POLITICALLY TODAY _PART1

1968, probably the last global uprising. This year we celebrate the fifty years anniversary of that sudden and worldwide escalation of social conflicts, but in our present day it looks as everything has been highly normalised. Common storytellings, too much (social) media leading to apathy, historical facts that fall in the right place. History seems to be written, a closed file that must be learned and permanently reiterate. Yet, things are more multifaceted than it appears to be and it's to this complexity that contemporary audiovisual artists presented in this program look at. In these films we discover accounts, traces and documents of the past century. While wondering what might still to be found and interpreted, we observe images, monuments or footages that invite us to grasp what's left from the recent history. We ask ourselves how this past insists on today's viewpoints and we understand what must be still thought and put in question. In every film, various aesthetics practices are at stake: essayistic forms dialogue with different documentary approaches; television footages are combined with acted sequences; moving and photographic images establish a dialectic, recordings of street performance resonate in opposition to the panoramic views of the cities. This topology of places shows micro-histories that always inscribe on a broader scope. In this sense, the artists work at once as historians, archeologists and interpreters of the current unsolved issues. Every film is a back and forth from the present to the past, it talks about today, but it suggests new perspectives for the past and open up the debate here and now. In this respect, this program is possibly not militant in the terms of '68, but is certainly political like we should be politically engage today.

Program:
Rob Jacobs & Anne Reijniers - Échangeur (2016)
Shelly Silver - 5 lessons and 9 questions about Chinatown (2009)
Miguel Peres dos Santos - Voices (2015)
Sarah Vanagt & Katrien Vermeire - The Wave (2012)

Related events

• Politically today _part2
• Politically today _part3

This event is part of Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento