August 23rd - October 18th, 2014
Opening Reception
Saturday, August 23rd, 2014 from 6 - 9 pm
The Darkroom Presents
Time is Love.7
22 video works curated by kisito Assangni
TIME is Love Screening is a roving international video art program on the theme of love in hard times.
Since 2008 the project has been exploring forms of artistic expression rising from society and the new media's use of technology.
The selected artists deliver us without concession a range of complexities and passions generated by human relationships. Each of the artists leads an interdisciplinary practice bringing a questioning and a criticism on a system of relation to others which appears to us as being dying.
Videos deal with prevented communications, disturbed feelings, globalization, memory and spirituality. Love as universal feeling extricates itself here from traditional clichés and from a timeless idealism.
The project wishes to support and promote the new movements and trends in contemporary culture. It is an opportunity for audiences to engage with video works by gaining greater understanding and enjoyment.
TIME is Love Screening brings to the world a refreshing perspective on video art.
About the curator
Kisito Assangni is a Togolese-French curator, consultant and producer who studied photography, art history and museology. Currently living between London, Paris and Lomé, his practice primarily focuses on psychogeography and post-globalisation impact on contemporary african cultures.
His projects have been shown internationally, including the Whitechapel Gallery, Ben Uri Museum, London; Arnot Art Museum, New York; Malmo Konsthall, Malmo, Sweden; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow; Foundation 3.14, Bergen, Norway; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul among others.
Kisito has participated in symposia, talks and events at numerous international venues.
He was also member of jury for the Award Letters From The Sky in Cape Town (South Africa) as well as the 28th Prix Videoformes in Clermont-Ferrand (France).
Kisito is the founder/curator of Time is Love Screening and [SFIP] project - Still Fighting Ignorance & Intellectual Perfidy (a platform for critical thinking, researching and presenting Video art from Africa.)
Artist Biography
Amina Zoubir (Algeria) lives and works between Paris (France) and Algiers (Algeria). She is graduated of a Master Theory and Practice of Contemporary Art and New Media at the University Paris 8, having previously obtained a DESA in Graphic Design at the Academy of Fine Arts at Algiers in 2006. She continued her studies as a PhD student in Aesthetics, Science and Technology of Contemporary Art and Photography at the Art images laboratory at the University Paris 8. Amina has exhibited at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Center for Contemporary Art, Riga; Musée d'Art Moderne, Alger; Artos Foundation, Nicosi, Cyprus.
Glissement, 8:23, Amina Zoubir 2013
Arnaud Brihay (Belgium) studied photojournalism and audio-visual communication at I.H.E.C.S. Brussels and holds also a Master in Business from EML. Arnaud Brihay principally works with photography, video, mixing often these media to art installations. His photographic work reflects his frequent travels and trips around the world, wanderer catching loneliness, strangeness or intimate scenes which he gently violates. On the other hand, he produces videos approaching, among others, either instinctive sensuality, intriguing portraits and moving sequences extending his photography work. His work was exhibited in many events, biennials and cities such as Shanghai World Expo 2010, Traffic Dubai, Bruxelles, Paris, Lyon, New Caledonia, ... and was selected to Videoformes Festival, Videoholica, Magmart 100x100=900 (100 videoartists to tell a century), Now&After 2014 Moscow, TIME is Love Screening - international video art program, AIVA International Video Art Festival Sweden and Videoart Festival MIDEN Greece.
That wasn't a dream, 2:56, Arnaud Brihay, 2013
Belle Shafir (Israel) investigates organic developmental processes with the objective of comprehending how phenomena arise, how the world changes & how this change impacts the consciousness of the spectator. The observer is invited to reconstruct the thought process that sets the artist in motion. Following art studies in Tel-Aviv, Shafir began showing her work in one-person & group exhibitions internationally, including Frauen Museum, Bonn; Air Gallery, New York; Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Herzliya, Israel.
Vertigo, 1:57, Belle Shafir, 2013
Carlo Giuseppe Zuozo (Italy) is an italian artist and videomaker. Born in Naples in 1973, after
primary and secondary schools he attends the Architecture department at the University
Federico II of Naples where he graduates in 2005. His video works are influenced by the Fluxus movement.They are made by filming the ordinary environment. Zuozo uses mass-devices as a cameraphone for filming the reality. The low-fi quality of image obtained from a very poor technical instrument is a desired effect because it represents the lack of efficacy in contemporary communication throughout the media. These glitches are metaphores of a bad communication. His work was shown at Galleria Tartaglia Arte, Roma; Spazio Amira, Naples; Blissland, Berlin; Galerie Talmart, Paris.
Contro Natura, 4:03, Carlo Giuseppe Zuozo, 2012
Eva Olsson (Sweden) is a Swedish artist who works with contemporary art where moving image is her major way of expression. She reconstructs familiar situations to create new insights in short animations, by working with reflections on everyday life. She holds an MFA degree at Norwich School of Art & Design in the UK. Together with Jonas Nilsson she's the co-founder and curator of Art Temple 1:85 (former Art:screen) which is an art space for new media art and contemporary art with a focus on emerging and experimental art on research and development practices.
Patience Dear, 3:18, Eva Olsson, 2012
Patience is the level of endurance one can take, before acting on annoyance in a negative way.
Evelin Stermitz (Austria) studied Media and New Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and holds the degree in Philosophy from Media Studies. Her works in the field of media and new media art focus on post-structuralist feminist art practices. In 2008 she founded ArtFem.TV – Art and Feminism ITV (http://www.artfem.tv) and received a Special Mention for the project at the IX Festival Internacional de la Imagen, VI Muestra Monográfica de Media Art, University of Caldas, Manizales, Colombia, in 2010. Her works have been exhibited and screened at various venues such as the MMoMA Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia / Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires, Argentina / CAM Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy / MAC/VAL Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, France / Chelsea Art Museum, New York.
What is Love? 15:00, Evelin Stermitz, 2013
Special credits to Eric Payson.
What is Love? follows the question by various answers from short interviews of women. The visual background to the video is a car driving perspective, providing a view to think about the issue. It reminds to a couple driving together on a journey, but both are experiencing their own state of mind instead of sharing their time. The given statements are diverse, but at the end, the question remains unsolved. So, What is Love?
Irina Gabiani (Luxembourg) moved to Amsterdam where she studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (“Free direction” and “C ontemporary jewellery”) after studying at the Academy in Tbilisi. Irina has lived and worked in Luxembourg since 1998. The Universe in its holistic essence is the focus of the research of the artist according to whom we all belong to a unique system, to a “big organism” imagined as a kind of complex, interrelated chain, of which we, and everything around us, are a part. In her works, Irina uses drawing, painting, photography and sculpture, often in porcelain or ceramics. Recent exhibitions include the Venice Biennale, Arnot Art Museum, New York; National Center for Contemporary Art, St Petersburg (Russia); Beijing Contemporary Art Centre, China.
Abacus, 2:24, Irina Gabiani, 2013
Trying to see beyond what we can perceive with our eyes, going beyond the vision of the world as we use to know, the artist researches the innumerable similarities between the infinitely big and the infinitely small within matter. The more we know matter and understand its complexity which escapes us at a simple glance, the more the infinitely small leads us to the universe. Discovering infinite worlds within our every-day surroundings leads the artist to believe that there are other parallel realities in time and space.
Justyna Scheuring (Poland) creates site-specific installations, live art situations, photography, performance, poetry, video, drawings. Recently she has been working mainly in performance with special interest in social emotional communication and deconstructing what is considered as 'familiar and stable' within the social interactions. She lives and works in London, Toruń and Kraków. She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions internationally, including Corner Window Project, Auckland, New Zealand; Contemporary Arts Centre, Torun, Poland; Goldsmiths, London; Coyote Gallery, Chicago.
I'm speaking human to you Dog, 3:45, Justyna Sheuring, 2013
Justyna addresses the state of transformation/change/metamorphosis: when something doesn’t cease to be what it was and, at the same time starts to be what it has never been before.
Laura Focarazzo (Argentina) is an Argentinian video artist and independent curator. She lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her works include experimental films and videos as well as curatorial works. Graduated in Graphic Design at the University of Buenos Aires in 1991, Laura Focarazzo also completed film courses and workshops with prestigious filmmakers of the local and international scene during last years. She has participated in exhibitions and international film festivals around the world.
Other moons, 02:22, Laura Focarazzo, 2011
Margarida Paiva (Portugal) is a visual artist, originally from Portugal, living and working in Oslo. In 2007, she completed her MA degree at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and has earlier studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Porto and Art Academy in Trondheim. Recent exhibitions include Stories and Desires From Who Sleeps at Galeria Camara Oscura in Madrid (ES), Stereo. Not Mono at Galleri F 15 in Moss (NO), 3rd Space / II Baltic Biennale in St. Petersburg (RU), Fail Again Fail Better at Tromsø Kunstforening (NO) and solo exhibitions at Galleria Muratcentoventidue in Bari (IT) and Interkulturelt Museum in Oslo (NO). Her short film Every Story Is Imperfect (2012) has recently been awarded at FOKUS 2014, Nikolaj Kunsthal (DK).
Erase, 3:26, Margarida Paiva, 2009
"In my video works I deconstruct real stories and assemble the fragments in different ways to create new plots. These videos are an intersection between documentary and fiction and the stories are personal narratives characterizing conditions such as isolation, trauma, anxiety and displacement. The characters are used as figures to direct the narrative, not to express their emotions openly. Using cinematographic techniques, these works become poetic narratives with a hint of something undefinable."
Marie Paule Bilger (France) graduated from the faculty of Fine Arts in Strabourg, France. She recontextualises elements of everyday life to create altogether new circumstances that shift the viewers political consciousness. She works with painting, drawing and video. Bilger has exhibited at Galerie Hegoa, Paris; Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany; Galerie Prysmat, Krakow; Film and video festival, Aarau, Switzerland.
WE-Nous, 3:44, Marie Paule Bilger, 2012
Marina Fomenko (Russia) is an artist and curator based in Moscow, Russia. She graduated from Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics and "Free Workshops” School of Contemporary Art of Moscow Museum of Modern Art. She is founding director of International Video Art Festival Now&After.
Recent Exhibitions include Moscow Museum of Modern Art; Uppsala Artmuseum, Uppsala, Sweden; [.BOX], Milan, Italy; Museum of Ideas, Lviv, Ukraine.
Portrait of the Shukhov tower, 0:57, Marina Fomenko, 2010
Nina Lassila (Finland) born in Helsinki, lives and works currently in Gothenburg SE and Belgium. She is a visual artist working mainly with video and performance. In many of her works she deals with questions of identity – specifically identity affected by social barriers, conventions based on gender and upbringing and cultural differences. Her other bodies of work explore issues of i.e supernatural phenomena, art and economic structures. She has taken part in several group shows and video festivals internationally i.e The Istanbul Biennial 2007, Reykjavik Festival of Arts 2008, Rencontres Internationals Paris/Madrid/Berlin 2007 and 2012, LOOP Barcelona 2011, SHE DEVIL V Macro Museum Rome 2011, Blanche-Neige Centre Georges Pompidou Paris 2011, DE 2013, WALK#2 EARLY VISIONS Brussels 2013 2014 Freunde und Feinde groupshow at Atelierhof Kreuzberg Berlin 2014.
Me Aphrodite? 2:17, Nina Lassila, 2012
Rahman Hak-Hagir (Afghanistan/Austria)) is an Austrian-born Vienna-based half-afghan conceptual and performance artist who began his career in 1990. Active for two decades in varied fields of art, his work is recently focussing on the conflicting priorities between individual and social environment.
Criticism, 1:43, Rahman Hak-Hagir, 2013
"It always was the privilege of comedians to illuminate the king and his court by clues and messages camouflaged behind symbols. My conceptual performative work contributes to all these anonymous jesters who served social evolution and human cohesion across history."
Robert Croma (UK) is a photographer and video maker who makes poetic works that are self published on the web that rely on the combination of intimate observation with the careful and delicate application of various effects (eg variable speed, post production effects). His works have been presented at The Museum of Club Culture, Hull, UK; Musée d’art Roger-Quilliot, Clermont-Ferrand, France; Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel; LOOP Video Art Festival, Barcelona, Spain.
Passenger, 3:42, Robert Croma 2009
Said Rais (Morocco) lives and works in Tétouan (M). His artistic career began with the applied arts in Tiznit, then at the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tetouan. Said is a digital media artist working on audio/video/interactive installations, photography, and transdisciplinary research in contemporary art.
His work explores the relationship between nature and technology, a reflection on the social and ecological issue. He participated in various exhibitions and festivals, including Short films festival NOUZAH Fennia Casablanca; Talmart Gallery, Paris; 15ème biennale de la mediterranée, Thessaloniki (Greece). 2012, Pink Gallery, Seoul; Festival Mundial Arte pela Pas, Brazil.
Changement...approche, 4:21, Said Rais, 2011
Saul Levine (USA) is a maker and advocate of avant-garde film and more recently video. He is currently a professor at MassArt where he has taught for 30 years and programmed the longstanding MassArt Film Society. His work has been screened nationally and worldwide, most recently in Shanghai, Paris and Rotterdam. He is based in Boston and hardly leaves town.
Nearsight, 2:04, Saul Levine, 1977
Sheri Wills (USA) is an artist whose work is based in film, video performance & digital media. She is a professor of Art and Film Media, and the Interim Director of Film Media. Her work has been exhibited around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the London Film Festival and the International Film Festival in Rotterdam and is featured in the Rizzoli book, Sonic Graphics: Seeing Sound, by Matt Woolman. She holds an MFA in filmmaking & an MA in art history, theory & criticism, both from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her collaborations include video projects with music composed by Bright Sheng, Jan Jirasek, Charles Norman Mason, and Ofer Ben-Amots and video performances with music ensembles, including the Providence String Quartet, Luna Nova New Music Ensemble, and Ensemble QAT in Montreal.
Acetylene, 3:06, Sheri Wills, 2011
Simone Stoll (Germany) trained and studied in Berlin and in London where she was part of an artist group and organised Live Art/performance events. In 1994 she spent 5 months in Reykjavik and moved the following year to Marseilles, France. For two years, she was a-i-r at an art centre situated on the premises of a psychiatric hospital in Aix-en-Provence. Since 2009, she lives again in Frankfurt/Main. Simone Stoll’s work can be found in private and public collections. She has participated in video festivals, group and solo shows in Europe, Canada, Australia and the USA. In 2007, she was part of the Biennale of Québec and received the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant. In 2011, she took part in the Bienal Internacional de Fotografía de Tenerife and was given the Fotonoviembre Award.
Meer, 4:15, Simone Stoll, 2013
“My work evolves around humanity, on the human body and mind. Earlier in form of painting, I focus on drawing, video and digital photography. Former collaborations with neuro-scientists and multi-media artists have nourished my work and I still appreciate the input of creative people. I seek to reveal intimacy, fragility, rawness. My approach is direct trying to keep the means simple, so I am generally the performer of my videos and model to photos.”
S/N Coalition (USA) is an electronic art group, which works extensively with video, sound, animation, photography and locative media. Their exhibitions often include performative elements and mediated footage, pushing both experimental and conceptual ideas around media. S/N members include Jennida Chase and Hassan Pitts who have been creating collaborative work together since 2008. Their works have been exhibited and screened in North America, Europe and Asia in various festivals, galleries and museums including Hong Kong Art Fair, Pekin Fine Arts, DAS Weekend and the Freies Museum in Berlin.
Thing of the past, 1:36, S/N Coalition, 2012
Sylvia Toy St. Louis (USA) is a performance artist & filmmaker living in San Francisco.
"Performance art, live that is, is an acquired taste. As a theatre artist, I was not evangelical about getting my work out there (well, maybe in 1994), trying to make converts." Her projects have been presented worldwide.
Passages, 3:28, Sylvia Toy St-Louis, 2013
William Esdale (UK) is a British artist and an experimental filmmaker based in London. He studied BA Fine Art at Kingston University, graduating with First Class Honours in 2011. His work focuses on cinematic and found video footage investigating the human condition and the psychology of art. Esdale’s work has been shown in many screenings, events and galleries which include: Japan, Portugal, Switzerland, Finland, London, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Germany, USA, Cyprus, France, Netherlands, Ukraine and Mexico.
Faultless_Weakness, 1:38, William Esdale, 2014
"I investigate theories concerning the human condition and question art-making which provokes and intermediates between visceral emotion and identity."