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Greetings from Kosovo 1989 (2025) nSingle-channel video, (DV Pal 4:3), 13:39 min. Greetings from Kosovo 1989 deals with archive footage from the 1989 gathering in Kosovo, made famous by Slobodan Miloševi?’s speech. Addressing a crowd of over a million, he spoke amid rising ethnic tensions in Kosovo and growing political unrest in Yugoslavia. His mention of “armed battles” in Serbia’s future has made this speech infamous, often seen as foreshadowing the Yugoslav Wars. Reframing and subverting the format of a TV reportage, the work emphasizes the mass hysteria, madness, and banality of nationalistic and religious iconography. In light of recent world events, revisiting this episode—an inseparable part of the history that profoundly marked the end of the 20th century—is a crucial gesture, as this history remains very much alive.

Bojan Fajfri? (Belgrade, former Yugoslavia) is an artist and filmmaker based in the Netherlands since 1995. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague and former resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Working primarily with moving images and photography, he creates layered narratives that reflect on history’s impact on individual lives. His interest lies in the porous relationship between memory and the moving image. His work has been presented at institutions such as Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead), San Telmo Museum (San Sebastián), De Appel (Amsterdam), the Belgrade October Salon, NGBK (Berlin), and the Center for Cultural Decontamination (Belgrade). His films have screened widely at international festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Vienna International Film Festival, DOK Leipzig, Sharjah International Film Festival, Tempo Documentary Festival (Stockholm), Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, and Impakt Festival (Utrecht).

On September 24th 1987, the Serbian League of Communists in the former Yugoslavia held its 8th Session. The 8th Session was a meeting in which Slobodan Milosević won a significant vote over his main political rivals on his rise to power. The whole event was broadcast live on Yugoslav television. The 8th Session was an historical turning point, starting an era of ethnic conflict which ultimately lead to the break-up of Yugoslavia . Theta Rhythm is a meticulous reconstruction of that day, from the perspective of one of the administrators of the 8th Session, Mirko Fajfrić. Mirko is interpreted by his son Bojan Fajfrić, the director of this film.

Bojan Fajfrić was born in 1976, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. His professional development has not been linked to Yugoslavia, which he left in 1995, when he went to study visual arts in the Netherlands. He graduated from the Royal Academy in The Hague and was the resident of the Rijks Academy in Amsterdam. However, in his works he has always referred to the country he grew up in, its political inheritance, as well as other social circumstances. His work presents a certain way of looking at history, one which stands at the intersection of personal memories, collective historical consciousness and the inevitable course of events. He uses mostly video installations as a form of expression. His works have been exhibited in many art galleries/spaces and museums: the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; the Tirana Contemporary Art Biennial; De Appel, Amsterdam; MUHKA, Antwerp; Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp; ARCUS, Japan; Spaport, Banja Luka, October Salon, Belgrade. Film Theta Rhythm was shown at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Seoul international NewMedia Festival, Viennale-International Film Festival Vienna, Human Rights Film Festival PRAVO LJUDSKI Sarajevo, Noordelijk Film Festival Leeuwarden, Impakt Festival Utrecht and Film Institute Netherlands.

``He has no coherent idea of himself, but all that he remembers is somehow connected to the city, although he has never lived, nor was born in the city, nor did he die in the city, or anybody else, as far as he knows. `` (Georgio Manganelli) Documentary scenes of wartime Osijek and a sound recording of Fritz Lang`s M create a macabre portrait of the city devastated by irrational forces and an invisible killer.

Born in Crnac (Croatia) in 1953. He is working on experimental film, photography, video, and video-installations. From 1975 to 1977 he was the editor of The Film-lovers panel in Osijek, than went on to direct film program of the Students` Centre (1981-1988), and since 1992 he has been the editor of the film program of Osijek Cinema. He has been shooting films and video works since 1975. Since 1979, he has regularly participated in conceptualist activities and exhibitions, held video and film performances, built installations and made multimedia presentations. In 1995, he participated at the Venice Biennale (A Case/At Home2), and in 2002, he represented Croatia at the 25th biennale in Sao Paolo. He won numerous awards, including the Grand Prix at 11th Days of Croatian film, the 2002 "Vladimir Nazor" award, and the Grand Prix of the 39th Zagreb salon in 2005. He was the founder and manager of the "Kazamat" gallery in Osijek (2001-2004) and organizer of the Performans art festival since 2001. Lives and works in Osijek.

Kangaroo Court is the second part of the multimedia reconstruction of the sequence from Fritz Lang`s famous movie M (1931), which began with the photographic replica of the scene of the illegal trial of the psychopathic murder in Berlin underground. In the first phase, the Berlin half world was revived by two hundred costumed actors, rounded up in a devastated former Zagreb factory. Two film cameramen kept a look out on the process of their costumed retro-initiation to Lang`s universe, which was in the film ?reconstruction of reconstruction? additionally underlined by the counter-point of documentary material and fragments from the sound track with dialogues from M.

Born in Crnac (Croatia) in 1953. He is working on experimental film, photography, video, and video-installations. From 1975 to 1977 he was the editor of The Film-lovers panel in Osijek, than went on to direct film program of the Students` Centre (1981-1988), and since 1992 he has been the editor of the film program of Osijek Cinema. He has been shooting films and video works since 1975. Since 1979, he has regularly participated in conceptualist activities and exhibitions, held video and film performances, built installations and made multimedia presentations. In 1995, he participated at the Venice Biennale (A Casa/At Home2), and in 2002, he represented Croatia at the 25th biennale in Sao Paolo. He won numerous awards, including the Grand Prix at 11th Days of Croatian film, the 2002 "Vladimir Nazor" award, and the Grand Prix of the 39th Zagreb salon in 2005. He was the founder and manager of the "Kazamat" gallery in Osijek (2001-2004) and organizer of the Performans art festival since 2001. He lives and works in Osijek.

?Pusta? or wasteland (aftre the Hungarian word ?puszta?), designates a spacious, level steppe in Hungary; it is a spacious, lever terrain which is not worked, but used for raising livestock, horses and pigs in the open. The puszta is a form of organised, planned, collective habitation, specific to Hungary, Slavonia and Baranja, constructed in 18th and 19th centuries on the nedless Slavonian plains owned by well-to-do aristocratic families. The wasteland was always inhabited by those who had no land, settlers, rstless spirits, wanderers unable to stay in one place, but there were those who stayed in the wasteland for generations. The film was shot by hand-held camera, and is all in subjective takes. The main ?character? in the film is light. Light reveals characters and objects, without care for the composition of the shot ou using artificial lighting. Simultaneously with the shooting of the refraction of light, the spreading ? ringing of sound is recorded. And the most important ? silence, because in the wasteland, on that ?island? with no visiable boundary between the sky and the eart, in that prison with no fences, silence is louder than the noise of any city.

Faktor was born in Crnac, Slavonia, in 1953. He deals with experimental film, photography, video and video installations. He has shot films and subsequenly videos ever since 1975. Since 1979 he has taken part in conceptualist actions and exhibitions, film and video performances, mounted installations and done multimedia shows. In 1995 he took part at the 46th Venice Biennale (A Casa/At Home 2) and in 2002 was representative of Croatia at the 25th Biennial in Sao Paolo. He has won numerous prizes and awards, including the Grand Prix at the 11th Croatian Film Days, 2002, the annual Vladimir Nazor Prize for film, 2002, and the Grand Prix of the 39th Zagreb Salon, 2005. From 1975 to 1977 he was the editor of the panel of the Film Lovers Club in Osijek; from 1981 he ran the film programme at the Student Centre, and from 1992 to 2006 was the editor of the film programme of Osijek Cinematography. He is the founder of the Kazamat Gallery in Osijek and managed it from 2001 to 2004, and has run the Performance Art Festival since 2001. Since 2001 he has been the director of Osijek?s City Galleries. He lives and works in Osijek.

Knocks on the door couldn't tell what was hiding behind it... I wish I was dead, dying between their hands, before fear got the better of me.

My name is Mahmud Farag, I am 28 years old, from Alexadria, Egypt. In 2005 I graduated from the faculty of Education in Arabic Language and Education at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. My interest in cinema started when I was a teenager but as a student in Al Azhar school I was not allowed to study cinema. So, in these years I cultivated my passion for cinema by reading and watching movies, and attending workshops (Script writing workshop at French Cultural Centre in Alexandria, 2004). In 2005 I made my first digital video experiment, which is film Fabrica, based on the debut poetry collection Bel-Amsy Faqadtu Zirran (Yesterday I Lost A Button) written by the Alexandrian poet Tamer Fathy (Sharqyat, Cairo, 2005) In 2006 I wrote and directed the film Kurras Kharayt (Blank Note), which tells about the inner thoughts of an intellectual, his relation with girl-friend and his friends, and his inner conflict with himself and the society.Both the films are mini-dv, their duration is 15 minutes and have been shown in Cairo and Alexandria in the Cinema Cultural centre, Syndicate of Journalists and at the Indipendent Film Cairo Festival. In 2006 I enrolled the High Cinema Institute and I obtained my second degree in Scriptwriting and Cinema Studies in 2010. During this four year study period I wrote and directed some documentaries (Nubat Sahyan (Sudden wake) and Al-dar darak (The center is yours). I also wrote scripts for the graduation movies of some students from the direction department in the academy. My last scriptwriting work is "Pale Red", which has been awarded with many prizes inside and outside Egypt ( Best short film prize for in Alexandria International Film Festival (2010) - Best short film prize in Carthage Film Festival, Tunis (2010) - Best short film prize in Kazan International Film Festival, Russia (2010)- Best film in the Independent film festival at the French Cultural Centre in Cairo, 2011). In the last year I also worked as Assistant Script-writer of Dr. Rafiq El-Sabban for the next-coming film As-Samt (The silence) and for the next-coming series Akhir Ayyam Ghrnata (The last days of Granada). This year, I also had a very interesting experience from my work as assistant with two photographers. The first one wanted to meet the new generation of the revolution, the youth of the new Cairo. My second work was about the families of the martyrs of the revolutio. Beside my interest in cinema, I also have a passion for visual arts. Painting, to me, is the unloading extra energy process, and the teacher of patience. Later I started making pieces of arts from old garments and unused plastic pieces. In May 2010, I was awarded the best painting prize in the ?Funny Nature? artistic competition organized by the association L?Arbre des égrégores, Paris, France.

Just Say NO to Family Values IT, 2006, 4`37? Beat poet John Giorno (b. 1936) is passionately reciting his poem Just Say NO To Family Values (1995). With great determination he is trying to persuade the listener to enjoy life to the full of its potential, and not to be satisfied with anything less. In Giorno?s words, this sounds as follows: `Tobacco is a sacred substance to some, and even though you?ve stopped smoking, show a little respect. Alcohol is totally great, let us celebrate the glorious qualities of booze, and I had a good time being with you.` However, his words are wasted on the frail little woman who is absent-mindedly watching this gesticulating poet, this stranger. She is sitting in front of her shabby dwelling, with the fly curtain sometimes flying up in the wind. In his fashionable clothes, Giorno sticks out like a sore thumb against this decor of simplicity. The woman and the small rural hamlet of Tursi precisely represent all those standards and values which, according to Giorno, we should throw out with the garbage. The region of Basilicata, where Tursi lies, is where his roots are: the origins of this Italian-American poet who, in the 1960s, was part of the New York underground scene and played the lead in Andy Warhol?s Sleep (1963), rubbing shoulders with the likes of William S. Burroughs. John Giorno made it his mission to bring poetry among the people in the spirit of mass production. Antonello Faretta?s lucid images convey in no uncertain terms that Giorno?s passion for poetry is still burning.

Antonello Faretta was born in 1973 in Potenza. He is a photographer, a director and a film producer. He has collaborated with such directors as Abbas Kiarostami, Marco Bellocchio, Saverio Costanzo, Giacomo Campiotti, Peter Del Monte, Babak Payami. He has also worked for Rai,Sat Arte and T9. He has directed numerous films, among which Lei lo Sa,Da Dove Vengono le Storie?,Il Vento, la Terra, il Grasso sulle Mani, 20Venti, Silenced Thoughts, Just Say NO to Family Values. His works have been featured in international film festivals, TV Networks, art galleries and museums throughout the world, and have received prestigious recognitions. In 2002 Faretta founded the independent production company, Noeltan Film, which produces his own works as well as those of young international artists (to this day, nearly 40 films). In 2004 he founded the Atelier del Cinema di Potenza and the Potenza International Film Festival, which he also directs, and for which, in 2006 he received the prestigious Targa per Meriti Culturali from the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano.

Conic Trilogy Study 2 explores the idea of machinery through its rhythmical and continuous production processes, the early association with a human being is quickly supplanted by the power and energy of the heavy machine. Filmed in black and white there is a poetic quality to the images which is added to and emphasized through the early slowing down of the movement. The viewer is lured into this sense of the ?romance? of the machine and its potential for endless production and the efficiency to manage that production without human interference. However the outcome of this reliance on the mechanical is answered in the latter part of the film. This is a powerfully metaphorical work that relates to contemporary political systems and movements.

Nooshin Farhid was born in Tehran, Iran and lives in London. She has been involved in a number of exhibitions, screenings and festivals both nationally and internationally. Nooshin Farhid?s video works whilst employing different subjects and scenarios have a connecting thread, a commonality, namely there is a certain kind of agitation, a restlessness, a sense of things not being right. This agitation and an unwillingness to settle for what is ?on offer? ( this is the way things are ), reflects upon the current state of things socially, politically and ideologically. Though not overtly political, for such a strategy inevitably enables privileged authority to manipulate the artist into the cul de sac of irrelevance, this work continually picks away at those familiar stabilising forces we encounter on a daily basis both within the social space of the everyday but also within the domain of contemporary art itself. Farhid?s work is eclectic and conceptually nomadic, she uses the camera as a visual notebook collecting fragments of encounters, events, chance meetings that collectively question the incessant drive towards normality and conformity through the pressure of state surveillance.

Criss Cross opens with a single image of a parked car lit only by a street light, although this ?minimal? scene is countered by the imposition of redness, infa red or night vision. This opening image in many ways sets the agenda for what is to follow, the colour red coupled with the overpowering element of water, a double saturation both literally and metaphorically. Criss Cross appropriates images from particular areas of media representation, the video takes genres that would appear to come from areas that might be generally referred to as ?low life? or an underworld of sexual exploitation and criminality. What follows from the opening sequence is a series of image clips, fragments, as if wrenched from more prolonged narrative sources, these visual fragmented elements have in common the night, what goes on in the night, what goes on in the ?after dark?. There is an almost subterranean quality to the series of rolling images, cars being broken into, sex chat line conversations, clandestine meetings in dark streets, empty car parks as sites of secret exchange and the imposing sounds and images of law enforcement, however the latter seem only on the periphery of this darkness.

Nooshin Farhid was born in Tehran, Iran and lives in London, she has been involved in a number of exhibitions, screenings and festivals internationally. She also co curated a number of exhibitions including ?Use this kind of Sky? which manifests as gallery show, video installation, radio broadcast, film/video screening and publication (www.nooshinfarhid.com). Nooshin Farhid?s video works whilst employing different subjects and scenarios have a connecting thread, a commonality, namely there is a certain kind of agitation, a restlessness, a sense of things not being right. This agitation and an unwillingness to settle for what is ?on offer? ( this is the way things are ), reflects upon the current state of things socially, politically and ideologically. This work continually picks away at those familiar stabilising forces we encounter on a daily basis both within the social space of the everyday but also within the domain of contemporary art itself. Farhid?s work is eclectic and conceptually nomadic, she uses the camera as a visual notebook collecting fragments of encounters, events, chance meetings that collectively question the incessant drive towards normality and conformity through the pressure of state surveillance. At the same time she appropriates that other form of ?making dumb? the popular media ? soaps, reality TV, Bollywood, MTV. This raw material is savagely and uncompromisingly edited and undergoes a form of post production, collaged fragments are welded together, each one activating and qualifying its predecessor. This process produces a contemporary surreal space that re-presents the familiar into that which is astonishing and invites the viewer to reconsider.

The central focus of ?Sleepwalker? is a single character, a young man who is seen in certain mundane urban spaces, apparently adrift, wandering aimlessly and alone. However this aimlessness quickly gives way to a realisation that there is an undercurrent of another kind of psychological space being experienced. He begins to investigate his surroundings, touching things, testing their surfaces as if not being certain of their material stability, as if they contain some element of threat directed at him, as he does so he triggers another kind of reality which might be seen as flashbacks, recollections of previous experiences or some form of neurosis. These threatening images filmed through a blue filter suggest a liminal space of paranoia, of anxiety, or perhaps of fantasy; there is a gradual but insistent fracturing and blurring of the notion of reality and the space of psychosis as if the rules of the game that determine our understanding of the way things are, are being broken.

Nooshin Farhid?s videos appropriate different narrative situations and filmic genres, re-presenting them in new and disturbing scenarios. Her starting point is often the ordinary, the commonplace or the culturally familiar. She acutely observes these mundane events extracting and editing them in such a way that there is an interplay between lucidity and reason, obsession and madness. Structurally these videos often appear fragmented and disjointed. The recognition of one filmic genre is disrupted by another in such a way as to continually avoid the security of familiar narrative territory, and as such does not allow the viewer full control over what they are experiencing. However throughout this ?schizophrenic? journey there is a certain logic of sense that threads its way through the complexity of the work

Respite is set in Westerbork, a transit camp for deportees to Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz. Powerful images are captured after the SS officer Gemmeker ordered production of a film about the camps. An inmate, the German-born Jew Breslauer, filmed scenes of work, leisure and a train leaving for the death camps with a 16mm camera.

Harun Farocki was born in 1944 in Neutitschein, Tchecoslovakia, then annexed by Germany. He studied at the Deutsche Film und Fernshakademie in Berlin from 1966 to 1968 and is since then freelance director. From 1993 to 1999, he was a lecturer at the university of california, Berkeley; since 2000, he teaches at the Hochschule der Kunst, Berlin, in the media department. His films approach notions of politics and mass medias based on archive work, research and theoritical reflexions on the contemporary society. Harun Farocki lives and works in Berlin.

"Aux ouvriers d?une société industrielle se substituent les technocrates issus de l?ère informatique. La vision de la gestion des moyens de transport est saisissante : les employés des années vingt s?occupant de la surveillance des transports ferroviaires sont remplacés par des caméras vidéos reliées à des centres où un personnel surveille les écrans et analyse la multitude d?images reçues. Prenant la suite de L?homme à la caméra, les images sans cameraman de Farocki témoignent d?un regard critique sur notre société, où le développement des moyens de communication génère des outils de surveillance toujours plus puissants et conduit à la négation de l?individu."

Harun Farocki est né en 1944 à Neutitschein en Tchécoslovaquie alors indexée par l`Allemagne. De 1966 à 1968, il étudie à la Deutsche Film and Fernsehakademie de Berlin et est depuis cette date réalisateur freelance, de 1993 à 1999, il est lecteur à l?Université de Californie à Berkeley, depuis 2000 il enseigne à la Hochschule der Künste de Berlin au sein du dépatement Média. Ces films abordent les notions de politique et de mass média à partir d?un travail d?archives, de recherches et de réflexions théoriques sur la société contemporaine. Harun Farocki vit et travaille à Berlin.

Respite is set in Westerbork, a transit camp for deportees to Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz. Powerful images are captured after the SS officer Gemmeker ordered production of a film about the camps. An inmate, the German-born Jew Breslauer, filmed scenes of work, leisure and a train leaving for the death camps with a 16mm camera.

Harun Farocki was born in 1944 in Neutitschein, Tchecoslovakia, then annexed by Germany. He studied at the Deutsche Film und Fernshakademie in Berlin from 1966 to 1968 and is since then freelance director. From 1993 to 1999, he was a lecturer at the university of california, Berkeley; since 2000, he teaches at the Hochschule der Kunst, Berlin, in the media department. His films approach notions of politics and mass medias based on archive work, research and theoritical reflexions on the contemporary society. Harun Farocki lives and works in Berlin.

The film shows a preoccupation with movement and stillness. It mimics the act of ?scouting?. By ascending the mountain to its foggy summit, it suggests a motion, seeking areas in which to pause and explore stillness; a journey through a series of derelict places that are rich with suggestion and significance. We are led to an elevated place; however, one where clarity is fading.

Anthony Faroux was born in Aix en Provence in 1971. He went to school in Lebanon and Morocco. He studied art in France and UK. His practice is video, film and painting. He has been in residence at the British School of Rome in 2007 and just returned from a year living and working at the Durham Cathedral artist residence. His work has been shown across Europe for the last five years. He is currently working in London.

Whistling can be heard, there is a natural reverb, the sounds ascend up and it comes from outside the frame, from the streets. People on roofs keep looking down and up; some don?t seem to care drinking coffee and talking, a man stands up and start shaking a stick as he looks up, one shacks a big green and yellow umbrella. Bab el Ramaal is located north of the city of Tripoli in Lebanon.

Anthony Faroux b in Aix en Provence, is an artist based in London. He received an MA from the Royal Academy Schools in 2007.He completed his undergraduate education at the School of FIne Arts, Marseilles. He is currently Artist in residence at the Durham Cathedral and was awarded a residency at the British School in Rome in 2007/08. His work shown widely in London and internationally, including a Hex Project space commission in London this year. His work was screened at the Goethe Institute in Cairo, Egypt. Faroux presented a solo Exhibition at Five Years, London in 2010.

Newly built high-rise buildings in multiple areas of accelerated regeneration across London are abstracted in a series of free-falling motions. Through this abstraction comes an attempted reclamation of London’s skyline.

Syd Farrington is an artist and filmmaker living and working in London. His work has been shown internationally at International Film Festival Rotterdam, London Short Film Festival and Kasseler Dokfest, among others. Working with film, his work explores the physical effect of contemporary capitalism on the changing landscape of London. Often using place and landscape as a starting point, He navigates the interrelation of personal and shared experience, drawing from the vast history of cinema and modes of structural filmmaking.

Proposée pour la première dois à Londres, cette installation vidéo en noir et blanc met en scène un personnage cherchant à taper à la machine le titre au moyen de marteaux. Seul le ruban est rouge, laissant penser que le texte s’affiche en lettres de sang, dans un télescopage de « la beauté de la phrase à écrire avec la violence et la difficulté de sa réalisation. »

« The Human Factor » is an experimental video work that explores the idea surrounding Art Deco and Exoticism. Exhibits concerning the native people of the colonies at the Paris Colonial Exposition which took place in 1931 during the interwar period, as presented within pavilions reminiscent of the architecture of the Black Africa, North Africa, and Indochina regions, had illustrated ties to the leading colonial rule and authority of the times. « The Human Factor » is a deconstruction of Marcel L’Herbier’s film L’inhumaine (1923). To this day, this film is considered as a manifesto of the Art Deco movement. This masterpiece in silent film that was filmed against the backdrop of modern and ornate set design, serves to vividly depict the various influences artists of the time had gained from the creations of distant foreign lands, as well as the very spirit that had permeated the era. L’inhumaine reconfigures the innovative methods of artists, decorators, costumers, and architects such as Robert Mallet-Stevens, Fernand Léger, Alberto Cavalcanti, Claude Autant-Lara, Pierre Chareau, Michel Dufet, Joseph Csaky, and Paul Poiret. This video work attempts to present another aspect of Art Deco that lay beneath the powers of colonialist ideology and its universal ambition. It should be noted that the influence of colonial art was not something that had emerged during the two wars of the twentieth century. Such had in fact existed since 1907 in the form of the “The Colonial Society of French Artists,” which was aimed at expanding colonial territory through art that would serve as beneficial to France. Awards and provisions of expenses to travel to the colonies were provided by the society, aiding artists such as Van Dongen, Matisse, and Paul Klee to sojourn in North Africa. By 1919, the Les Arts à Paris magazine had already introduced Art Nègre (African Art) as a “new aesthetic” that could have a great influence on European art. For example, African masks and sculptures became a subject of interest and source of inspiration for artists such as Picasso, as well as Fernand Léger who derived the ideas for his costume designs and stage sets for the Swedish ballet troupe “La création du Monde” through referencing “Aboriginal and African Art.” Furthermore in 1930, the “Exhibition of African Art and Oceanic Art” was held, organized by Tristan Tzara, Pierre Loeb and Charles Ratton. This exhibition served as an important step in the history surrounding primitive art in the West. Here, the Paris public was able to view a selection of primitive sculptures presented along with the works of Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Georges Braque, Joan Miró, Paul Guillaume and Félix Fénéon. Finally, at the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition that served to present colonial ideologies in an explicit way, the distinct characteristics of respective ethnic groups in the colonies were only introduced under conditions of conveying France’s blessings to the colonies, in addition to solely the positive aspects of colonial development. With the exception of several masks, statuettes, and archaeological items, very few, if any, works made by the native people of the regions were exhibited. As opposed to such works, people in general had preferred the spectacle of pageantry created within the realms of dance, folk arts, and art, which in itself was a convenient perspective for the French and Western audience as a whole. It must also be known that these perspectives had not necessarily been shared among French artists. A group of surrealists including figures such as Louis Aragon, Georges Sadoul and André Breton, with the support of French Communist Party, had opposed the colonial exposition through distributing fliers featuring slogans that discouraged people from visiting. The Human Factor is a video work that approaches the issue surrounding the Paris Colonial exhibition, which had publically presented the relationship between what one might refer to as Avant-garde Primitivism, and the Exoticism of the Art Deco as inspired by the colonies. Studio Fatmi, September 2018.

mounir fatmi was born in Tangiers, Morocco, in 1970. He studied at the Academy of Arts in Rome, at the Casablanca Art School, and at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He spent most of his childhood at the flea market of Casabarata, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Tangiers, where his mother sold children’s clothes. Such an environment produces vast amounts of waste and worn-out common use objects. The artist now considers this childhood to have been his first form of artistic education, and compares the flea market to a museum in ruin. This vision also serves as a metaphor and expresses the essential aspects of his work. Influenced by the idea of defunct media and the collapse of the industrial and consumerist society, he develops a conception of the status of the work of art located somewhere between Archive and Archeology. By using materials such as antenna cable, typewriters and VHS tapes, mounir fatmi elaborates an experimental archeology that questions the world and the role of the artist in a society in crisis. He twists its codes and precepts through the prism of a trinity comprising Architecture, Language and Machine. Thus, he questions the limits of memory, language and communication while reflecting upon these obsolescent materials and their uncertain future. mounir fatmi’s artistic research consists in a reflection upon the history of technology and its influence on popular culture. Consequently, one can also view mounir fatmi’s current works as future archives in the making. Though they represent key moments in our contemporary history, these technical materials also call into question the transmission of knowledge and the suggestive power of images and criticize the illusory mechanisms that bind us to technology and ideologies. Since 2000, Mounir fatmi’s installations were selected in several biennials, the 52nd and 57th Venice Biennales, the 8th Sharjah Biennale, the 5th and 7th Dakar Biennales, the 2nd Seville Biennale, the 5th Gwangju Biennale, the 10th Lyon Biennale, the 5th Auckland Triennial, the 10th and 11th Bamako Biennales, the 7th Shenzhen Architecture Biennale, the Setouchi Triennial and the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial in Japan. His work has been presented in numerous personal exhibits, at the Migros Museum, Zurich. MAMCO, Geneva. Picasso Museum La Guerre et la Paix, Vallauris. AK Bank Foundation, Istanbul. Museum Kunst Palast, Du?sseldorf and at the Gothenburg Konsthall. He also participated in several collective exhibits at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Brooklyn Museum, New York. Palais de Tokyo, Paris. MAXXI, Rome. Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. MMOMA, Moscow. Mathaf, Doha, Hayward Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, at Nasher Museum of Art, Durham and Louvre Abu Dhabi. He has received several prizes, including the Uriöt prize, Amsterdam, the Grand Prix Léopold Sédar Senghor at the 7th Dakar Biennale in 2006, the Cairo Biennale Prize in 2010, as well as the Silver Plane Prize, Altai Biennale, Moscow in 2020.

Behind the Shield paints a filmic portrait of the city of Beirut over the past three years. It documents key moments in the country’s recent history – from the October Revolution to the port explosion of August 4th – while also shedding light on the mundane and commonplace facets of everyday life. Behind the Shield is a reflection on the city and the dichotomies that exist within it, juxtaposing the impactful and the mundane; the colossal and the minute; the urban and the rural. The work also highlights the camera as both a silent observer and a silent participant in the events the city has witnessed. Crucially, it explores the video camera’s transformation from a device that is used to surveil, control, and oppress of the masses, to a tool that gives people agency and grants them a voice.

Sirine Fattouh is a Lebanese artist living in Paris. Interested by histories from below, her personal work, as a researcher and artist consists of examining the consequences of violence and displacements on people’s identities. She holds a doctorate in Visual Arts and Aesthetics from the University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne and a Master degree from the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts of Paris Cergy.

"Le Terrier (2)" is video freely inspired by the unfinished short story of Kafka that tells the story of someone going insane after having obsessionally dug his hole, and who persuades himself that he's threatened by the arrival of someone else. "Le Terrier (2)" deals with this shift moment when the familiar structure, supposed to shelter, becomes suddenly a threat : a woman and a man wander in a street where we can't tell if the houses are being built or have been destroyed by an anonymous disaster. In this crossing of a new city of the Parisian suburbs, the housing loses its primary function, since we don't know anymore if it accomodates or threaten, and if it forces to be on one's guard.

Elsa Fauconnet is a french artist, born in the parisian suburbs in 1984. After obtaining a Bachelor of Art at the "ENSAV - La Cambre" of Brussels, she gets a diploma from the "Ecole des Beaux-Arts" of Paris, with distinction from the jury. From engraving, video and photography, she questions the supposed pictures of the real. At first, she works essentially with images extracted from the medias. She appropriates these images that tell our contemporary history, and plays with rewriting History and questioning its conceptual substance. Progressively, her own images (the wall in Palestine, a city being built in France...)are reinstated in fictions. These pieces of real anchored to a historic reality reveal themselves as relics. They are concrete facts and allow at the same time the start of possible fictions, in the interpretation we give of it. Playing with several styles, Elsa Fauconnet's films create a trouble that reveals the difficulty of placing oneself into a story, a place, the real and its representation. In her work, there is also talk of territories, of borders, of dwellings, of the search of a home... She plays with strangeness : in german, the same word stands for stranger and stranger. Would the strange be the aesthetic corollary of the stranger ? "What interests me in the strange and the strangeness concepts is that they both result in casting doubt on every familiar reality, creating a favorable moment to detachment." Using strangeness in order to allow a new observation and a new emergence of the things.

The center piece (Blue Sky ? Palau) is a documentary movie shot in Palau. In November 2009, six ex-detainees from the US Prison in Guantánamo Bay have been released to Palau, which is known for its sparkling water, shiny beaches and beautiful diving spots. Faulhaber traveled to the tiny island nation of Palau in the South Pacific to visit the six men, which are part of the uighur minority in western China. He interviewed their Australian interpreter and his Excellency, the President of Palau. Following his trip to Palau, Faulhaber went to Shenzhen, China, to visit the Oil Painting Village Dafen, which is the world`s biggest conglomeration for reproducing and copying artworks. In Dafen he worked together with local artists to reproduce oil paintings from the portraits of the six men that can never go back to their homeland Xinjiang, which is now under Chinese hegemony. In this series of work Faulhaber focuses on some main questions surrounding the ideological and philosophical notion of the `picture` today: How strong is the global prevalence and regime of the picture? What kind of pictures are we supposed to conceive when thinking of Guantánamo? What is the state of the picture with regard to a global system of industrialized tools for copies, imitation and reproduction? Or, as W.J.T. Mitchell has raised the question: `What is the work of art in the age of biocybernetic reproduction?`

?I don?t see myself, primarily, as a political artist,? says Christoph Faulhaber. Still, there?s something disconcerting about this claim. A quick survey of the projects he has carried out to date tells us about the sale of Cuban real estate to customers in Florida, a preoccupation with the future of Ground Zero, problems with the FBI in New York, Faulhaber?s name on the United States Terror Watch List and the planning of an allocation center for former Guantánamo inmates in Hamburg. These are topics which catch our attention and brush on important discussions conducted in the media on a daily basis. Hence, Faulhaber made a name for himself in 2007 with his project Mister Security, which he carried out jointly with fellow artist Lukasz Chrobok over a period of three years. The project encompassed several actions in the public realm as well as two publications. Christoph Faulhaber, born 1972, is today one of the most promising young German artists. His work has been shown amongst others at the National Gallery Prague, Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje, Laiyan Gallery Hong Kong, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum Ludwigshafen, City Museum Remscheid, Kunstverein Hannover and Fridericianum Kassel.

« A dictator and a revolutionary icon are on a golf course ». What could have been the beginning of a strange political private joke led to something far more odd than expected. Acting like pro-players at the British Open, the two figures of Cuba communism regime, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara came up that day with a loopy idea : build on the island the most magnificent art school of south America. What Is left from this titanic undertaking ? Didier Faustino tries to answer that question with his A « Walker To Explore Dead Buildings » project. On the occasion of the Cuba Art Bienale, the renowned architect/artist invites you to a real first person exploration video game through this edifice drained of his essence. In a tropical atmosphere at dawn. Three young bodies deploy a choreography over the roof of a utopian curved architecture. These melancholics and heteronymous characters wear metallic suits as a metaphor of a caged youth. The cameras placed on the structure as well as those witch gravitate around them give us the image of a wandering over the ruins of the Cuban Escuela De Ballet de La Havana. The films brings out the failure of this architectural and cultural utopia. The performance underline the memory of the desire for a better future. The scene of light and darkness intersperse themselves, Between exterior and interior, day and night, at the service of a fictional esthetic.

Exploring Dead Buildings is a video made in Georgia in the abandoned building of the Ministry of Highways of the Soviet Republic of Georgia. This video shows the discovering of this dilapidated space by a non motorized module on wheels that is moved by two operators. Only enlightened by two spotlights powered by a battery the camera make slow movement into the darkness and makes discover the complexity of this dead architecture.

Named after a mythical lost oasis, Zerzura addresses questions on our relations to the non human: How do we perceive 'nature'? Is it a 'thing' to which we humans are external? Or are we all part of a mesh where there is no centre nor periphery? Can an assemblage of sounds and images invite us to see 'nature' as living, sentient and endowed with agentivity? Following 'Resistance' (2017) and 'Osmosis' (2022), 'Zerzura' closes the trilogy 'Corpus Animale'.

Laurence Favre is an artist, filmmaker and researcher. Her practice revolves around analog images, sounds and writings. She makes experimental films, installations and film performances, looking for ways of triggering epistemic changes through sensory perception. Her films are shown internationally in film festivals (Locarno Film Festival, Visions du Réel, Rotterdam IFFR, Ann Arbor Film Festival and others), in art spaces as well as in informal spaces and in the frame of symposiums. She has been awarded several artist grants and residencies. Laurence is an active member of the artist-run filmlab LaborBerlin, and a co-funder of SPECTRAL, a platform for the creation and diffusion of Expanded Cinematic Arts.

BLUE is an interactive[less in the common sense] interface Shockwave Flash application. The work just presents the title in its written form and in a common contemporary typographic although in a newly designed dot font. The work and the title are one but in its paradoxical endless changing form presenting a colorful diversity and multiplicity. Not according to it?s supposed inner stable form and expected meaning. BLUE is also interacting for viewers in a physical space container of its DVD video projection as one another material form. Being first presented at jack, a non-profit contemporary art room in Lisboa, now it can also be seen at Joao Felino selected works on the internet.

"Painting is the critic of movement; movement is the critic of painting." [Octavio Paz] Having started doing art work in mid eighties, soon after Joao Felino decided to pursue architectural studies. While keeping working mainly on paper, he developed a conceptual art methodology, process and work with a minimalist material emphasis. He promotes experience and refuses interpretation and [established] narrative[s]. He started working with video, moved also towards sculpture. He sees painting as usual and any other media. He studied multimedia and new media and he starts also working with new media technologies. Joao Felino is currently director of the cultura material contemporanea e arte | contemporary material culture and art gallery He is also the author and the commissioning director of a poster gallery on the internet. In recent years he has been developing projects for the web among others the recent and close group of: the revista de poesia & politica, a web journal focusing on presenting politics & poetry and on translation, from various foreign languages to portuguese; the edition of a serie of love letters by the portuguese poet Paulo Jose Miranda as a blog; he is also the "Essais-Dattées" editor-in-chief. He has also recently finished [P]. The third of a serie of three video works, with "Desassossego de Catarina Morao" and "Destino/Destination". The all of the three constituting a reflection on Portugal.