LAND OF ABUNDANCE
Utopias are images of future societies in which antagonisms, dislocations, and social conflicts are resolved. Such grandiose, universalist fantasies have collapsed long ago, not in the least through the inherent ambiguity of the utopian construction itself. In the terrain of international politics, global corporatism, and urban culture, this program looks at the precarious line between the desire for a reconciled and harmonious community and the dangers of any enforced segregation or gentrification of ‘other’ people.
ABSOLUTELY
Aleesa Cohene
VIDEO / 00:09:00 / CANADA / 2001
Absolutely is a pseudo-documentary dealing with history, politics, and the body, against the background of a society in continuous crisis. Besides incorporating various sources of found footage put into a new context, the film mingles interviews with four characters about democracy, revolution and their internal manifestations.
THE JACKSONS – CAN YOU FEEL IT
Michael Gibson
VIDEO / 00:12:00 / UNITED STATES / 1981
The Jacksons created a mini-movie music video to accompany their Triumph album which culminates in computer-enhanced images of the Jacksons as benevolent giants sprinkling glittering magical dust over the world.
WHITE BALANCE (TO THINK IS TO FORGET
DIFFERENCES)
François Bucher
VIDEO / 00:30:00 / UNITED STATES / 2002
This work is an effort to uncover the geographies of power, the frontiers of privilege. It revisits this problem from different angles, creating short circuits of meaning which are hosted by improbable audiovisual matches. Media and internet footage is mixed with images shot in downtown Manhattan before and after the September 11th attacks.
Among these ruins of architecture of consciousness, Bucher digs out layers of the unspeakable hidden in the discourse of ‘whiteness’. He opts for a language that seeks to arouse thought by concentrating on the openings of the audiovisual experience, in the short-lived moment of the in-between.
DRIFTWOOD
Oliver Payne / Nick Relph
VIDEO / 00:23:00 / UNITED KINGDOM / 1999
Sincerely and overwhelmingly romantic, Driftwood pulls focus in and around the inner city of London, questioning the uses of urban archaeology and mentoring civil behavioural devices. Skateboarding’s appropriation of the city’s urban environment is the focal point of a psycho-geographical journey that flickers between the macro and the micro, the personal and political, utopianism and reality.