Lutz Becker, THE SCREAM, 2012

Born in 1941 in Berlin, Germany lives and works in London, UK. Lutz Becker is an artist, filmmaker, curator and film-historian. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, where he graduated under Thorold Dickinson and became a distinguished director of political and art documentaries. A practicing painter, he is also a curator of exhibitions. He collaborated with the Hayward Gallery on The Romantic Spirit in German Art (1994), Art and Power (1995), and Tate Modern on Century City (2001). As of 2003, Becker has been working for the Mexican Picture Partnership ltd.’s reconstruction project of Sergei M. Eisenstein’s film ¡Que viva Mexico! ‒ Da zdravstvuyet Meksika!.

THE SCREAM

‘The video installation The Scream is an homage to the Ukrainian filmmaker and poet Aleksandr Dovzhenko (1894-1956). It is a reflection on Dovzhenko as a poet who told his stories in the form of the classical eclogue, in which pastoral simplicity stands in contrast with modernist self-consciousness. Even in his more overtly political films Dovzhenko’s perspective remained subjective, attached to the old art of story telling, its allegorical elements, symbols and types. The installation, originally presented on three screens, is shown here as a single-channel version especially created for this exhibition. The work is a montage of segments from Dovzhenko’s films, based on dramatic interactions and accidental synchronicities of images and scenes, the play of affinities and contrast, textures, details, and the monumentalisation of the human face’.

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Yang Fudong, YEJIANG / THE NIGHTMAN COMETH, 2011

Born in 1971 in Beijing, China lives and works in Shanghai, China. Yang Fudong’s films, photographs and video installations are born out of an interest in the power of the moving image to explore subjectivity, experience and thought. He draws stylistically on different periods in the history of Chinese cinema to create open ended existential narratives that interweave quotidian ritual with dream and fantasy states. Yang trained as a painter in the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. In the 1990s, he started to work in the medium of film and video. He is known for his cinematography and mastery of cinematic style, using 35mm film to produce powerful and poetic works about the human condition with its malaise and fantasies of everyday life. He possesses a sensitivity to the traditions of Chinese art, cinema and the place of the intellectual (the literati). Each of his films is philosophical and open-ended, engaging questions around both history and contemporary life, mostly depicting the lives of young people from his own generation, albeit with historical resonances that sometimes span many centuries. Through vignettes staged with classical precision, yang’s works propose a poetics of place and a critique of time that is determined through the interaction of individuals rather than by political doctrine.

THE NIGHTMAN COMETH / Ye Jiang

The single screen work shown here, unfolds in the realm of historical fantasy. An ancient warrior is seen wounded and forlorn after battle, in conflict about his path in life. Three ghost-like characters appear as emblems of feelings and thoughts that surface and clash within the warrior’s heart and mind as he has to decide whether to disappear or continue fighting. Yang has preferred to describe this film as ‘neo-realistic’ rather than historical or allegorical: Neo-realism” is a history theatre where current and contemporary social conditions come to play. Who exists realistically, the warrior baron in his period costume or the ghost in a modern outfit? When the ancient battlefield scene and other historical events appear and reappear, where do they belong, in the past, the present or the night-falling future?…. There is hope nonetheless. The body is full of desire whereas the soul is more precious. His spirit is what backs him up in life. How should we live our lives now? How do we identify ourselves with neorealistic historical events and continue to search for spiritual meanings? What do we really want?” [DE]

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Tracey Moffatt, DOOMED, 2007

Born in 1960 in Brisbane, Australia, lives and works in Australia and USA. Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists as well as being an artist of international significance. She has had numerous solo exhibitions in major museums around the world. Working in photography, film and video, Moffatt first gained significant critical acclaim when her short film Night Cries was selected for official competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.

DOOMED

Tracey Moffatt’s video collage, Doomed, features depictions of doom and destruction ‒ war, violence and terror ‒ as they appear in popular cinema. In collaboration with Gary Hillberg, with whom she made Other (2009), Love (2003), Artist (2000) and Lip (1999), Doomed uses cut-and paste editing techniques in a highly entertaining and black-humorous take on the bleak side of our current psychological landscape. Moffatt’s film looks at both entirely fictional and reconstructed disastrous events. Each scene carries a particular cargo of references. They occupy their own unique symbolism and filmic territory ‒ the poignant, sublime and epic, the tragic, the B-grade and downright trashy. The accumulation of scenes, however, within Moffatt’s own essaying, creates a narrative whole comprised of parts. Not only does Moffatt play within the ‘disaster’ genre, re-presenting representations, she revels in it. Moffatt points at how the viewer is involved in filmic narratives through an emotional hook, by the promise of imminent disaster, an important narrative device. Moffatt’s film itself is crafted with an introduction, body and finale ‒ in a presentation of the form of filmic entertainment, as well as of ‘art as entertainment’.

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Miao Xiaochun, RESTART, 2008-2010

Born in 1964 in Wuxi, Jiangsu, China lives and works in Beijing, China. Miao Xiaochun graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing, China and the Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany. He is presently a professor at CAFA and one of the leading digital artists in China. While studying in Europe he familiarised himself with western art history and motifs from famous classic paintings are often animated in his videos. Miao Xiaochun is considered one of the most representative and influential artists In the domain of China’s new media art. He started in 90s his creative explorations on the interface between the real and the virtual. His extensive body of work includes photography, painting and 3D computer animation which are parallel to each other. He works in contemporary photography based on the “multiple view point” perspective to pioneer connections between history and the modern world. Miao Xiaochun successfully uses 3D technology to create upon a 2D image a virtual 3D scene, to transform a still canvas into moving images, concurrently changing the traditional way of viewing paintings and giving a completely new interpretation and significance to a masterpiece of art, especially with the striking use of his idiosyncratic imagination about history and the future. His works add an important example to contemporary negotiations with art history, and open up new potential for art as he experiments with new possibilities, taking a step forward into new potential spheres.

RESTART

The apocalyptic 3D video Restart begins with an animation of Pieter Breughel’s The Triumph of Death (c. 1562). Here one famous Western masterpiece morphs into another and classical civilisation crumbles into modern chaos. As the video continues, images of the present begin to take hold, some reflecting China’s recent economic growth and technological prowess. yet no triumphalism is intended in what after all is a continuing cycle. In Xiaochun’s works the naked homogeneity of seemingly oriental CG figures based on the artist’s body, dead or alive, represent everyman ‒ his joys and horrors as well as the endless struggles between life, love and death.

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ARTIST STATEMENT

JARIK JONGMAN

A former assistant of Anselm Kiefer, Jarik Jongman uses both his own photographs and anonymous pictures found in flea markets, books, magazines and the internet as a starting point for his work, which often deals with archetypical imagery. Dutch born, he studied in Arnhem and has had numerous exhibitions in London, Berlin, Switzerland, Amsterdam and at the 53rd (2009) and 54th Venice Biennale in collateral events. He lives and works in Amsterdam. Jongman will expand his series of painted portraits of icons of the contemporary art world. Originally developed for the ABOUT FACE exhibition at MOMENTUM in 2012, Jongman has applied traditional oil painting to an interactive performative practice. Painting some of the richest and most influential art-world players of our time, he subsequently invokes the audience to break all the taboos of the relationship between audience and artwork. Giving the audience the tools to leave their mark on the paintings, Jongman encourages the purest form of iconoclasm in the context of the sacred space of the museum. The result is a series of mutilated images, reminiscent of the damaged murals and toppled statues of ousted dictators across the world. This series of work has so far been enacted in Berlin, Jerusalem, and London, with portraits of icons of the art world site specific to each location. For his Artist Residency at TRAFO, Jongman will show the results of the previous performances, in addition to creating five new portraits of icons of the Polish art scene. The subjects of these portraits will be selected through an open call, involving the audiences of Szczecin in the process of art production; in the very first stages of choosing a subject, and in the last step in putting their own signatures on the finished work.

ARTIST’S CV

Emi Hariyama is a ballerina born in Osaka, Japan. She graduated from Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow in 1996. She joined the Moscow Ballet Theater and the Aalto Ballet Theater in Essen, Germany in 1997. She has won numerous international competitions, including the Special Prize at Moscow International Ballet Competition, a bronze medal at the New York International Ballet Competition, and a silver medal at the International Ballet Competition in Paris (no gold was awarded). Since 2004, Emi Hariyama has been a member of ”Staats Oper Unter den Linden” and ”Deutsche Oper Berlin” under the direction of the maestro Vladimir Malakhov.

Peter Kirn is an audiovisual artist, journalist, and technologist. Classically trained in composition and piano, he now focuses on live electronic performance. He is the founder of CDM, a widely-read daily site that explores creative technology, and has contributed to Macworld, Popular Science, De:Bug, Keyboard, and others. He teaches and develops open creative tools, including co-creating the open source MeeBlip synthesizer. Born in Kentucky, he is now based in Berlin. He is a PhD Candidate in Music Composition at The City University of New York Graduate Center.