09 September, 2017
Mehringplatz/ Impact Hub, Berlin
Video and film screening with works by Josefin Arnell, Oreet Ashery, Feiko Beckers, Ashley Holmes, Stephanie Kang, Dafna Maimon, and Emma van der Put in the framework of Whenever The Heart Skips A Beat festival.On living together in the world. On community, clashing, curiousness and curiosities.
Josefin Arnell (*1984 in Ljusnedal, SE, lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin)
Mental hunt / Running, 2016, HD Video, 01:38 min. (loop)
In Mental hunt / Running the artist runs through a thick overgrown forest, you can hear her heavy breathing, she looks back, seemingly on the run – but what for? Including video work, installations and performances, for example as part of the artist duo HellFun, Josefin Arnell’s praxis navigates between “exuberance and exploitation”.
Oreet Ashery (*1966 in Jerusalem, IL, lives and works in London)
Marcus Fisher’s Wake, 2000, Single Channel Video, 16:00 min.
Marcus Fisher is Oreet Ashery’s alter ego: an orthodox Jewish man, whose fictionalized life is told in the film Marcus Fisher’s Wake through interventions, public performances and home videos.
Oreet Ashery’s artistic work includes eccentric costumes, photography, video and live situations, in which the artist concerns herself with community, subjectivity and social as well as gender identity.
Feiko Beckers (*1983 in Witmarsum, NL, lives and works in Brussels)
The Inevitable Others, 2016, HD Video, 08:19 min.
On what looks like the set of a talk-show Feiko Beckers greets guest after guest, yet none of them will have their say. Instead Beckers tells the viewer of situations in which he wanted to be alone and avoid any contact with others, but failed. The video and performance work of the artist often begin with a question. From this question, reflections on the dynamics of everyday situations, relationships and other personal stories about feeling ashamed, miscommunication and awkwardness come forth.
Ashley Holmes (*1990 in Luton, UK, lives and works in Sheffield, UK)
Where Yuh Deh From, 2017, reworked found video material, 03:40 min. (loop)
“Weh Yuh Deh?” is Jamaican dialect for “Where are you?”. In Ashley Holmes’ video Donald Duck persistently asks his doppelganger: “Where are you from? But where are you really from? No, where were you born?”, without receiving an answer. Where Yuh Deh From is part of the project Dot Dot Dit Dit Dot Dot Dash, in which Holmes concerns himself with stories of British Black (Pop) Culture.
Stephanie Kang (*1991 in Chicago, lives and works in Chicago)
잠지 주먹밥 (Tuna Rice Balls), 2013, Single Channel Video, 03:32 min.
In a seemingly how-to video shot in YouTube aesthetic, Stephanie Kang, shows us how to make Tuna Rice Balls while skillfully playing with the stereotype of the cutesy Asian female. Digital platforms and internet culture are being examined by the artist for their potential to form personal and collective identities.
Dafna Maimon (*1982, lives and works in Berlin)
Orient Express, 2014, Single Channel Video, 06:32 min.
In 1985 the first kebab restaurant opened in Helsinki. Dafna Maimon’s father produced a commercial for the snack bar in which his own family stars. The video and performance artist takes this clip as a starting point, adds subtitles, dissects and analyses the original material. Through this method she looks at her own Israeli-Finnish origin and asks questions concerning migration, culturally conditioned symbols and the function of memory.
Emma van der Put (*1988 in s‘-Hertogenbosch, NL, lives and works in Brussels)
WTC, 2016, Single Channel Video, 07:34 min (loop)
Emma van der Put uses public spaces as Ready-Mades in her work. Over the course of six months she filmed, from the World Trade Center in Brussels, the neighboring quarter Noordwijk, which since the 1960’s is left fallow and is now home to a refugee camp. With an empathic, yet distant view, she catches the tension which arises when expectations of the past and the future meet in the reality of the present.
