Marianna Christofides: exercises in becoming uncertain

Marianna Christofides, from: Days In Between, 2015, 16mm essay film, 40’, color & b/w. Image: Marianna Christofides / VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2022.

In her work, Marianna CHRISTOFIDES addresses juxtapositions of geological and sociohistorical narratives; she is concerned with the (mis)use of the concept of nature as justification for determinist mindsets that attempt to obscure the contingent character of things. The presentation at mumok cinema will include two works that reveal the manifold practice of the artist with film, writing, and research, followed by the launch of the book Days In Between, together with theorist Brenda HOLLWEG and curator Andrei SICLODI.

In the exploratory film reading exercises in becoming uncertain, Christofides reflects on multiple beginnings traversed to inhabit for a while the trails of ruptures that leave behind little but bruised life worlds. Drawn to those who fight in the wake of catastrophes like those in Fukushima or Minamata, where natural and man-made forces get tangled, Christofides’s camera and narrative performance take us to Japan and address a multitude of embodied ecologies of knowledge.

The essay film Days In Between reflects the artist’s engagement with border zones and topographies of violence and violation. In a nuanced choreography of audio-visual recalibrations, the work looks at postindustrial landscapes and stereotyped ascriptions of “the Balkans.” The disjunctive ethos of the essay film and its interstitial practice of thinking give voice to the neglected or unthought in thought, the unform in form, providing viewers in aesthetic-affective and, hence, also political ways with possibilities and hope in uncertain times.

This event is a cooperation with mumok cinema, Wien.

 

Program

Marianna Christofides,
exercises in becoming uncertain, 2022, exploratory film reading (live), 35 min
Days In Between, 2015, 40 min

Presented by Marianna Christofides together with Andrei Siclodi, followed by a conversation with Brenda Hollweg (in English)

Marianna CHRISTOFIDES is an artist working primarily in moving image and text. In her artistic research practice, imprints of slow violence are negotiated in long-term observations and in a material engagement with the spaces under study. Christofides was Büchsenhausen Fellow in 2017-18.

Brenda HOLLWEG (University of Leeds, UK) is a film, art, and cultural theorist. A scholar of the essay as literary and expanded cultural form, she has worked on research collaborations that addressed questions of gender and affective dimensions of democratic participation. In 2019 she copublished World Cinema and the Essay Film (EUP). Hollweg is co-editor of the book Days In Between (Hatje Cantz, 2021).

Andrei SICLODI (*1972 in Bucharest) is a curator, writer, editor and cultural worker whose theoretical research focuses on forms of critical-emancipatory knowledge production in art. He is director of Künstler:innenhaus Büchsenhausen in Innsbruck and founding director of the Fellowship Program for Art and Theory which takes place there. He is also editor of the publication series „BÜCHS‘N’BOOKS – Art and Knowledge Production in Context“ and producer of the monthly radio broadcast „Büchs’n’Radio“ on Radio Freirad.

Location

mumok
museum moderner kunst stiftung wien
Museumsplatz 1
1070 Wien