Reality/Fiction: (Re)Constructing Representation: a film & video screening

Date/Time: 06/12/2003 12:00 am

Reality/Fiction: (Re)Constructing Representation: a film & video screening
Date: Saturday, December 6, 2003
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Place: Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, 161-04 Jamaica Avenue, Jamaica,
Queens. For directions, please call 718.658.7400 or visit
http://www.jcal.org/summary.asp?summary=13
Organized for Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning’s current exhibition
Reality/Fiction: (Re)Constructing Representation, a film and video program
is scheduled for this Saturday evening, December 6, at 5:00 p.m.
The screening presents media projects that question how identity is
constructed and perceived, while investigating a multitude of fantasies
inherent in the process of recognition. Using documentary tropes,
appropriation, found footage, and mixtures of fiction and reality, the works
in this program underscore the instabilities of identification, making it
clear that in the contemporary context, identity is formed through a complex
combination of circumstances, half-truths, aspirations, and projections.
Included in this program are works by Alex Hubbard, Jesal Kapadia, Lisa
Oppenheim, Lisl Ponger, Marc Robinson, Keith Sanborn, Corinna Schnitt, Moira
Tierney, and Silke Witzsch.
In Passages, Lisl Ponger presents stories of forced migrations before and
after World War II by combining found travel footage with voiceover accounts
of leaving and returning to one’s homeland. Lisa Oppenheim’s Lili on Air
engages with ideas of femininity and war, translation and myth as
experienced through the cinema and radio during World War II. Jesal
Kapadia’s The Space Between contemplates the immigrant experience of living
in two cultures at the same time, making reference to Bollywood musical
lyrics, many of which are translations from a book of poems titled “Love
Songs: In Praise of Krishna.”
In Silke Witzsch’s video, Passing – Crossing Over the Color Line, an
African-American woman attempts to pass as white while on the subway in New
York. Filmmaker Moira Tierney documents a demonstration by New York’s
Haitian Community protesting a year of mortal policing in Radio Haiti, which
simultaneously captures a community’s rage and a celebration of its culture.
Working primarily as a sculptor, Marc Robinson originally made his video I’m
the Man You Think You Are as part of an installation. On its own, the video
activates Robinson’s rendering of Malcolm X, revealing the how a mere
representation can produce the desire to identify, and the fragility and
temporality of that identification.
Keith Sanborn’s Operation Double Trouble uses military promotional media to
consider the complexity of personal politics in relation to the United
States military. Alex Hubbard’s Choose Your Sleigh: Re-edit appropriates a
recent television commercial for Hummer as a critique of the cultural
references that are conflated and commodified in the name of marketing. In
Living a Beautiful Life, Cologne-based filmmaker and artist Corinna Schnitt
presents the American ideal of happiness through the perspectives of a
good-looking forty-something couple who speak openly about the perfection of
their beautiful and harmonious lives.
This film and video program is organized by Sara Reisman.
Reality/Fiction: (Re)Constructing Representation is an exhibition that
explores issues of “real and unreal” through the lens of representation.
The exhibition presents works of art that deal with various modes and
fundamental problems of representation. Organized by Heng-Gil Han, JCAL’s
Curator of Visual Arts, Reality/Fiction includes an exhibition, a series of
performances inspired by the urban experience, film and video screenings,
book-readings, and a forum. Reality/Fiction will be on view in JCAL’s
gallery at 161-04 Jamaica Avenue, Jamaica, New York, from October 25, 2003
through January 17, 2004.