running body of work on the traces and hauntings of colonial pasts. Both works are Dutch premieres.
Programme
Slow Shift (Shambhavi Kaul, 2023, 9’)
Amid the ruins of the 14th-century city of Hampi in southwestern India – fabled site of the ancient Monkey Kingdom – troops of langurs observe a world in flux. Intercutting observational footage with constructed sequences, filmmaker Shambhavi Kaul in Slow Shift (2023, 9’) juxtaposes human, simian, and geologic timescales, marking a place where history, mythology, and nature conspire and collide. (NYFF)
Shambhavi Kaul is an experimental filmmaker whose projects speculate on the possibilities for cinematic storytelling to build worlds. Her films make temporal and spatial demarcations porous by reorganizing cinematic space and layering historical, mythical, geological, ecological and cultural timescales. Eventually, audiences consider their own time and space in relation to survival, the environment and these filmic worlds. She has exhibited her work worldwide at film festivals such as the TIFl, Berlinale, New York, Rotterdam, Edinburgh, London, Oberhausen, and Experimenta Bangalore among others. She has presented her work at museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Tate, London. She has had two solo gallery shows at Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai. She was born in Jodhpur India, and lives in the United States where she is a professor at Duke University.
An Asian Ghost Story (Bo Wang, 2023, 37’)
A cinematic and conceptually inventive film that explores the haunting memories of Asia’s late 20th-century modernization through the large-scale export of wigs during the Cold War. Yet, in every wig resides a ghost from the imperial past. (CPH:DOX)
The film has received awards at CPH:DOX, DOKLeipzig, Arkipel, Image Forum, Festival Entrevues Belfort, Curtocircuíto, and Sharjah Film Platform. Bo Wang is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher based in Amsterdam. His works have been exhibited internationally, including Guggenheim and MoMa, Garage Museum, International Film Festival Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, LUX & Open City Documentary Festival, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, DMZ Docs, Sharjah Film Platform and Sesc_Videobrasil, among others. He is a PhD candidate at ASCA, University of Amsterdam.Bo Wang in conversation with Rachael Rakes and Julian Ross (20’)
Rachael Rakes is an independent curator and researcher. She is a selection committee member of the New York Film Festival, was artistic Director for the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2023) and is the editor of several publications on contemporary art, politics, and film. Julian Ross is co-programmer of Doc Fortnight 2024 and the Flaherty Seminar, and an Assistant Professor at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. Together with Jo-Lene Ong, they are curators of Canal++, an Amsterdam-based film club.
Curated by Canal++ and presented in collaboration with Sonic Acts Biennial
This is part of
Details
Production year
2024
Length
86 min.
Event language
English
Country
NL
Part of
Eye on Art
Eye on Art is a programme on the intersection between film and other arts. Eye on Art keeps up with current events, with presentations on contemporary artists and programmes that coincide with important exhibitions, manifestations and Eye activities.
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