The Glasgow School of Art

Wed Night Open Forum: Film screening
Extraction: Projection
5-6.30pm, 13 March 2013, Mackintosh Lecture Theatre 

The film screening is programmed around the theme of extraction and comments specifically on the continued mining of natural and human resources. It will start with films by Harun Farocki and Stefanos Tsivopoulos that reflect on the mining industries of Bolivia and Spain respectively; and will follow with a programme curated by José Roca from Colombia called 'Exploration, Extraction and Market'.

The film screening represents an excerpt of Extraction: Projection, a programme of projected image work conceived originally for The Penzance Convention. The Penzance Convention was a three-day conference, hosted at The Exchange in May 2012, which reflected on the theme of extraction, with reference both to the social and environmental narratives of Cornwall's extractive industries - mining and fishing in particular - and to the processes by which artists draw meaning from history and site. (For more information on the Extraction: Projection programme please see http://www.thepenzanceconvention.com/extraction-projection.)

PROGRAMME

Part 1:

Harun Farocki,The Silver and The Cross,2010, Video, colour, sound, 17'
Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Amnesialand, 2010, Super 16mm transferred to Bluray, 23'

Part 2:

Exploration, Extraction and Market
A programme of projected image work curated by José Roca.
Total running time: 51'38"

Vasco Araujo, O Jardim. (The Garden), 2005, DVD, colour, sound, 9'44"

Sanna Kannisto, Bee Studies: Orchid Bee Males, 2004, DVD, colour, sound, 8'06"

Alberto Baraya, Río(River), 2005, DVD, colour, sound, 1'50"

Alberto Baraya, Palma(Palm), 2009, DVD, colour, sound, 5'

Miguel Ángel Rojas, Economías intervenidas (Intervened Economies), 2012, DVD, colour, sound, 7'

Jonathan Harker, Awaman: Manawa Nicarawa, 2010, digital animation, sound, 3'15"

Superflex, Guaraná Power commercials, 2004, DVD, colour, sound, 11'15"

Javier & Erika, Haciendo mercado (Doing Market), 2007, DVD, colour, sound, 3'10

Donna Conlon/Jonathan Harker, Drinking Song, 2011, DVD, colour, sound, 1'58"

About the films:

'The Silver and the Cross' - Harun Farocki

The Silver and The Cross (2010) by Harun Farocki was commissioned for the exhibition The Potosí Principle at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2010/11.

'At the beginning of the 17th Century, Potosí was one of the largest cities in the world - comparable to London or Paris. During the Spanish colonial rule, enormous quantities of silver were shipped from Potosí to Europe, giving the early capitalist system a tremendous push, and initiating the start of the modern era.
'During the Counter-Reformation, this dynamic triggered a mass production of images, not only in Spain, but also in the Viceroyalty of Peru. The exhibition The Potosí Principle traces the circulation of money and art, which developed during that period.'

Harun Farocki's film reflects on the history of Potosí through a detailed examination of a Baroque painting that depicts the Cerro Rico (the 'rich mountain') on which the town's fortunes were founded.

Harun Farocki Biography 

1944 born in Nový Jicin (Neutitschein), in the then German-annexed Czechoslovakia. 1966-1968 studied at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (West). 1966 to Ursula Lefkes. 1968 birth of daughters Annabel Lee und Larissa Lu. 1974 - 1984 author and editor of the journal Filmkritik in Munich. 1998 - 1999 Speaking about Godard / Von Godard sprechen, New York / Berlin (with Kaja Silverman). 1993-1999 visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. 2001 to Antje Ehmann. Since 1966 over 100 productions for television or the cinema: children's television, documentary films, film essays, story films. Since 1996 numerous group and solo exhibitions in museums and galleries. 2007 at documenta 12 with Deep Play. Since 2004 guest professor, from 2006 to 2011 full professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. 

'Amnesialand' - Stefanos Tsivopoulos

Amnesialand, 2010, Super 16mm transferred to Bluray, 23 minutes duration.

Stefanos Tsivopoulos's film Amnesialand (2010), commissioned for Manifesta 8 (in Murcia, Spain), is composed of archival material from different sources and Tsivopoulos's own video footage shot in the vicinity of Cartagena in southern Spain. It is accompanied by a script combining fictional and factual information in the form of a dialogue between a female and a male character, who speculate about a mysterious event that is said to have caused a state of collective amnesia: 'Rich in minerals and close to the shores of North Africa, Cartagena was once the region's main resource and trading port. For 2500 years, Phoenicians, Romans, Carthagineans and Spaniards have been mining in this district for silver, lead, zinc, copper, tin, iron, and manganese. This activity reached its height during the industrial era, when in 1840 mineral fever hit the region and produced a booming bourgeoisie, still visible in some of the city's decadent buildings. In the 1980s productivity came to an end, but the ongoing exploitation of natural resources and human labour had taken its toll. As a consequence of the long-lasting mining activities, the mountainous landscapes in the region known as La Unión are transformed: numerous spoil piles and pits extend for many kilometres, leaving a deserted and almost forgotten cratered landscape full of toxic mining waste - an archaeology of mines, and a living memorial to the natural catastrophe that took place here.' Eva Scharrer, 'Recalling the archive - on Amnesialand by Stefanos Tsivopoulos' 2010

Stefanos Tsivopoulos Biography

Stefanos Tsivopoulos' artistic oeuvre encompasses films, photographs and performances. His work is based on a process of layered narratives that involve long periods of research on-site and archival findings. In Tsivopoulos' art, the starting point of a work is always a social or political event and its impact on the collective memory. Tsivopoulos' work prompts the viewer to contemplate how historical events are recorded, remembered and perceived. He exploits the grammar of cinema to investigate the mechanisms of construction of history in a subtle interplay within the present and contemporary society.
Stefanos Tsivopoulos is based in Amsterdam and works between Amsterdam, Athens and New York. He has participated in international art-residency programs including Rijksakademie van beeldenden kunst Amsterdam, Netherlands; Platform Garanti Istanbul, Turkey; IASPIS Stockholm, Sweden; and ISCP New York, USA.

He was shortlisted for the 4th edition of DESTE Foundation Prize for Contemporary Greek Art, and the 7th edition of the "Future of Europe Award" Leipzig. He is the recipient of the Golden Cube Award for best video installation at the 25th Kasseler Documentary Film Festival in Kassel, Germany. Recent solo shows include :The Blind Image, ISCP New York, USA; Amnesialand, Heidelberg Kunstverrein, Germany; The Real The Story The Storyteller Smart Project Space Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Lost Monument, Art Forum Berlin, Germany.

His work has been further shown in group shows such as The Rest is History, Manifesta 8 Murcia, Spain; On Morality-Act III, Witte de With Rotterdam, the Nethrlands; One Giant Leap, BFI Southbank London, UK; Suspended Spaces, Centre Pompidou Paris, France; Practicing Memory, Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, Italy; Monitoring, Friedericianum Kunstverein Kassel, Germany; Reading the City, ev+a Biennial Limerick, Ireland; Murmuring Images, Centre Photographique d'Isle Paris, France; Destroy Athens, 1st Athens Biennial, Greece.