Talks, screenings, launches, and performance
Join us at e-flux this June for talks, screenings, launches, and performance featuring Lucy Cotter, Stephanie Dinkins, Sky Hopinka, and Cannupa Hanska Luger; Jen Liu; Fahim Amir; Alexander Kluge; McKenzie Wark and Nick Bazzano; Haile Gerima, Merawi Gerima, Honey Crawford, and Natacha Nsabimana.
Monday, June 3, 2024, 7pm
Artistic Research in a World on Fire
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What are the stakes of artistic research in a world reckoning with social justice, climate change, and the rise of artificial intelligence? What are the unique forms of knowing and unknowing specific to artmaking? How do they relate to academic knowledge? How can they contribute to the decolonization and indigenization of knowledge? Why is there no established discourse around artistic research in the US? Do US arts infrastructures need to shapeshift to support artistic research? For the New York launch of the newly released Reclaiming Artistic Research (Hatje Cantz, 2024), writer, artist, and curator Lucy Cotter will reflect on the currency of artistic research in the US and engage in discussion with two of the book’s artist contributors, Stephanie Dinkins, and Cannupa Hanska Luger. The event will include screenings of video work from Luger’s Future Ancestral Technologies project and video documentation of Dinkins’ multi-generational narratives of Black women in Secret Garden. The discussion will be followed by a screening of contributing artist Sky Hopinka’s work Fainting Spells, an experimental filmic meditation invoking the possibility of future mythology. Read more here.
Thursday, June 6, 2024, 7pm
Jen Liu: Labor, Liquidation, and Resistance
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From the allegorical focus on labor activism in contemporary China in The Land at the Bottom of the Sea to the speculative narrative on biopower and genetic engineering in Pink Slime Caesar Shift: Electropore, Jen Liu’s films from recent years explore the impact of globalization and technological advancements on labor rights and environmental conditions, with an emphasis on China’s evolving socio-economic landscape. Pink Slime Caesar Shift: Gold Loop delves into the implications of first-world recycling practices on third-world biopolitical landscapes, while The Machinist’s Lament reflects on the historical shift of industrial productivity from America to Asia, critiquing the mythologized view of American industrial history and the harsh realities of globalization. Collectively, through a mix of speculative fiction and documentary elements, Jen Liu offers a visually compelling critique of contemporary labor conditions, environmental degradation, biopolitical control, and the enduring influence of historical narratives on present-day socio-economic realities. This screening and discussion features Liu’s The Land at the Bottom of the Sea (2023), Pink Slime Caesar Shift: Electropore (2021–22), Pink Slime Caesar Shift: Gold Loop (2021), and The Machinist’s Lament (2014). Read more here.
Tuesday, June 11, 2024, 7pm
Fahim Amir, “Under Afghan Eyes: Stories of Plants and Paints”
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In this lecture, philosopher and author Fahim Amir follows the mundane entanglements of two nonhuman entities from Afghanistan: a rock that forever changed Western art history (lapis lazuli), and a rather uncharismatic looking plant (gandana) that continues to enrich the lives of ordinary Afghans. By interrelating materiality and metaphorology, Amir connects notions and histories of distance and proximity, minerals and myths, plants and paint, revolt and hope. Read more here.
June 13, 15, and 18, 2024
Phoenix Cinema: Meeting with Alexander Kluge
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“Phoenix Cinema: Meeting with Alexander Kluge” is a special series of events featuring works and discussions with renowned German filmmaker and author Alexander Kluge. The program unfolds in four parts taking place at e-flux Screening Room, and in a six-part online screening on e-flux Film. Phoenix Cinema offers a unique opportunity to delve into the extensive body of work of Alexander Kluge, a renowned figure in post-war German cinema, literature, and cultural theory. This comprehensive program explores Kluge’s multifaceted legacy, tracing his influential roles in cinema, art, and theory over the past six decades and presenting new works. Born in 1932 in Halberstadt, Germany, Kluge’s creative career spans filmmaking, writing, criticism, and television production. In the 1950s, he pursued academic studies at the University of Marburg and later at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, where he became a student of Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno’s theory, particularly his critique of the culture industry and writings on negative dialectics, had a significant impact on Kluge, providing a theoretical foundation for his subsequent work in film and literature. Part I. Alexander Kluge and Cinema takes place at e-flux Screening Room on Thursday, June 13 at 7pm, Parts II and III. The Dragonfly’s Eye on Saturday, June 15 at 3pm, and Part IV. Alexander Kluge and the Art World on Tuesday, June 18 at 7pm. See the full program here. Watch the online screenings here.
Tuesday, June 25, 2024, 7pm
A Hacker Manifesto: 20th Anniversary Remix
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To mark the publication of eflux journal #146 (June 2024), a special issue for the twentieth anniversary of McKenzie Wark’s A Hacker Manifesto, e-flux presents a word and sound performance of highlights from the text, revised and updated for the present situation. With words by McKenzie Wark and sounds by Nick Bazzano. Read more here.
Thursday, June 27, 2024, 7pm
Haile Gerima’s Sankofa, with Honey Crawford and Merawi Gerima
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A screening of Sankofa (1993) by Ethiopian director Haile Gerima, followed by a conversation between filmmaker Merawi Gerima, scholar Honey Crawford, and anthropologist Natacha Nsabimana. The event is organized as part of the film series curated by Nsabimana in the framework of the African Film Institute. Sankofa takes on a journey from a beach in contemporary Ghana, to Cape Coast Castle, to resistance and rebellion on a plantation in the American South. From Africa to the US and back, Gerima’s magnanimous tale invites us into a world of historical and metaphorical continuities between Africa as geography and Africa as a politic. Sankofa’s beauty is this opening and conversation with endless unfolding connections: Africa as a location, an idea, a metaphor, a diaspora. Read more here.
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For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.