WHAT THE GREEKS CALL---------
Mon, Dec 2 at 7pm. Anthology Film Archives
Ellie Ga and Felipe Meres in person. Discussion moderated by Flaherty NYC Co-programmer Mathilde Walker-Billaud, curator.
In partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York. Co-presented with Cabinet.
How has the rapid multiplication of available data in recent years converged with the historical urge to collate all earthly things? The term encyclopedia was coined by Western humanists in the Renaissance. Pseudo-Greek for rounded knowledge, it suggests an endless, spatial form to the intellect. This evening’s program plays with systems imagined, from antiquity to the present, to order, comprehend, and preserve the world. Here, artists get lost in their processes of research, or expose the metaphysical dimensions of replica technology. Incorporating film, performance for the screen, and documentation of 3D printing, the works fuse the enlightenment project of classification with its folly and violent aftermath. Knowledge is revealed as provisional, and dangerously so, as attempts to find evidence and indices are eclipsed by the world’s persistent unknowability.
FILMS & PERFORMANCE:
Jean-Daniel Pollet BASSAE 1964, 9 min, 35mm-to-digital
Aurélien Froment THÉÂTRE DE POCHE 2007, 12 min, digital
Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni BASSAE BASSAE 2014, 9 min, 35mm-to-digital
Felipe Meres GLOBAL ILLUMINATION 2017, 8 min, digital
Ellie Ga EUREKA, A LIGHTHOUSE PLAY 2014, 45 min, live performance
Total running time: 80 min.
SYNOPSES
Jean-Daniel Pollet BASSAE 1964, 9 min, 35mm-to-digital
A temple in the middle of the Peloponnese, where time challenges us.
“Bassae is the most beautiful enclosed site in the world. When I came back from my trip in the Mediterranean, this is the place that obsessed me the most. I think this is the last work of the architect of the Parthenon. What is special about it is its geographical situation. In the mountains, far from the sea, hidden in a basin. It is oriented in a way so it is almost opposed to the other Greek temples, and seems dedicated to any God. I went there often, I wanted to do a film on this object which has lost its signification, but stills possesses a mysterious and fantastic potential. — Jean-Daniel Pollet.
Aurélien Froment THÉÂTRE DE POCHE 2007, 12 min, digital
Inspired by Arthur Lloyd’s show Human Card Index, in which the performer takes out of his pockets any images requested by his spectators, Théâtre de poche presents the artist as a magician making images appear, disappear and move in space. A rudimentary collage of performance, sound and visual effects, this comedic video is a metaphor for artistic research hesitating between representation and manipulation, technique and illusion. (adapted from Kadist)
Felipe Meres GLOBAL ILLUMINATION 2017, 8 min, digital
A series of Pre-Columbian objects from the Pumapungo Museum in Cuenca, Ecuador, selected for their anthropomorphic or zoomorphic qualities, are re-duplicated in an atmospheric 3-D animation. Titled after the CGI algorithms which simulate the behavior of light, Global Illumination meditates on the hyper-realistic aesthetics that drive the representations of ethnographic artifacts. (adapted from artist’s website)
Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni BASSAE BASSAE 2014, 9 min, 35mm-to-digital
Bassae is an ancient Greek temple in the Arcadian mountains of the Peloponnese. Bassae is a film made by Jean-Daniel Pollet in 1964. Ever since 1987, when its restoration work began, the temple of Bassae has been covered by a large white tent, making it disappear. Forty years ago, Jean-Daniel Pollet described how stones had fallen back into silence, as the gods withdrew from the scene. Bassae Bassae shows the temple now made invisible by its very restoration. Like a contemporary reprise of the original work, this is a film about what has become mute and invisible. (adapted from artist’s website)
Ellie Ga EUREKA, A LIGHTHOUSE PLAY 2014, 45 min, live performance
In EUREKA, A LIGHTHOUSE PLAY, Ellie Ga draws upon an archive of photographs, video footage, documents, objects and interviews to reconstruct the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria, which was destroyed in a series of earthquakes during the Middle Ages. This visual and performative narrative describes the journey of an artist lost in the process of research, and the limits of the known, even in the high times of data. (adapted from artist’s website)
ARTIST IN PERSON
Ellie Ga is an artist who uses a range of media to build documentary, observational and fragmentary narratives, in tandem with research centers and archives such as The Explorers Club (New York) and The Center for Maritime Archeology, Alexandria (Egypt). Her work has been presented at Le Grand Café, Saint-Nazaire (FR), M-Museum, Leuven (BE), the Albright-Knox Art Museum, Buffalo (US), The Guggenheim Museum, The Kitchen (New York), The Cartier Foundation (Paris) and the Playground Festival (BE). She is a co-founder of the publishing press Ugly Duckling Presse in Brooklyn. Her video installation Gyres 1-3 was commissioned for the 2019 Whitney Biennial. She is currently a FLAD artist-in-residence at Art351 in Portugal.
Felipe Meres is an artist working with photography, film and sculpture. His work has been exhibited at Mendes Wood DM (São Paulo), the 2018 Cuenca Biennial (Ecuador), GAMeC, (Italy) and the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (Miami). Currently pursuing a PhD in Anthropology at The New School, NY, he is the recipient of the 2016 Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Grants & Commissions Award and of the 10th Tom of Finland Foundation Emerging Artist Grand Prize.
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Back to full series info: SURFACE KNOWLEDGE
STILL: Ellie Ga, Eureka, a Lighthouse Play, 2014, Live narration, video, slide and overhead projections, recorded sound, 40 minutes, courtesy of the artist and Bureau New York.
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