Newly commissioned works at the nexus of art and cinema
June 16–July 14, 2021
From June 16, Prototype presents a collection of new moving-image commissions exploring cultural heritage, community, family and diasporic connections—closing with a new work on time by Raqs Media Collective. Crossing the field from cinema to contemporary art, the works stretch across the realms of artists’ films, hybrid documentaries, video art and scripted moving image.
The program takes Prototype up to its 31st commission of experimental moving image work.
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Curated by Lauren Carroll Harris.
Supported by Arcadia Films, Australia Council for the Arts, City of Sydney and CreateNSW.
June 16: Justine Youssef and Leila El Rayes (Australia), Say Swear: This is one way we can find each other if we ever get lost
A work of auto-ethnography, queerness and resilience made with community residents in Sydney’s Western “area” subcultures, appropriating the aesthetics and format of multiplayer video game Mortal Kombat. In English.
June 23: Audrey Lam (Australia), Is Anybody Coming Over to Dinner
An intimate diaristic documentary portrait, brimming with life-force, following a seven-year-old child, Yoki, in a multilingual family, in the months following the birth of his brother. In colour and black and white on 16mm film. In English, German and Japanese.
June 30: Allison Chhorn (Australia), Missing
A fictional work exploring distance and separation in Cambodian migrant families of the diaspora, made with Cambodian-American poet Monica Sok. In English and Khmer, with subtitles.
Guest text by critic Simran Hans (UK).
July 7: Pilar Mata Dupont (Netherlands), La Maruja
Inspired by the mood and slippery non-linearity of Lucretia Martel, Australian-Argentian artist Pilar Matar Dupont imagines her extended family members as protagonists against the backdrop of Argentina’s complicated and violent history, exploring motherhood, trauma and the body, colonial dread and alienation. In Spanish.
July 14: Malena Szlam (Chile/Canada), untitled project
An abstracted, rhythmic, experimental moving image work of skies, horizons, mountains, volcanoes and natural forms.
Guest text by Ela Bittencourt (Brazil).
July 21: Raqs Media Collective (India), untitled project
Earth is spinning on its axis more quickly than ever: the 28 fastest days on record all occurred in 2020. Raqs Media Collective splice images relating to this month of faster time with a series of pictures from the Kolb-Proust archive at the University of Champaign Urbana that play with Proust’s handwriting, seen through prismatic light. A meditation on what it means to feel time accelerate, even when time feels lost. In English.
Guest text by AS Hamrah (US).
