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The final exhibition at the WRO Art Center in 2024 titled Obce kadry will focus on Found Footage strategies used by artists.
This exhibition will feature video works in which artists transform the use of found or rediscovered images, film fragments, and recorded tape segments, giving them their shape and new meanings.
1
Antoni Pinent (ES)
G/R/E/A/S/E
video, 21:13, 2008-2013
Deconstructed cultural symbols, camp and unleashed pop. Inspired by the work of Dziga Vertov, Mimmo Rotelli or Christian Marclay, a self-made décollage – a new, original version of 1978’s Grease. Antoni Pinent literally takes the well-known musical under the knife. Operating directly on film, the filmmaker isolates and enhances the pop aesthetic and dialogue of the cult film by cutting and gluing frames to create a multi-dimensional remix.
2
Robert Arnold (US)
The Morphology of Desire
video, 05:55, 1988
An experimental look at romance and desire in popular culture and the relationship between the still slide and the moving image. The work uses digital morphing to animate illustrations from romance covers. It depicts the illusion of cinematic movement – the tension and contradictions between reality and illusion, still and moving image, flat and depth.
3
Lewis Klahr (US)
Her Fragrant Emulsion
video, 10:23, 1987
An obsessive tribute to 1960s B-movie actress Mimsy Farmer. Lewis Klahr edited his film in Super 8 format, gluing together multiple cut strips of film using splicing tape. He then ran the reel through a projector and re-filmed, giving the scratched and blurred images a hand-drawn feel.
4
Dan Boord, Luis Valdovino (US)
Cocteau Cento
video, 05:34, 2004
This experimental video takes the form of a cento – a literary work composed of fragments of other works. It pays homage to the work of poet, playwright, artist and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Combining footage from several of his films, the writings of Cocteau and his contemporaries and a sound design created from these writings.
5
Lého Galibert-Laîné (FR)
A very long exposure time
wideo, 07:00, 2020
Medytacja nad różnymi technologiami zapisywania obrazu. Poetycka narracja prowadzi przez obrazy stworzone za pomocą dawnego aparatu fotograficznego Louisa Daguerre’a, kamer filmowych 16 mm, rozpikselowanych gier wideo, wczesnych smartfonów i współczesnych interfejsów komputerowych. Praca zadaje pytanie: czy te różne technologie zaprojektowano do dokumentowania konkretnych aspektów naszej rzeczywistości? Czy istnieją jakieś wymiary naszego doświadczenia na Ziemi, jeszcze nie udokumentowane wizualnie i dla których technologie fotograficzne nie zostały jeszcze wynalezione?
6
Péter Forgács (HU)
Wittgenstein Tractatus
video, 04:52, 1992
An experimental film essay based on Wittgenstein’s ‘Logico-Philosophical Treatise’ – the philosopher’s only work published during his lifetime. Juxtaposing archival black-and-white footage from the early 20th century with oral and written quotations, Forgács illustrates the Viennese philosopher’s key concepts such as logic, language and reality with its representations.
7
Alexander Pawlik (PL)
Natura Piekła
video, 03:55, 2014
A found footage work created from 16 mm educational science films. The aim was to retain all the characteristics of the source material: moving film images, a logical discourse structure and a narrator introducing the viewer to the subject matter. Inspired by Dante’s Inferno, the work explores the structure of hell and the dynamics of the movement of the human soul within it. An imaginarium of atoms, waves and molecules becomes a representation of the soul within the infernal within. Rephotographed old animations serve as an illustration of this process.
8
Vera Sebert (DE)
Liquid Traits of an Image Apparatus
video, 07:21, 2019
Visualised machine instructions are reprogrammed into interfaces with human-readable instructions.
9
Laura Grudniewska (PL)
Soft Poachers
video, 06:49, 2020
The internet as a sensory space. Laura Grudniewska uses ASMR and liminal images shared online. In late modernity, when everything has been invented, told and created, Soft Poachers seeks a collage-like danse macabre that can satisfy the contemporary internet consumer.
10
Rodrigo Gomes (PT)
Ariane
video, 03:01, 2020
Ariane is a deepfake of Ariwasabi, the world’s most famous unknown model from Shutterstock. Billions of people regularly see her face, although her identity remains unknown. She is a digital ghost. Social media profile pictures and celebrity images are implemented into porn films, and people in videos appear in places they have never been. This leads to a belief in non-existent events that have the power to shape opinion and feed a whole new kind of invisible violence.
11
Marcos Bonison, Khalil Charif (BR)
Kopacabana
video, 13:33, 2019
A collage of current and archival images. Copacabana as an epicentre of intercultural, social and sensual experiences. The narrative is built up by poetic text by Fausto Fawcetta, the work was soundtracked by Arnaldo Brandão.
12
Piotr Krajewski (PL)
Boletus Bikini
3-channel video, 24:29, 2017
sound: Maciej Markowski
First observed in the mid-20th century, Boletus Bikini is one of the most powerful fungi. It owes its name to the Bikini Atoll, a group of picturesque coconut islands in the Pacific, where 23 specimens of the species were experimentally bred and studied by US scientists and engineers in 1946-58. The work used both original American film footage and its high-quality Chinese and North Korean ersatz.
13
Agnieszka Pokrywka (PL)
Koniec
video, 08:58, 2009
The End is inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Number Five. The book’s main character (Billy Pilgrim), thanks to his special abilities, watches a documentary about the Second World War backwards. An excerpt from the text describing what he sees while watching this television programme provides a kind of script for The End. War creates a reality of inverted principles. The principle of The End is the reversal of war. The work is based on documentary footage and was inspired by films from the 1940s (feature-length and propaganda films). The soundtrack includes excerpts from Richard Wagner’s Valkyrie played backwards.
14
Anthony Discenza (US)
Suspension
video, 08:54, 1997
A glitched rescan of ads from fashion magazines. Discenza explores the territories of McLuhan, Baudrillard and TV Week. It attempts to find or hide the borders of information circulation in mass media.
15
Ip Yuk-Yiu (HK)
Plastic Garden
machinima, 11:18, 2013
Images and memories of the nuclear age. Plastic Garden evokes the ghosts of a forgotten future and the grim doom of nuclear war. The author hacks and appropriates the popular computer game Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010). It depicts playerless and gunplay-free scenes from Nuketown, a mock-up city built for a nuclear testing ground.
16
APSOLUTNO (YU)
Good Evening
video, 08:07, 1996
The role of media in the late 20th century. The video seems to be a playful, ironic commentary on the vastness of globally available television stations and the differences and similarities of their form and language. It uses the same greeting from satellite channels broadcasting news available in 1996 in Serbia. It refers to the influence of the media on the experience of reality, but is also a farewell to the 20th century and a dark welcome to the coming new millennium.