27th LES INSTANTS VIDEO
Marseille , FRANCE
Curated by Marc Mercier
from 13rd November to 10th December 2014
TOWARDS THE FREE MOVEMENT OF BODIES AND DESIRES
Video art is a contemporary art … of the struggle of those who have not yet renounced their right to bear wings.
1) More and more walls are built between those who have (almost) nothing and those who have (almost) everything.
2) Misogyny and homophobia (even when hiding behind good intentions) are walls built between bodies and desires.
How can video artists express what should be a universal right: the right of everyone to circulate and settle where they please, to live freely in their sexuality, to love without impediment … ?
We have built this year’s festival upon our firm belief that the same logic drives all States, with the unfortunate agreement of a too-large number of individuals: to control the migratory flux and the flux of desire. The victims of this war against the unfamiliar and the foreign are in their millions today, whether in Gaza, Syria, Mexico, in Lampedusa or on our street.
We are living on a planetary scale under a (political and economic) regime of patriarchal domination based on the law of the strongest: the most muscular, the richest, the best-armed, the best-qualified, the best-endowed. Whether it be in the name of a god; of saving an economy; of the preservation of identity; or as a guarantee of our security, the predators of a cosmopolitan, mixed-race, and unanimous humankind are conniving to close borders against undesirable populations, and control sexualities that threaten the heterosexual nuclear family unit where the safe pairs of hands are reproduced to produce the luxuries indispensable to the workings of a liberal economy, or to carry guns to fight in new ‘civilising’ crusades.
Last April in Tunisia, I heard a mother declare that fish had become her enemies because her son was eaten by them when shipwrecked off the coasts of Europe. That is enough to justify our fight: reconciling Mediterranean people with fish. Between July and September 2014, 2900 migrants have died in the Mediterranean.
What is at stake when we open borders in our bodies and desires is not only a human and political concern: it is also a poetic one. The unrestrained opening of borders will lead to the blending of bodies and the creolisation of languages. If only for this reason; if only for poetic reasons. We should demand of ourselves and the institutions which manage our destinies in spite of ourselves, the duty of radical hospitality.
We do not talk of “our rights”, but of “our doing what is right”. As incest is (universally) forbidden, there should be a (universal) duty of hospitality. This is not negotiable; it is our moral obligation.
We wish you a frenzied take off, on wings of mischief …
Marc Mercier
Translation Kate Pinault
Selected Artists:
Flaut Rauch (Allemagne) – Eric Huber (USA) – Ulf Kristiansen (Norvège) – Azucena Losana (Mexique) – Hande Zerkin (Turquie) – Sandrine Deumier et Alx P.op (France) – Khairul Ikhwan and Zulkhairi Zulkiflee (Singapoure) – Elodie Derlyn (France) – Arie Syarifuddin (Indonésie) – Ari Dina Krestiawan (Indonésie) – Yara Mekawei (Egypte) – Marc Neys (aka Swoon) (Belgique) – Thuraya Emad (Egypte) – Alexander Isaenko (Ukraine) – Nico Winz (France)
Video Selection:
Choose (7’49 – 2013) / Flaut Rauch (Allemagne)
Onward (3’15 – 2014) / Eric Huber (USA)
Jealous guy (4’40 – 2014) / Ulf Kristiansen (Norvège)
LoCo (Paparazzi III) (2′ – 2009) / Azucena Losana (Mexique)
Dasein (1’56 – 2013) / Hande Zerkin (Turquie)
Magical Garden (2’25 – 2012) / Sandrine Deumier et Alx P.op (France)
Viscera (6′ – 2014) / Khairul Ikhwan and Zulkhairi Zulkiflee (Singapoure)
L’Amante Religieuse (4’23 – 2014) / Elodie Derlyn (France)
Maaf Singapura (Sorry Singapore) (2’21 – 2013) / Arie Syarifuddin (Indonésie)
Making Love with Jakarta Traffic (4’54 – 2012) / Ari Dina Krestiawan (Indonésie)
The surface (2’17 – 2011) / Yara Mekawei (Egypte)
Ve Znaku (In the sign) (5’05 – 2013) / Marc Neys (aka Swoon) (Belgique)
Delirium (1’58 – 2014) / Thuraya Emad (Egypte)
The Negative Selection (3’29 – 2012) / Alexander Isaenko (Ukraine)
Les courtoisies d’une femme de chambre (16’04 – 2013) / Nico Winz (France)
LES INSTANTS VIDEO
Les Instants Vidéo is an event dedicated to video art and electronic poetry with its multiple forms, monobands, installations, performances, multimedia…
It is all together a festival and a laboratory where international renowned artists and works of arts can meet with works that are more fragile, still in progress, delicates. In order to support real encounters between works of art, artists and spectators, there is no competition and the admission is free.
The event is made of different spaces of time. The international Encounters take place in Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseilles (in November 2014). Every year, this central part of the event welcome more and more spectators, in a space we try to make as friendly as possible.
And either before and after these dates, we act in concert with our partners to organise the festival stopovers in other spaces in Marseille, the area…and abroad. We name the whole stopovers a poetronic constellation.
We do not give a theme, but every year we give a title to our manifestation like one does for a collection of poems: “Burn your own patience”, “Resistance my sweet concern”, “(Seize) The image round the waist”, “Under the sign of the Quetzal”…. Each one of the artists can take it into account or not.
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