OFFoff-ON: Amarger / Iimura / Lootens / Abdul-Hamid / Rosefeldt / Calvo / Raetz / Alhamwy / Lizène

Colorful cir­cles out­lined by black lines sepa­ra­te from each other and come back together again, under­sco­red by evo­ca­ti­ve sounds refer­ring to the horo­sco­pe and to sexuality.

The ear­ly sixteenth-cen­tu­ry Japanese gar­den in the Zen tem­ple of Ryoan-ji, in Kyoto, is con­si­de­red a mas­ter­pie­ce of the kare­sansui or ​“dry lands­ca­pe” sty­le. This film, a col­la­bo­ra­ti­on bet­ween archi­tect Arata Isozaki and avant-gar­de film­ma­ker Taka Iimura, invi­tes the vie­wer to expe­rien­ce the gar­den as an embo­di­ment of ma, a Japanese con­cept that con­veys both time and space.

The videos of Gwendolyn Lootens are emo­ti­o­nal­ly and psy­cho­lo­gi­cally evo­ca­ti­ve, des­pi­te their appa­rent abstrac­ti­on. Zooming in onto a small gestu­re, a move­ment or an object, the artist libe­ra­tes a spa­ce of asso­ci­a­ti­ons and con­nec­ti­ons, both sim­ple and essen­ti­al. By focu­sing on see­min­gly random phe­no­me­na, her videos invi­te for a trans­for­ma­ti­ve visi­on, in which no thing beco­mes a thing, and a thing beco­mes no thing.

The film­ma­ker’s first short film with the National Film Organization, pro­du­ced after his return to Syria from the Soviet Union, Our Hands is a com­pel­ling visu­al essay on labo­ring, gestu­ring hands.

Short film ver­si­on of a nine-screen film instal­la­ti­on, in which Rosefeldt sets up a visu­al­ly opu­lent and high­ly sty­li­sed the­a­tri­cal envi­ron­ment in order to exa­mi­ne and decon­struct the ste­reo­ty­pes asso­ci­a­ted with immi­grant citi­zens and the idea of ​‘the other’. The work deals with nine dif­fe­rent eth­nic groups or nati­o­na­li­ties, inclu­ding Chinese, Vietnamese, Turkish, Kosovan-Albanian and Afghan. A hund­red and twen­ty ​‘per­for­mers’, many of whom are immi­grants living in asylum see­k­ers’ hos­tels, liter­al­ly ​‘act out’ their exis­ten­ce as foreig­ners by repe­a­ted­ly exe­cu­ting typi­cal, cli­ché-rid­den jobs in exu­be­rant set­tings. The hyp­no­ti­cally slow moti­on of the came­ra, its pen­du­lum-like move­ment within the pic­tu­re fra­me, emp­ha­sises the ritu­a­lis­tic and non­sen­si­cal aspect of the tas­ks being per­for­med. Always port­ray­ed as homo­ge­neous groups, the per­for­mers are strip­ped of their indi­vi­du­a­li­ty. Far from adop­ting a docu­men­ta­ry appro­ach, the artist has con­struc­ted sub­jec­ti­ve and tightly con­trol­led com­po­si­ti­ons — tableaux vivants, at times remi­nis­cent of tra­di­ti­o­nal fine art, at others playing on pure kitsch.

The Argentinian video and per­for­man­ce artist Eugena Calvo pro­du­ces film work with the sim­pli­ci­ty and ori­gi­na­li­ty of magic tricks, with the humor of play­ful traps, or as parts of a domestic sys­tem that is fal­ling apart into pie­ces. They all inci­te the public to feel, whe­ther in their homes or out­si­de, by day or by night, that the silen­ce of an order­ly room can sud­den­ly be lost and trans­form itself into a site of confusion.

The Swiss artist Markus Raetz pro­du­ced in the spring of 1971 an ani­ma­ti­on film based on 1525 dra­wings. This work remai­ned unknown to the public for many years, and was only recent­ly relea­sed as an artist edi­ti­on. The film reveals the sen­se of won­der, which charac­te­ri­zes the work of the Swiss mas­ter, nota­bly the poten­ti­al of eve­ry object to trans­form itself into ano­ther object and even into a being, or a word… ​“eben”, a German word which is qui­te untrans­la­ta­ble, mea­ning some­thing like ​“just”, ​“sim­ply”, ​“indeed”, but also ​“pla­ne”, ​“flat”.

Based on the pre­ca­rious rea­li­ty of living in Syria today, Shalan Alhamwy’s video work exhi­bits a sur­pri­sing sen­se of wit and inven­ti­ve­ness. Being pri­ma­ri­ly a musi­cian and a com­po­ser, the­se videos are based on musi­cal pie­ces of his own hand. By means of ani­ma­ti­on, as well as digi­tal video com­po­si­ting, he cre­a­tes powerful audio­vi­su­al gestu­res invi­ting for a trans­for­ma­ti­on of the rea­li­ty of a coun­try in war into the poe­tic world of possibilities.

The came­ra films an elec­tric plug which pro­vi­des the power for ligh­ting the sce­ne. After a whi­le, a hand enters the fra­me and dis­con­nects the plug. Black. A mes­sa­ge from the artist con­veys the tro­pe of an artis­tic gestu­re which depends on self-destruc­ti­on and slapstick.