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The Good Life (a guided tour), is a meditation on the inextricable relationship between institutions of contemporary art and the wider structure of the economy, harnessed today by the 'creative class'. The video takes the form of a guided tour around an unspecified contemporary art institution, in a future scenario where it is selling off its building to be transformed into luxury apartments. The depicted institution - itself an uncanny 'collage' of four existing major European institutions -, is utilizing is assets, promising major regeneration to its host city. (Nav Haq, curator Arnolfini, Bristol)
Katleen Vermeir and Ronny Heiremans live and work in Brussels. In 2006 both artists initiated A.I.R (short for 'artist in residence'), a long-term collaborative practice that examines the dynamic relation between art, architecture and economy. The practice encapsulates different projects, in which they render architecture as a space of constructs for the projection of consumer desires.
Vermeir & Heiremans have presented their work as exhibitions, lectures or screenings in 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007), Arnolfini, Bristol (2009), Casino Luxembourg (2009), Frankfurter Kunstverein (2009), Kassel Documentary Film Festival (2009), Radcliffe Institute, Boston (2009), CEAC, Xiamen (2009), Nam June Paik Art Center in Korea (2010), LOOP, Barcelona (2010), Rencontres Internationales in Paris/Madrid/Berlin (2010/11), Videonale, Bonn (2011), Videoex, Zurich (2011), 10th Urban Nomad festival, Taipei (2011)
The video was made for an exhibition in Rio on Paulo Werneck one of Oscar Niemeyer's collaborators. Werneck was the first to introduce mosaics in Brazilian Modernist architecture. P.W. shows the context of the artist's work in Rio and Belo Horizonte in the 50s and the 60s as well as Brasilia at the time of its construction in 1960. It's an inventive collage of archival footage, music and Werneck's modernist mosaics.
Vivian Ostrovsky was born in New York. Programmer for the Jerusalem Film Festival, Filmmaker, curator. Her films have been shown in festivals worldwide (Toronto, Berlin, Locarno, Rotterdam, Tribeca, Vienna and others), in cinematheques and in art fairs such as the Sao Paulo Biennale and Arco in Madrid. As well as in venues such as : M.O.M.A., Lincoln Center, NY, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Anthology Film Archives, NY, Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley, CA.
Her films can be found in the following collections: MOMA, NY; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek, Berlin; Forum des Images Paris; Israel Film Archives, Jerusalem and the French Ministery of Foreign Affairs for French Institutes worldwide.
In 1964, when Philippe de Broca was shooting "the man from Rio", Brasilia is a vast undertaking. Prior to house the higher social classes sought, the city must deal with an unwanted population, but essential, manufacturers. Also called "candagos" this immigrant population accounts for 55% of the workforce, but there is no question for the government it installed permanently in the Federal District. So is it installed directly on site or in the satellite towns. Os Cadangos features an excerpt from "The Man from Rio", which takes place in Brasilia. In addition to the comical style of the original film, this passage offers an exceptional view over the city in 1964. The sequence was reworked frame by frame - Belmondo was erased with any trace of life. With this gesture I wanted to fuse the notions of materiality and utopia in the same movement to question the challenges of a project such as Brasilia. The traces left by the erasure process reveal a certain presence, the actors and workers. The prevailing wind and dust. Brasilia, the highlight of modernism, became a ghost town.
Guillaume Linard-Osorio was born in Montereau in 1978, holds a Diploma in Applied Arts (Ecole Boulle, Paris, 2002) and a DPLG (ENS Malaquais, Paris, 2007).
"Private Views" creates a parallel between two starkly different worlds: the wretchedness of the destitute and the conspicuous consumer lifestyle of the nouveaux riches. The video explores the themes of social inequalities, real estate speculation, and dispossession. It documents the decline of some North American cities and casts a critical eye on the emergence of wealthy new suburbs. These private residential enclaves are often gated and under surveillance. Their luxury homes, with their dubious architectural style, are the reflection of a world dominated by appearances, consumption, and social conformity..
Born in 1969, Isabelle Hayeur lives and works in Montreal. As an image-making artist, she is known for her large digital montages, her videos and her site-specific installations. Her work is situated within a critical approach to the environment, urban development and to social conditions. She is particularly interested in the feelings of alienation, uprooting and dislocation. Her artworks have been shown in the context of numerous exhibitions and festivals.
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 born 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.
E is the story of a journey through northern Japan. It investigates an inaccessible territory that was devastated in June 2008 by an earthquake of 6.7 Richter scale magnitude. The mountain moved, open in minutes by the violent impact of the elements and left an open scar - a strange beauty whose fate is undetermined. It is now a large canyon that eventually became a park attraction. The "Ecopark" attracts tourists, making the disaster a selling point. Those who lived through the earthquake replay these moments of naure's violence. Taming the disaster is a Japanese cultural attitude. If you can not tame the future, it can be prevented.
Born in 1967 in Grenoble, Natachha Nisic studied Fine Art at ENSADin Paris, as well a film at the Berlin DFFB and FEMIS. His work blurs the borders of different media- moving image, Super 8, film and video, but also photography and installation. He has been shown in numerous exhibitions in France, Printemps de Cahors, Centre National de la Photographie, Le Plateau-Frac Ile-de-France. His films were recently presented at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, K21, Dusseldorf, Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, British Film Institute, London.
Long After We're Gone is a soundscape piece that I made comprising video and audio field recordings in and around the Gowanus Canal, one of the most polluted waterways in the US. The idea for the piece grew out of my interest in Soundscape Composition and Acoustic Ecology.
The title comes from a conversation I had with Eymund Diegel, who took me out on the canal by canoe. Eymund is an Urban Planner with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Gowanus Canal. He talked about the natural streams that have been flowing into the canal for centuries and that will still be around long after we're gone.
Nerina Penzhorn was born in New York, raised in South Africa and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Nerina has produced segments for In The Life Television and Current TV and various non-profits. She currently teaches in the International Affairs Graduate Program at The New School in New York City and freelances as an editor for Public Television. Nerina's films have screened at various film festivals including Slamdance (UT), Frameline (CA), Outtakes (New Zealand), and Africa in the Picture (Holland) among others.