November 3–16, 2022
e-flux Video & Film is very pleased to present Words Takeover, the fourth chapter of the six-part Takeover program curated by Julian Ross.
Words Takeover explores the act of reading as a summoning. The writer enters your mind, you let them in, and their thoughts hover alongside yours. And when you read them out loud, you become a vessel for their thoughts to enter the world.
Featuring Ephraim Asili, Fluid Frontiers (2017); Dora García, The Joycean Society (2013); Jonna Kina, Secret Words and Related Stories (2013–2016); and Natsuka Kusano, Domains (2019), streaming for two weeks from November 3–November 16, 2022.
Watch the films here.
Takeover
IV. Words Takeover
Thursday, November 3–Wednesday, November 16, 2022
Ephraim Asili, Fluid Frontiers
2017, 11 Minutes
Fluid Frontiers is the fifth and final film in the series entitled The Diaspora Suite, exploring Asili’s personal relationship to the African diaspora. Shot along the Detroit River, Fluid Frontiers explores the relationship between concepts of resistance and liberation, exemplified by the Underground Railroad, Broadside Press, and artworks of local Detroit Artists. All of the poems are read from original copies of Broadside Press publications by natives of the Detroit/Windsor region, and were shot without rehearsal.
Dora García, The Joycean Society
2013, 53 minutes
A group of people have been reading a book together for thirty years. They have been reading it again and again, with each journey from the first to the last page taking eleven years. Once they reach the last word, a very enigmatic “the,” they begin again with the first word, “riverrun.” The text appears inexhaustible, its interpretation endless, the inconclusive nature of the reading exciting. The world seems to cease existing outside this reading room or, perhaps, it exists because of it
Jonna Kina, Secret Words and Related Stories
2013–2016, 20 minutes
Secret Words and Related Stories is a set of anonymously collected passwords and the stories behind them. The entry point is personal “secrets” and security, and their place in contemporary society. To examine independence—a limited kind of independence—is to unravel what security means to the identity, a kind of coding of physical history and memory to access all kinds of commerce and services in the virtual world. That key is compressed into these fragments of language (passwords) that are unpackaged through the work. In the video, young actors between the ages of 12 and 16 years stand in front of a red backdrop and read from a sheet of paper, narrating personal confessions, childhood memories, and clichéd rationalities. These are thoughtful, humorous, and emotional stories about a chosen word that often discloses personal information, which is the antithesis of its purpose. The 74 passwords and corresonding stories featured in this video are also collected in an eponymous book, published in the style of a paperback novel.
Natsuka Kusano, Domains
2019, 150 minutes
Aki took a leave of absence from her work at a Tokyo publishing company and decided to go back to her hometown for a few days. Aki was also planning on visiting Nodoka, her childhood friend, whom she had grown up with and known since elementary school and through university. Nodoka was now married to Naoto, her senior in university, and they lived together with their little daughter in a new house near Aki’s family home. Nodoka’s house was kept at a comfortable and moderate temperature and humidity, as if the family were covered with transparent film. Aki thought they secluded themselves from society. Honoka, Nodoka’s little daughter, was shy at first, but soon took to Aki as they played together. Nodoka meanwhile seemed so tired. A few days later, Aki was back at her home in Tokyo. She sat at her desk and started writing a letter, absorbed in her task. Upon finishing it, she began to read it out loud. “I killed your daughter.” Now, Aki is in the interrogation room. She begins to talk about her relationship with Nodoka—her strong attachment to her and her hatred of Nodoka’s husband, Naoto. Shifting the action to a rehearsal room, a series of script readings are undertaken in order to trace the backstory of the tragic incident.
About the program
Takeover explores the experience of letting another being—their voice, or their mind—into our own. Would we become them, or would they become us? The act of letting someone in, or of being the recipient of a possession, can involve a loss of self. But it can also be a trigger for learning, sharing, or becoming. Watching a film can operate in a similar way. In Sherlock Jr. (1924), Buster Keaton leaps into the cinema screen and enters the onscreen world. Or is it that the onscreen world has entered him? After all, we are in Keaton’s dream, which he has after falling asleep while operating the cinema’s film projector. Film can engulf us and haunt us. In questioning the limitation of understanding film experience as simply reception, Francesco Casetti suggests: “A spectator does not find herself “receiving” a film: she finds herself ‘living’ it.” (2011) Even after the screening is over and we leave the cinema, the film continues to live within us. As film viewers, we are not just a screen but also a projector, taking the film with us into the world.
Curated by Julian Ross, Takeover will unfold in six chapters, each streaming for two weeks on e-flux Video & Film between September 22 and December 15, 2022.
With films and videos by Ephraim Asili, Kurdwin Ayub, Maïder Fortuné and Annie MacDonell, Simon Fujiwara, Dora García, Gary Hill, Su-Chen Hung, Hsu Che-yu, Mako Idemitsu, Myriam Jacob-Allard, Jesse McLean, Jonna Kina, Meiro Koizumi, Natsuka Kusano, Toshio Matsumoto, The Nest Collective, Agnieszka Polska, Riar Rizaldi, Manuel Saiz, Shireen Seno, Tiffany Sia, Ghita Skali, Lisa Spilliaert, Sriwhana Spong, Pilvi Takala, Isabelle Tollenaere, Joseph Wilson.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.
