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CologneOFF I
Identityscapes
Curated by Agricola de Cologne
was launched on 11 April 2006 online and incorporates 40 videos and digital short films
Venues 2007
Selections of Cologne OFF I – were presented on
Gijon/ES – 8,10-14 November 2008
Lyon/F – 21-27 January 2008
Belgrade/Serbia 19 November 2007
12-13 October 2007
1-8 October 2007
www.mobileinstitute.org – 24 August 2007
Istanbul/Turkey – 27 – 30 June 2007 – http://www.caravansarai.info
10-15 April 2007
9-11 February 2007
16-18 November 2006
20-22 October 2006
Guadalajarra/Mexico – 12-17 November 2006
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Find more details also in the PDF catalogue
Selected artists
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Arzu Ozkal Telhan (Turkey)
Title: Entitled, video installation, 2003, 3:34
In collaboration with: Insoon Ha and Peiyun Lee
A naked newborn baby is not considered wrong or bad. A naked two year old
On the beach is generally considered normal and innocuous. At what age child
considered as a human and trained with the set of social practices, disciplinized and socialized?
“Activities such as walking, experiencing shame (experiencing gender), stigmatization, eating, and dressing, are the daily rituals through which the child attends and trains the body. The body is a powerful symbolic form, a surface on which the central rules, hierarchies, and even metaphysical
commitments of culture are inscribed (sewed).†_Foucault
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Andrew Johnson (USA)
Title: Black and White, 4:30
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Elia Alba (Domincan Republic)
Title: If I were a…
In collaboration with Nicolás Dumit Estévez
DVD; 4:30 min.
This video refers to the Banana Dance performed by Josephine Baker in Paris in 1926. The word “jaba†is a negative informal expression from the Dominican Republic that is the equivalent to the term “high yellow†used here in the United States, meaning a very light skinned black person. In this video, the performance artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez wears a skirt similar to the one worn by Josephine Baker in her dance and the mask is that of my face. However, instead of bananas, the skirt is made up of miniature doll heads of various ethnic races. By re-enacting this performance, I wanted to make reference to this historical act, which was about white Parisian culture consuming the acts of a black female body, but in presenting a man in the guise of Josephine Baker, I wanted to reconsider the original narrative of the Banana Dance, which eroticized the black, female body and the consummation of such.
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Alla Girik and Oksana Shatalova (Kazakhstan)
Alla Girik biography
Oksana Shatalova biography
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Title: Warning! Women
year of production : 2005, duration: 3 min. 12 sec
In non-modernized patriarchal societies (they are still the majority of humanity) the role of cultural organizing force, “intellect” and “consciousness” is traditionally given to male.
A woman symbolizes the power of the Unconscious, intuition, chaos. It’s a kind of some impersonal force. She is dangerous like the nature (= threat of disaster).
The trilogy “Warning: Woman!” is a Rabelaisian illustration for ideas on woman as a “corporal bottom”. It’s an ironic illustration of feminophobia; an illustration of archaic myth (about “vagina dentata”). Woman here is represented as a brutal (though funny) monster that always can deprive a male of his phallic regalia.
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Eleanor Gates Stuart (Australia)
Title: Knit, 2005
Duration: 9 minutes 4 seconds
Eleanor Gates-Stuart’s video, Knit (2006), is a gruelingly frustrating depiction of human condition. Her video works are described as – distinguished psychological mindscapes, claustrophobic and compulsively escapeless.
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Ina Loitzl (Austria)
Title: Snow-white and red like a rose
Trick animation video with sound / 5’ / 2005
Regularly “SNOW – WHITE†becomes “ROSE – REDâ€
Takes of her clean appearance
Goes wild, blooming and pulsating
To return again into white silence
This metamorphosis colours the red juice blue
Blood can not be denied
ALARM!!!
Womens’ tears clean their “unsanitary mons venerisâ€
Marias’ concentration on her body fluids
Made her think of a simple analogy
With the blood of her own son!
Which sanguine is now allowed to be drunk,
which blood is worth to be shed?
Oh, don’t wish for a woman with no abdomen!
Could she serve better with a missing genital?
Clean, safe, marias’ mouth can only swear….
The critical days are “my daysâ€
Activity can be gained with injections or pills
The end is the absence of menorrhoea
But this hide – and – seek can take revenge
With bouts of the vagina
Because tampons can only stop, plug and tame
The juice floating with relish
The power and fury should not be forgotten
The life in all its red coloured nuances.
It’s a beautiful part of you and me……
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Joao Paulo Simoes (Portugal)
Title: Take.This.Turn, 2005
In which three musical interludes are combined to form a three-part Video Illustration about the nature of identity in an abstract, sci-fi context.
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Elisabeth Smolarz (Germany)
Title:
You and Me
2003, Video installation, 3 min
A couple. The woman slowly transforms into the man and vice versa. The video visualises a relationship between two people., The installation is a metaphor for how human beings interact with one another; the creation of our identities.
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Beatrice Allegranti (UK)
Title: IN MY BODY, video 2005, 4 min
is a site-specific autobiographical solo film which explores the sensations and emotions of a woman in the nascent stages of re- constructing her identity following the death of her mother.
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Unnur A. Einarsdottir (Iceland)
Title: Toilet (2005),
A woman, dressed in a pink night dress and high heels, is licking a toilet seat covered with whipped cream and candy, with sexual intensity.
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Sonja Vuk (Croatia)
Title: Cosmo Club
year of production 2004
This art work deals with typical problems of life adjustment in transitional Croatia.
Split between temptations of consumerism, media influence and real financial and political situation in the country leads to contradictions on everyday basis in common people’s lives.
This problem is serious but sometimes offers comic moments as a defence against general absurdity and helplessness.
One of such examples is processing the text from Cosmopolitan.
The basic idea of this project is inspired by certain «Guide through fantasies», published in Cosmopolitan magazine in January,2004 which promisses «momentary pleasure» by following instructions for sexlife refreshment.
Superior author of the text tries to help by clear role division (Who are you?,Who is he?,
What he says?,What you say?,What do you do?,How everything ends?).
He/she thinks that helps to those who are not creative and fearless enough even for dealing with general questions in politics, economy etc. so how they can be capable of finding mature solutions of own sexsual frustrations? Or the other way around? Those who are not creative enough for their own imaginative intimate life, are they capable enough for independant dealing with socially important questions?
However, Cosmopolitan is here to help with instant recepes so life can be more alike cliche lives of heroines and heroes from soaps where they are always rich, beautiful, sexy and they get the best and the most of the life.
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Irène Tétaz (France)
Title: Il Nue (the nude), 2006
The ambiguity between male and female
« Il nue » est une vidéo qui se joue sur une ambiguïté homme-femme (d’où son titre).
Une peau, une peau avec poil….homme.
Une poitrine, mais poilue….homme ? femme ?
Une poitrine, qui petit à petit est nettoyée par du lait, qui, devient seins….le lait, symbole par excellence de la femme, mais de la pureté aussi ?
Une femme doit –elle être pure ?
Les seins, signe de la maternité, certes, mais aussi de l’envie, de la sexualité…..
« il nue » se propose comme un voyage sur ces questions.
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Risk Hazekamp (the Netherlands)
http://www.riskhazekamp.nl/
artist biography
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Title: Gay King
model: Mariëlle, duration: 3 min., year: 2005
“I try to re-formulate the question about ‘gender’ again and again through the use of images. For me there’s not one conclusion possible. It is much more interesting to stay surprised and to take that surprise as a starting point, in stead of trying to make a definition.
This film is an encounter between two (drag)kings and they happen to be gay. The film is also a little tribute to the most brilliant scene in Patricia Rozema’s “I’ve heard the mermaids singing”, where Polly tries to look around the edge of the monitor.â€
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Rahel Maher (Australia)
Title: Misstar
Year of Production: 2002, Length: 2 minutes, Format: Digital Video
In its simplest form, Misstar is film about a woman who dresses up as a man. This process appears to entirely change her identity but this film presents the question: what is her real identity? Perhaps people have many gender identities and it is about exploring ways to express them. MIsstar is a short documentary exploring personal identity and one person’s experiment with her own.
This film involves two characters: Lee and Misstar (Lee’s drag persona). Misstar has many characters but this film presents just one of them: Johnny Gash. On many Friday nights Lee performs as a singing man in a Drag King shows. It’s entertaining for the people who go to watch; often amusing, sometimes confronting. But for Lee it is about exploring and fulfilling an identity that she feels doesn’t always breathe easily in her life daily life. Dressing up in drag allows her to find expression for a personal urge that materialises as both a committed performer and a convincing male personality.
This film presents the relationship between Lee and Misstar as a transition in gender identity. It traces Lee’s process of dressing up as Johnny Gash and the actual preparation for performing in drag that night. So, we watch her dressing up physically and psyching up mentally to leave the private persona Lee for a while and become publicly recognisable Johnny Gash.
Lee’s insightful descriptions of her identity offer a great commentary to the visual representation of the physical process of transition. We catch a glimpse of the dreams and the tradition that motivated and inspired Lee to create Misstar. And ultimately we observe Lee revel in who she is and what she does.
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EILEEN BONNER (UK)
work title: I THOU
The dichotomy between boundaries and merging. The invisibility of myself alone becomes the ambiguity of us together: we are plain sight and yet unseen.
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Steven Dixon (Sweden)
Title: The Invisible Girl, 2004
Interview about the lesbian identity of a young girl
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Sinasi Günes (Turkey)
Work title: ANDROGEN, video 2004
This video art work shows transforming of a man and woman’s role each other.
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Michael Brynntrup (Germany)
Title: TV-X-perm. (Being Queer As A Commissioned Work)
My Gay Self-Portrait For Arte TV.
Being queer as a commissioned work.
Elastic Realityâ„¢ as program.
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Fred Koenig (France)
Title: The Vodoo Diva’s International
Playing with Gender, Love, Hope and a keen Desire to find where they
Belong, in a style that can only be described as falling between
Contemporary Conceptual High Art and Total Trash. These two
Internationally famous performance artists hope to do nothing more at
Playtime, than astound their audiences and live up to their reputation
with a special new creation made in Jo’burg inspired by the beauty of the
purple Jakaranda trees, titled :
The Voodoo Diva’s On the Barbecue
‘freedom’s just an other word for nothing left to lose’ -Janis Joplin “I
only wanted to see you bathing in the purple rain”- Prince
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Joey Hateley (UK)
Title: A: Gender, video excerpt from a DVD performance
A bold new performance, A:Gender delves deep into one of the last remaining taboos in our society. Boys can be girls. Girls can be boys. Men can be women. Women can be men. Or can they?
‘When I don’t fit ‘man’ and I don’t fit ‘woman’, it’s like all these holes start appearing…’
Conceived by the Manchester based queer performance artist, Joey Hateley, A:Gender takes a long, hard, and sometimes uncomfortable, look at our notions of gender. A:Gender daringly mixes up drag/queer photography, videography, performance poetry, academia and science to rip up our notions of gender and start again.
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Ane Lan (Norway)
Title: Ane Lan, video
The video and performance work conceived by Norwegian artist Ane Lan is based on living portraits, short performances that interpret the domestic and personal condition of History; the interior life of common men that, being out of proportion with the universal dimension, rests in painful resignation. The setting, alternately pop, naïf, ordinary, or looking like a doll-house, is only apparently ironic. The harsh contrast of colours signifies the extraneousness which Ane Lan stages by means of transvestitism. Her docile characters create portraits of silence, of extraneousness, of incongruity, but also of an icy political verdict. Innocence veined in melancholy is intended as a conscious return to a childish perception of the world.
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Carlo Sansolo (Brazil)
artist biography
Title: PANOPTICA
In his work “Panoptica”, the viewer takes to position of the hidden artist who is observing what is happening around in the living environment of the hired flat. Every day life scenes become relevant and are catapulted to the level of importance.
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Erika Frenkel (Brazil)
artist biography
Title: Cascadura Baby – 5:00 – 2004
A turbulent body, relativizing the difficulty on communicating and the function of the culture on the whole society.
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Jamil Yamani (Australia)
Title: All Quiet on the Western Front, 2005
This work explores the changing face of identity when one is exposed to a greater cultural hegemony, it is illustrated through the simplistic device of eating food. In the work on the left/east side I can be seen eating a traditional indian meal, salt is taken at the beginning of the meal and I begin to eat with only my right hand (my family are muslims), no drink is taken until the meal is finished. On the right/western side a napkin is laid on my lap and I commence my meal by swallowing a large amount of beer, halfway through the meal I burp quite loudly and once again near the end. On the table on the eastern side is placed a jar of olive oil, its counterpart on the west is a jar of salted preserved lemons, how can these two elements come together to harmoniously communicate? Can they ever? For most of the duration of the film, both myselves studiously ignore each other but every now and then their eyes meet or when one is engaged in their food, the other observes himself. I make no commentary or observations within this text, I merely present multiple facets of complex problems.
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. Ruben James Preston (UK)
artist biography
Remembering (4:40) (2005)
The piece addresses the issues of remembrance in the human consciousness, in particular how an inanimate material can be the vehicle for a very deep sense of remembrance, loss and change. In the work the simple item of a chair is raised to iconic level by the significance it holds in the character’s life. The chair is a symbol of much hope and aspiration as well as hard work toil and commitment. A commitment which came to an end as life needed to move forward. But the questions that hang in the air are where does the future lie when the leap of faith is made and where will new faith and hope be found when the traditional vessels have failed to supply the hopes, desires and security which were sought after. The chair as a piece of timber embodies something of these remembrances and points to the personal journey for meaning and purpose in the human quest. The piece presents us with the letting of in the ordained ministry in the search for creativity and self fulfilment.
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Welmo E. Romero Joseph
artist biography
Title of work : ½ POCILLO , video, 2003, 3:40
Production Team:
Welmo: MC (Lyric)
Sasha/”splice” Costanza Chock: Beat
Dj K-kemit: Scrachts
Actors/actress: Joanna, Gerardo Calderón, Lucia Castellano, Josias Tapia, Sonnel Velázquez: Photography Director
Leslie Colombani: Illumination Director
Hernand Cortés: Vtr
Angelo Alberti: Make-up
Raúl Marchand: Editor
Bang Post: Postproduction
Inés Mongil: Director
A Nonstop’s Production
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Calin Dan (Romania)
Title:
Sample City
10:00, 2003
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Jens Salander
Mikael Strömberg
Title of work: The Collossos by the Sea
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DANA LEVY
artist biography
Title:
“Time with Franzâ€, video, 2004, 11:00
Dana Levy met Franz during her stay in Austria. He invited her to his countryside home, inherited from his family. There, she discovered boxes of old family photos, Nazi swastikas. Being third generation of the Holocaust, she felt threat, anger, and fear. The movie reflects the way the artist tries to overcome her mixed emotions. The past slowly gives way to the present moment, and to the developing friendship with Franz, despite history. The music is by Die Linzer Philharmonic, conducted by artist Hannes Langeder. The orchestra players are all non professional. The result is an eerie out of tune classical music.
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Lital Dotan & Eyal Perry
artists biography
Embracement
10:00, 2004
The woman artist bandages herself, tightening thorns to her body. The scene is photographed by the male artist from two perspectives that represent an objective and a subjective point of view.
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Antonia Valero (Spain)
Title:
S/T (sin titulo)
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Gudrun Bittner (Spain/Austria)
Title of work: A Dark Glimpse on the White Gloved Mouse, video, 2004, 5:00
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Petra Lindholm (Sweden)
Title: Reported Missing, video, 2004, 10:00
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Ji-Hyun Kim (South Korea)
Title: “Wo-men, Wo-rld”, video, 2003, 2:40
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Andrea Ferrara, Fiorella Nicosia, Polytimi Patapi (Italy)
Title of work Spazio dell’Assenza
6:00, 2004
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Tan Chui Mui (Malaysia)
artist biography
Title of work: Hometown, video, 2003, 6:00
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Nita Mocanu (Romania)
Title:
Waiting Room
10:00, 2003
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Rafael Alcalá (Puerto Rico)
artist biography
Title of work: SMOKED, video, 2003, 3:00
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Nancy Atakan Turkey)
Titles of work: The wall
2:20, 2004
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More details available as PDF
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