Why matter matters / wóyde cineforum
︎︎︎event 13.11.2024
Urgent Pedagogies, IASPIS, Stockholm
VIIth session of wóyde cineforum
intro by Magnus Ericsson
moderators: Silvia Susanna, Alice Pontiggia and Steffie De Gaetano
guests: Pelin Tan, Susan Schuppli
Based on a selection of films, the event posed the question:
Is it possible to see matter as an ally in shaping our lives?
How does the knowledge embedded in matter challenge the modern paradigm that considers it an inert stock of resources available for human use, a passive material, a subjugated symbol of unjust power structures, or even a weaponized tool?
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To break the modern paradigm of matter as an inert stock of resources available at human disposal, shaped from matter to material, or as a subjugated symbol of unjust power structures, or even as a weaponized tool, we are proposing short documentary and film materials that aim at disclosing hidden narratives or proposing new points of view over the “perceivable world”. Is it possible to look at matter as an ally in building our life? We encourage enhancing your sensitivity as bodily matter when viewing the program.
Il Capo
Yuri Ancarani, 2010, 2’53’’ (excerpt)
How beautiful a crumbling desire can be? How many hidden faces are there behind the construction industry chain? What are these landscapes’ meanings? How disturbing can it be for our belly to watch this video?
Cu-Porn
Colectivo Cenex, 2020, 10’41’’
How sexy can a mine be? How does copper extraction affect Chilean sexual behavior? A lovely rhyming description of cruel realities.
La Via Della Pomice
Archivio Luce Cinecittà, 1961, 0’46’’ [ITA, NO SUBS]
Celebration of extractivism and industrialization of natural stone introduced by patriarchal irony. All in 46 seconds!
How is Made: Cement
How is Made/Wondastic Tech, unknown/2024, 5’/8’25’’
Please inform yourself on the cement production cycle through a beautifully filmed documentary that probably comes from the 90s, or through a way more futuristically depicted history and production flux of cement with shining views of giant factories.
Eroded Pyramid
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, 2018, 8’50’’
Experimental video of a Mexican collective that is working on giving new meaning to filmic practice. The video’s description is: The pyramid used to be a mountain. * Please take care, strong flashing lights.
Can the Sun Lie?
Susan Schuppli, 2014, 12’51’’
Manipulation of evidence and discrimination of knowledge at international court level. What the sun is telling us about environmental changes?
Material Witness
Susan Schuppli, 2015, 11’22’’ (excerpt)
Cit from the author: “The documentary begins with a rumination asking: What does it mean to stand in the place of death knowing that violent things happened in that very location but seeing apparently nothing? Over the course of the video, the landscape itself becomes a mnemonic device for revealing traces of these histories.”
Weaponizing Water
Susan Schuppli, 2023, 4’52’’ (excerpt)
Forensic reconstruction of the use of water by armed forces as a weapon against protestors in 2016.
Dimeşin / Fenomenolojiyên Dîcleyê I – Walking / Tigris Phenomenologies
Pelin Tan, 2023, 5’30’’
An assemblage of moving images around and through landscapes of Tigris river of Hasankeyf with elements of Ezidi cosmologies. A phenomenology of experimenting with female landscaping of non-extractivism and its future. The video sceneries were recorded with a cell phone camera between 2021 and 2023 in Çinerîya Ezidi village (Batman, Turkey), where most of the inhabitants left in the 1980s for Germany as migrant workers. The community occasionally lives in both places.
︎ UP EVENT
Urgent Pedagogies is a project and platform for inquiry, sharing knowledge and experience through public events and an emerging online archive highlighting and discussing both practice and theory. It aims to serve as a common resource, bringing together practitioners and researchers from a plurality of contexts, experiences, and backgrounds to be in dialogue and think together.
wóyde cineforum is an experimental research tool working through the formula film projection + collective discussion.
It is also both the name of the (mainly) digital place where the practice is activated, as well as a mutual learning practice for deepening the knowledge that can stem from collective confrontation in a safe space.
Urgent Pedagogies is a project and platform for inquiry, sharing knowledge and experience through public events and an emerging online archive highlighting and discussing both practice and theory. It aims to serve as a common resource, bringing together practitioners and researchers from a plurality of contexts, experiences, and backgrounds to be in dialogue and think together.
wóyde cineforum is an experimental research tool working through the formula film projection + collective discussion.
It is also both the name of the (mainly) digital place where the practice is activated, as well as a mutual learning practice for deepening the knowledge that can stem from collective confrontation in a safe space.