<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><p><strong>Here We Are Now</strong></p><p><em>13 October 2010, 21:00. <a href="http://www.beursschouwburg.be/">Beursschouwburg</a>, Brussels.<br>
A <a href="http://www.courtisane.be/">Courtisane</a> event, in the
context of the S.H.O.W. (Shit Happens on Wednesdays) series. </em></p><p>To what extent can we still make a difference between “public” and
“private”? According to philosopher Jean Baudrillard, “the one is no
longer a spectacle, the other no longer a secret”. Now that the most
intimate details of our lives are thoughtlessly shared on the internet
and the media, in order to feed an endless, compulsive loop of
information, participation and circulation, it seems like ever more
constraints and obstacles are being annulled. Surrounded and obsessed by
a world of images, overcome by a gnawing insecurity, we submit
ourselves to a regime of ultimate visibility. We are well aware of being
seen, followed and remembered, but that is precisely what pushes us to
all kinds of forms of disclosure, confession and “selfploitation”. The
mediatised gaze of the other, at the same time disturbing and
stimulating in its elusiveness and omnipresence, has become the
paramount point of reference for our obsessive search for identity and
belonging. We show ourselves in order to become ourselves, while we
irrevocably disappear behind our images. The uncanny transit zone where
intimacy merges into transparency is the central theme of this
programme. Four recent video works, each in their own way, explore the
contemporary conjunction of media and subjectivity, in which it seems no
longer possible to maintain an unequivocal relationship between
watching and showing, subject and object, seeing and being seen.</p><p><i>With works by Mohamed Bourouissa, Olivia Rochette & Gerard-Jan Claes, Ruti Sela & Maayan Amir, Shelly Silver</i></p><p><br>
<strong><a href="http://www.claes-rochette.be">Olivia Rochette & Gerard-Jan Claes</a>, <em>Because We Are Visual</em> (BE, 2010, 47′)</strong><br>
A brooding glance in to the world of online video diaries, circulating
in the deep shadows of YouTube and related platforms. There we find a
never-ending stream of micro-confessions and intimate exposures, teenage
fear and moody blues, broken hearts and timid souls in search for
comfort and belonging. It doesn’t matter if essentially there is nothing
to say nor show, as long as it contributes to the driving flow of
information. Anything can be said, everything must be disclosed, to the
point that there is ultimately nothing left to see. It does not matter
if nobody watches or listens, what matters are the traces we leave
behind in our endless search for identity and significance. What matters
is mattering itself. Looking for an answer to our loneliness and
insecurity, overwhelmed by the omnipresence of images, we become images
ourselves. Instead of looking for an object, rather than looking at
ourselves as objects, we become objects ourselves. We immerse into the
shadow play of the web, only to sink deeper into a trap of pointless
circulation and forced visibility. Here we are: desperate bodies without
desire, crude visuals without necessity or consequence. Welcome to the
spectacle of banality. </p><p><br>
<strong><a href="http://www.fillesducalvaire.com/index.php">Mohamed Bourouissa</a>, <em>Temps Mort</em> (DZ/FR, 2009, 18′)</strong><br>
“There is something fragile in this project, which mirrors the fragility
and fugacity of the process itself of making the images. Every image
has been made with the help of a friend who is in prison. Situations
are established and filmed with a mobile phone, hence the poor quality
of the images. If I insist upon this fragility, it’s because it contains
the whole idea of the work. This video puts forward the intimate and at
the same time distant, relationship between two persons, one free and
the other one in captivity; between a real human relation and a digital
communication; between a prison system which puts a person in the
situation of fundamental isolation, of retraction in a closed space; and
a free circulation : a profusion of information turning him into a
member of the “media community”. We enter an “off screen” kind of free
space. And at the same time, it’s the encounter between two
temporalities, one slowed down, stopped, frozen by the prison
environment, and the other one fast, dazzling, in constant movement.
That’s why I chose the title ‘Temps mort’, for these images are in that
duality of time being close and very distant at the same time”. (Mohamed
Bourouissa)</p><p><br>
<strong><a href="http://www.shellysilver.com/">Shelly Silver</a>, <em>What I’m Looking For </em>(US, 2004, 15′)</strong><br>
“‘I am looking for people who would like to be photographed in public
revealing some part of themselves (physical or otherwise). This is for
an art project. No other relationship will take place outside of being
photographed.’ My ad received many responses, mostly from men. After
they initiated contact, I would set up a meeting where I would try to
capture photographically whatever these people wanted to show me. Early
on I realized that much of what they wanted to reveal couldn’t be
contained in still photos, and I started integrating these images into a
video. The fifteen-minute video is a riff on this adventure, a somewhat
fictionalized version of the strange intimacies and connections formed
between my subjects and I. (…) It is the first video I’ve made utilizing
the internet, both as subject and resource and I was amazed by the
incredible richness of interaction possible on the web, the unexpected
play of fantasy, projection and desire as well as how boundaries between
public and private are navigated differently than in actual physical
space. When I moved, with my camera, from virtual to the actual space, I
found my focus turning to the central importance of evidence of the
physical world; exulting in the lush intimacy of details, the wrinkles
on an ear, the spidered veins in the white of an eye, the elegant curve
of the nape of the neck, the irregular rhythm of crooked front teeth…”
(Shelly Silver)</p><p><br>
<strong><a href="http://www.beyond-guilt.com/">Ruti Sela & Maayan Amir</a>, <em>Beyond Guilt #1</em> (IL, 2003, 9′30”)</strong><br>
The first part of a video trilogy, in which Ruti Sela and Maayan Amir
focus on and play with the distorted power relationship between the
photographer and the photographed subject, between the public domain and
the private sphere. Sela and Amir proceed through the underworld of Tel
Aviv’s busy nightlife, its dark night clubs and musty hotel rooms,
unveiling, through a stimulating game of provocation and exposure, the
influence of media on the expressions and compulsions of subdued drive
and desire. This video documents their meetings in the toilets of
pick-up bars with youngsters who talk to the camera about their sexual
escapades and fantasies. Under the seemingly banal surface of their
revelations lies the deep influence of the Israeli political and
military apparatus (and the ideological positioning towards what
Israelis euphemistically refer to as “hamatzav” – the situation), which
unrelentingly permeates the most intimate spheres of their psyche.</p><div apple-content-edited="true"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; font-size: 12px; "><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.courtisane.be">www.courtisane.be</a></div><div><a href="http://www.diagonalthoughts.com">www.diagonalthoughts.com</a></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></body></html>