Fannie Sosa
I Need This In My Life, 2016


Presented by Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina

“This video is a cristalisation of several threads that have been going around in my life for a while. The threads are: the healing and evolutionary power of khunt orgasmic experiences, the blatant disregard of Black dance and song and their technologies as healing devices in scientific and epistemological racism, the amount of research and resources that go into weaponing these same technologies against the very people that first conceive them, this experience that I had a couple of years ago when I literally felt bass fill my womb and make it vibrate into orgasmic release… A lot. Around this time my friend Sho Mo told me about this vibrator called “the womanizer”. When I first experienced it I realized that it made so much sense to conceive a vibrational device that is round and hollow, in the image of the cervix, instead of designs like the “bullet” that reinstate phallic and warfare language even in clitoral stimulation. I had been lending it to all my friends and my roommate at the time left me a note saying “I need this in my life” after she experienced it. At that moment I had a bit of a revelation: we need this round, vibrational, healing technologies in our life, and sort of was able to channel all of what I had been thinking and knowing into this video.”

             Acclaimed scholar and multi-Award winner, Fannie Sosa, is an internationally applauded interdisciplinary artist, scholar and activist cued up to receive their doctorate degree in Gender and social science at Lille III University in 2019. Their Afrodiasporic & Indigenous descendance has informed their many years of research, performances and teachings. Sosa’s work focuses in developing pleasurable methodologies using vibrational & sonic therapy, movement practices to liberate the chore and transformational social justice centered publications. Sosa’s thought leadership has been featured in Dazed Magazine (UK, 2015), iD (UK,2014), Noisey (CO, 2015), Paper Magazine (USA, 2016), Style Like U (DE,2018), Berlin art link (DE, 2016), Schön Magazine (SP, 2018), Afropunk

(USA, 2018), The Fader (USA, 2015) & GalDem (UK, 2016) among many. Their texts have published in The 3D Additivist Cookbook (DE, 2016), “How to sleep faster” x Arcadia Missa (UK, 2016), and “Afropean Mimicry and Mockery in Theatre, Performance, and visual arts” Commissioned by Mousonturm (DE, 2018). Other texts by Fannie Sosa include “A White Institutions Guide For Welcoming Artists Of Color And Their Audiences”, “Pleasurable MOON Struation”, “The Origins Of Patriarchy” and “BioHack is Black”. Their performance work has been produced by Tate Modern, Matadero Madrid, and Wiener Festwochen. Sosa has collaborated with artists such as niv Acosta, Tabita Rezaire, Ana Pi, Poussy Draama, Bearcat, Spoek Mathambo & Kirikoo DEs. Sosa’s current artistic projects include BlackPower Naps, Pleasure Is Power, Consent Improvisation and screen writing a new television series. Through their social justice work, Sosa has provided professional development trainings and consultancy for Performance Space New York (USA), Mousonturm (DE) and Tate Modern (UK).

Theresa Traore Dahlberg
The Ambassadors wife, 2018. 


Presented by Bonniers Konsthall - Stockholm

 

Theresa Traore Dahlberg has attracted attention for her films which in poetic and subtle ways depict themes like power structures, colonialism, gender inequality and feminism. The film The Ambassador’s Wife (2017) follows the French ambassador’s wife in her comfortable everyday life in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. As the camera slowly sweeps across the embassy’s impressive garden, where workers are busy maintaining its splendor, it is implied that the ambassador’s wife dreamt of becoming a celebrated opera singer. As part of her daily routine she rehearses her repertoire, well aware that she will never perform for a significant audience as her residence allowance prohibits her from working, making a singer career no longer possible. The film conveys the feeling of the ambassador’s wife being trapped in her privileged life and that singing is a way to endure and to hold on to her dreams. This beautiful and subtle portrait manages to expose the dullness of a sumptuous being and the film’s sparse and precise monologue succeeds to reflect on the role of women. In her films Theresa Traore Dahlberg has the ability to tell multifaceted stories about people from different backgrounds. Often using humor but always with great respect for her protagonists. Her films are characterized by understated expressions, yet they manage to raise important universal topics.




Theresa Traore Dahlberg e(b. 1983) grew up on the Swedish island of Öland and in Burkina Faso. In 2017 she received a master’s degree in Fine Arts at The Royal Institute of Art in Sweden. Before that she studied film production at The New School in New York and at the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts.  Traore Dahlberg has in 2018 been exhibited at Zeller van Almsick, Austria and Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden. Her films Taxi Sister (2011) and Ouaga Girls (2017) have been screened at festivals all over the world and The Ambassador’s wife was screened at Toronto Film Festival 2018. The same film awarded Traore Dahlberg the Tempo Documentary Short Award. Most recently she is the winner of the Beckers Art Award 2019.

Jacopo Miliani
Deserto [Desert], 2017. 

Deserto [Desierto], Jacopo Miliani, 2017Presented by Galleria d´Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo GAMEC, Italy

The video Deserto reflects on the possibility of speaking about multiple and queer identities through the invention of a new language. Through only the movement of two hands and a voice over, the desert is evoked as the place where the sand never takes a precise shape. The desert is also a symbolic reference to two specific films: Teorema (1968) by Pier Paolo Pasolini and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) by Stephan Elliot.

The protagonists of these movies are ‘the Guest’ (a mysterious stranger with an fluid sexuality) and Bernadette (a transgender character), respectively, and both played by the same actor Terence Stamp. These films are the starting point for the text  created by the artist and narrated by a voiceover in Deserto, where real and fictional identities disappear, dismantling the existence of any fixed role.
 

Jacopo Miliani born in Florence, he lives and works in Milan. The work of Jacopo Miliani is based on an interdisciplinary research involving different practices such as video, installation, performance, collage, photography; Solo exhibitions include: Galeria Rosa Santos, Valencia (2018), Marselleria, Milano (2017), Matadero, Madrid (2017), Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2016), Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona (2016), ICA studio, London (2015), Biblioteca Nacional, Buenos Aires (2014), GAM, Turin (2013), EX3, Florence (2012) and the exhibitions at Studio Dabbeni in Lugano (2015 e 2010) and FRUTTA gallery in Rome (2012 e 2014). He realized several performances including: Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017), David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2016-2012), Fondazione Giuliani, Rome (2015), Museum of Dance, Stockholm (2014), CCSP, Sao Paulo (2014), ViaFarini/DOCVA, Milan (2014), MADRE,  Naples (2011).

Nguyễn Hải Yến
Summer siesta , 2017. 

Summer siesta [Siesta de verano], Nguyá»n Hải Yến, 2017Presented by Hanoi DocLab, Vietnam

In the midsummer of a tropical country, persons are taking their siesta, personas dream of time, nothing but the tranquility of time. It was inspired by my habit of visiting my uncle's grave on the highest spot of the pine forest where you can see moon in the day time and the sun looks bigger than ever before sunset. It's the transition space between dream and reality, between different reality, the reality of persona who’s gone and persona who stays. It's a completely private space where you are not bothered by anything except for the sound of cicadas and memories. The film also reflects the different possibilities of existence.


Red (aka Nguyen Hai Yen, Viet Nam) plays with (sign) language(s), water, mirror and emptyness and sees herself as Borges' Funes the memorious after being thrown by a half-tamed horse and becoming physically paralysed decided to reduce each of his past days to some seventy thousand memories. She started practising moving image at Hanoi Doclab since 2015 and has made few short films including Homeless (2016), Water dreams (2016) and her latest one Summer siesta: 6th hour counting from dawn (2017) (produced within Hanoi DocLab’s film and photography serie project Realities instructed and curated by Jamie Maxtone-Graham). Her films were screened at such programs as Quest Festival, Hanoi Docfest 2017, Cold Call Film Festival (February, 2018). “Water Dreams" has won first prize for Quest x Doclab Short Film Competition. “Summer siesta: 6th hour counting from dawn” was exhibited at Fundacion PROA (Buenos Aires, Argentina) following the program of Artists Film International 2019 (nominated by Hanoi DocLab) from Feb 1 - March 3. She just finished her residency at Á Space in June 2019.

Senem Gokçe Ogultekin
DUN (Home), 2018. 

DUN (Home) [DUN (Casa)], Senem Gökçe OÄultekin, 2018Presented by Istanbul Modern, Istambul, Turkey.

Senem Gökçe Oğultekin’s video “Dun (Home)” is set among the ruins of the city of Ani, now located in the province of Kars in eastern Turkey. An important cultural hub in the 10th and 11th centuries, the city’s remains now overlook the Akhurian/Arpaçay River which creates a natural border between Turkey and Armenia. Setting this landscape as its backdrop and taking its name from the Armenian word for “home”, the video develops around dynamics such as the body, women, gender, roots, and borders. In the video we see two look-alike women, one from Turkey played by the artist herself, and the other from Armenia. The video displays their encounter, the conflict between them, and the unison they eventually achieve, first through their bodies, and then their souls. Centering on the female body’s connection to her habitat, the video visualizes the symbolization of opposition, which it develops through two individuals who obstinately butt heads, while the narrative woven around the rhythm of difference evolves toward “similarity”.





 Born in 1982 in Izmir, Senem Gökçe Oğultekin is a choreographer and performance and video artist. Oğultekin first started dance at the Istanbul State Opera and Ballet, then went to the Institute of Contemporary Dance at the Folkwang University of Arts in Essen, from where she graduated in 2005. The artist has worked with choreographers such as Pina Bausch, Va Wölfl, Meg Stuart, Laurent Chétouane, Mara Tsironi, and many more. Having worked with avantgarde dance companies, Oğultekin has also taken part as a dancer, singer, and performer in various events at theaters such as the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, the Kaaitheater in Brussels, and Pact Zollverein in Essen. She has participated with her performances in festivals such as the Venice Biennale, Tanzplattform Deutschland, the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, and the Rencontres Chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint Denis. In the videos she has been creating since 2016, Oğultekin has been focusing on body exploration, sound, and improvisation.

 

Mwangi Hutter
Eastleigh Crossing, Mwangi Hutter, 2009.

Eastleigh Crossing [Cruce de Eastleigh], Mwangi Hutter, 2009
Presented by Neuer Berliner Kunstverein Video-Forum, Berlin, Germany

Eastleigh Crossing, 2009, is somewhat reminiscent of that earlier work. Filmed in the flooded streets of Nairobi, in a part of the town mainly inhabited by Somalian refugees, Ingrid Mwangi is seen trudging trough muddy water. In what Mwangi Hutter calls a „Guerilla Action“, she breaks with the conventions of social conduct and confronts the public with irrational behavior. The crowd of spectators tries its best to move out of the way and the viewer of the video is reminded of the priviledged perspective he/she assumes in keeping a save distance from a screaming, water-soaken mess.

Since 2005, Ingrid Mwangi (*1975 in Nairobi/Kenya) and Robert Hutter (*1970 in Ludwigshafen/Germany) started signing their works as the collective individual Mwangi Hutter, thereby resolving both their identities as artists. Mwangi Hutter’s work blends exploration of cultural heritage with questions of gender roles. Being a former student of video pioneer Ulrike Rosenbach, Ingrid Mwangi concerned herself with the reflection of cliched gender roles in early works. Wildlife, 1999, presents the artist as a caged animal, thereby exaggerating an image of the exotic otherness of the feminine.