Speculations on the Cultural Organisation of Civility: Film Programme

Speculations on the Cultural Organisation of Civility is a two-day symposium which seeks to connect current debates about care and citizenship in contemporary art, philosophy and politics to the realities of healthcare organisation in the Netherlands and internationally. The event is part of a series of symposia Agents, Actors and Attendants.

The accompanying Film Programme presents three film evenings, aiming at contextualising and reflecting on the themes and notions explored throughout the symposium. Through a comprehensive selection of artists’ films and documentaries, the Film Programme exemplifies and articulates the politics of resistance and participation in relation the idea of democracy and ideology.

On this occasion, SKOR joins forces with Schijnheilig, an Amsterdam based cultural collective involved in the claim of unused spaces for creative and political purposes. The venue therefore embodies the very idea of political struggle that is highlighted throughout the event. The bar will be open after each session to further the discussion.

Tuesday 12 October 8 pm – Theories on governance and neo-liberal politics:

– Encirclement: Neo-liberalism Ensnares Democracy
(2008) Québec, Canada, 160 min. dir. Richard Brouillette

Drawing upon the thinking and analyses of renowned intellectuals, this documentary sketches a portrait of neo-liberal ideology and examines the various mechanisms used to impose its dictates
throughout the world.
Neo-liberalism’s one-size-fits-all dogma are well known: deregulation, reducing the role of the State, privatisation, limiting inflation rather than unemployment, et in other words, depoliticising the economy and putting it into the hands of the financial class. And these dogmas are gradually settling into our consciousness because they’re being broadcast across a vast and pervasive network of propaganda.

The bar will be open after each session to further the discussion.

Tuesday 19 October 8 pm – Health-Care, society and activism

– Hospital (1970) USA, 84 min. dir. Frederick Wiseman

HOSPITAL shows the daily activities of a large urban hospital in late 1960’s New York with the emphasis on the emergency ward and outpatient clinics. The cases depicted illustrate how medical expertise, availability of resources, organisational considerations, and the nature of communication among the staff and patients affect the delivery of appropriate health care. This acclaimed documentary by Frederick Wiseman is an engaging work which echoes the current shift in healthcare policies in the USA.

Fast Trip, Long Drop (1993) USA, 53 min. Dir. Gregg Bordowitz.

In the spring of 1988, video-maker/activist Gregg Bordowitz tested HIV-antibody positive. He then quit drinking and taking drugs and came out to his parents as a gay man. This imaginative autobiographical documentary began as an inquiry into these events
and the cultural climate surrounding them. While writing the film, a
close friend was diagnosed with breast cancer and his grandparents
were killed in a car accident. The cumulative impact of these events
challenged his sense of identity, the way he understood his own
diagnosis, and the relationships between Illness and history.

The bar will be open after each session to further the discussion.

Tuesday 26 October 8 pm– Active citizenship, collective identity and resistance

– Dammi I Colori (2003) Albania, 16 min. dir. Anri Sala

Sala. Video projection with sound, 15:24 min. ©Anri Sala. Courtesy the artist; Johnen Galerie, Berlin; Marian Goodman Gallery, New
York; Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris and Hauser & Wirth.

When former artist Edi Rama became mayor of Tirana in 2000 he immediately set upon a controversial project to enliven the troubled Albanian capital by re-painting the city’s decaying buildings in a riotous array of colour and pattern. An aesthetic and political act, which prompted social transformation, and much debate, through it visualization of signs of change. Three years later Rama and the project became the subject of artist (and friend) Anri Sala’s film, Dammi I Colori. The next year, Rama was voted World Mayor 2004. Edi Rama will be giving a presentation at Felix Meritis on 29 October, as part of the related symposium.

– Get Rid of Yourself (2003), 61 min. dir. Bernadette Corporation

Courtesy: Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

Get Rid of Yourself is a video-film-tract addressed to those who anonymously embody the return of political activism within the Empire. While its initial sounds and images were filmed in Genoa, during the hyper-mediatised riots of the G8 counter-summit in 2001, they are pulled apart and recomposed in order to locate the intensity of a shared experience. Elaborating a complex and rhythmic form of address, the film declares its own exile from a biopolitical space-time where nothing ever happens. The crisis it announces is the sudden return of history without characters or a story, and of a politics without subjects.

– Shut the Fuck Up! (1985) USA, the Netherlands, 14 min. dir. General Idea
14 min. dir. General Idea, Video, 14’07. Distributed by: Netherlands
Media Art Institute, Amsterdam.

Shut The Fuck Up! deals with the media cliché of the artist. The (sometimes hilarious) fragments of TV programmes, documentaries and feature films that are featured in Shut The Fuck Up! create the impression that the media have little respect for ’the artist’ and that they ascribe to a set of preconceived ideas and stereotypes . These images are periodically interrupted by General Idea’s ’talking heads’ who spew forth artistic clichés. General Idea is a Canadian artist group formed in 1969 by AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal. AA Bronson will be giving a presentation during the related symposium at Felix Meritis on Friday 29 October.
The bar will be open after each session to further the discussion.

Schijnheilig
Passeerdersgracht 23
Amsterdam, Netherlands

SKOR, Foundation Art and Public Space
www.skor.nl