September program

Bar Laika is back from vacation :) 

This fall we would like to revisit e-flux video rental (EVR), a seminal e-flux project organized in 2004 by Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle. EVR started with a handful of artists’ videos at a tiny storefront on Ludlow Street and went on to become a video archive of more than 1,000 films and single-channel video works by more than 600 artists that traveled to more than 20 cities all around the world, until it finally found a permanent home in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ljubljana in 2011.

EVR was conceived as an alternative means for distribution and circulation of video art. Despite the fact that many artists in the 1960s and ’70s were drawn to working with video because it was relatively inexpensive and easy to reproduce and distribute, the subsequent assimilation of video art into the precious-object economy of the art market has significantly limited access to video works. EVR began as a functional reflection and inversion of this process. Comprised of a public screening room, a film and video archive that grew with each installation of EVR, and a free video rental shop, VHS tapes could be watched in the space or checked out and taken home once a viewer had completed a membership form.

We plan to view the entirety of the contents of EVR at Bar Laika in a series of weekly screenings. This may take a few years… 

We start this Thursday at 9pm. Free admission.

Join us for this and other events at the bar this month, program below:
 

e-flux video rental at Bar Laika
Thursday, September 5, 9pm

Clemens von Wedemeyer, Occupation, 8 minutes, 35mm/DVD, stereo, 2001–02
A night scene is about to be filmed. Standing within a large rectangular marker on the ground, 200 extras await their cues, but the director and production staff are arguing. The atmosphere grows increasingly tense. The restless crowd develops a life of its own as the film crew attempts to keep the situation under control.

Clemens von Wedemeyer is an artist based in Berlin. His films often encompass multiple storylines and viewpoints, adopting both cinematic and documentary conventions, screened in architectural installations.

Cerith Wyn Evans, Pasolini Ostia Remix, 15 minutes, video, 1998–2003
Pasolini Ostia Remix is set on the beach of Ostia where Pier Paolo Pasolini was found dead, murdered in 1975. A group of people are installing a handcrafted wooden structure holding up a text made up of fire works. The sentence gradually spells “on the banks of the Livenza silvery willows are growing in wild profusion their boughs dipping into drifting waters,” and is taken from Oedipus Rex (1967), the most autobiographical of Pasolini’s films.

Cerith Wyn Evans began his career as a filmmaker producing short, experimental films and collaborative works. Since the 1990s he has created artworks that focus on language and perception. 

e-flux video rental at Bar Laika 
Thursday, September 12, 9pm

Józef Robakowski, From My Window, 19:05 minutes, film/DVD, 1978–99
The film was made on the basis of a dozen or more hours of footage shot between 1978 and 1999. The artist filmed the front yard of his block of flats in “Manhattan” in Łódź—a cluster of tall, cement housing buildings. The images are accompanied by the artist’s commentary, which brings the viewer closer to his neighbours and family, including his then-wife, Małgorzata Potocka. The film comments on the political and social transformations that had taken place in Poland during the two decades.

Józef Robakowski made his first experimental film in 1962. From 1974, Robakowski also embraced a new medium—video art. Since 1978 Robakowski has run Exchange Gallery (Galeria Wymiany), a private gallery of recent art featuring leaflets, films, videos, objects, photographs, books, posters, documentations, and all kinds of publications, both the artist’s own and donated by other artists. 

Michel Auder, Polaroid Cocaine, 5 minutes, video, 1993
Composed solely of still images, Polaroid Cocaine is a meditation on photography, advertising, desire, and spectacle. The title song is written by Jean-Jacques Shuhl and performed by Ingrid Caven, both friends of the artist.

Michel Auder moved to New York City in 1970 and has been making videos since the arrival of the Sony Portapak in 1969. Auder is an ethnographer of both moving-image time itself and the many art worlds in which he has lived and moved; his earliest works include portraits of artists including Alice Neel, Larry Rivers, Annie Sprinkle and Hannah Wilke. 

Bar Laika presents: Satellite 9 Amateur Psychology release party with Joe Jeffers, Jaimie Branch, and Ase Manual 
Thursday, September 19, 9pm

Join us at Bar Laika for the ninth edition of Satellite, featuring a live performance of Amateur Psychology by Joe Jeffers and Jaimie Branch, and a DJ set by Ase Manual. 

Joe Jeffers’ debut album, Amateur Psychology, is the inaugural release of Satellite music series, and will be available digitally and on cassette on September 19. Jeffers describes the album, featuring Jaimie Branch, Zhalih, Kevin Carey, Jim Cannon, and Jackie B Free, as a “self-help audiobook” that maps his musical influences, offering avant and dance productions, punctuated by voice and field recordings.

Joe Jeffers is a Brooklyn based composer from Chicago. 

Jaimie Branch is a Brooklyn based improvisor, composer, and trumpeter.

Ase Manual is a club music producer from New Jersey. 

12 USD entrance fee includes a copy of Amateur Psychology.

Satellite is a monthly experimental music series curated by Sanna Almajedi. 

Bar Laika presents: Satellite 10 BABYASPIRINDVD
Sunday, September 22, 9pm

Join us at Bar Laika for the tenth edition of Satellite, featuring BABYASPIRINDVD.

Cordey Lopez is a sound artist and musician currently residing in Los Angeles, CA. Since 2004, Cordey’s experiments in electronic sound have involved various pursuits including instrument design, hardware hacking, software programming, recording and mixing, modular synthesis, and Balinese gamelan. His solo electronic music project BABYASPIRINDVD has performed across the United States, Bali, Java, Sulawesi, and Sumatra. He most recently completed a tour of Java and Bali in a grunge/noise band called Lansanese. Their full-length album will be released next year by Yes No Wave Music (Yogyakarta).

Guest curated by Tabitha Piseno.

Screening: APART’s The Most Beautiful Catastrophe
Thursday, September 26, 9pm

Join us for a screening of APART’s The Most Beautiful Catastrophe (2018), introduced by Peter Sit. 

The Kosovsko-Laskár wetlands are located in the Central-Western Slovakia and are probably the first example of newly emerging wetlands and marshes in Slovakia. They formed as a by-product of the underground extraction of coal near the Nitra river. These wetlands have been created during the past 40 years of coal mining. The landscape has changed: large sinkholes have been created affecting both housing and the natural environment. This change in the environment forced people to move away from the area, forming an unusual habitat as a way for nature to find balance with the radical change of the ecosystem. After several years, the situation was made worse by a crisis at the still-operating mine, when water was discharged from its flooded tunnels up to the surface. As miners began to pump this water into the nearby creek, it burned their skin. The mixture of ash and hydraulic emulsion managed to kill all life in the creek.

Formed in 2011, APART is an artist cooperative based in Bratislava. APART performs research, creative and artistic production, project- and exhibition-making / curatorial production, publication, and archiving. The artists initiate, create, organize, and exhibit group manifestations (often inviting and giving space to other artists and theoreticians) but they also operate individually. Today, its members include Ema Hesterová, Denis Kozerawski, Chiara Rendeková, Peter Sit, and Andrej Žabkay.

Stay tuned to upcoming programs on our website; or subscribe to our events mailing lists for e-flux and Bar Laika.

For more information, contact laika [​at​] e-flux.com.