Documentary by the award-winning French director Gilles Coudert on the shooting of Kimsooja’s video "Bottari Truck / Migrateurs", which the Korean artist filmed in 2007 during a period as "artist in residence" at the MAC/VAL (Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne) in Vitry-sur-Seine near Paris. Interviews with the artist, as well as with her assistants, workers and security personnel, many of whom are themselves migrants, provide insight into the artist's artistic and social motives and intentions. Loaded on the truck is a veritable mountain of cloth bundles (bottaris) - historically charged and emblematic "trademarks" of Korea's (often involuntary) migrants -, in which pieces of clothing, bed linen, household utensils and books can be kept. The film depicts the artist sitting atop the pile of bottaris as the truck slowly makes its way through the Parisian suburbs and later through the narrow streets of the French capital itself. Gilles Coudert's documentary is being presented for the first time ever in Germany. 

 

2009, colour, 26’ (Loop)

Director: Gilles Coudert. Producer: a.p.r.e.s. production,  Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne.

 

Exhibition: October 10 - November 01 2009, Mon-Fri 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sat 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

  

“Staging Silence” is based around abstract, archetypal settings that lingered in the memory of the artist as the common denominator of the many similar public places he has experienced. The video images themselves are both ridiculous and serious, just like the eclectic mix of pictures in our minds. The decision to film in black and white heightens this ambiguity: the amateurish quality of the video invokes the legacy of slapstick, as well as the insidious suspense and latent derailment of film noir. The title refers to the staging of such dormant decors where, in the absence of people, the spectator can project himself as the lone protagonist. Memory images are disproportionate mixtures of concrete information and fantasies, and in this film they materialise before the spectator’s eyes through anonymous tinkering and improvising hands. Arms appear and disappear at random, manipulating banal objects, scale representations and artificial lighting into alienating yet recognizable locations. These places are no more or less than animated decors for possible stories, evocative visual propositions to the spectator.

 

B 2009, Full HD Video, transferred to Blu-Ray Disc, b&w, ca. 22’ (loop)

Director, DoP, Production design: Hans Op de Beeck. Assistent camera: Jasper Lutin. 
Assistent production design: Jasper Lutin, Bert Heytens, Cleo Jespers
. Sound: Serge Lacroix
. Production Management: Stijn Maes.

 

Opening: October 29 2009, 6 - 9 p.m.

Exhibition: October 30 - November 11 2009, Tues-Fri 10am-6.30pm, Sat 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

 

Sergio Vega (born in 1959 in Buenos Aires, lives and works in Gainsville, Florida) has been working since 1995 on a large project with the main title "El Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo", based on a theory of Antonio de Leon Pinelo from the 17^th century, according to which the Garden of Eden is to be found in South America. Using various media, Vega reinterprets Pinelo's depiction of paradise with a great deal of subtle humour. For example, the large-scale photographs "Paradise on Fire" show trees in the tropical rain forest; only at second glance do we see the wildfire. Or in the video "Parrot Theory 101", Vega takes a look at the iconology of parrots, which were seen in the 17^th century as birds of paradise. Both works are part of a complex, critical multi-media exploration of historical and contemporary methods of representation, in which the modus operandi of colonialist ideology in the development of culture and social circumstances is examined. Vega roguishly combines theory, empiricism and mordant criticism of power and society and finally creates, in art, a paradise in which sensory stimulus and critical discourse come together.

 

Sergio Vega, Eine multimediale Konfrontation mit dem Mythos des Paradieses.

 

Opening: October 29 2009, 6 - 10 p.m.

Exhibition: October 30 - November 07 2009, Tues-Fri 10 a.m. - 6.30 p.m., Sat 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

In cooperation with the KunstFilmBiennale Cologne 2009, the Heinz Bossert Gallery is presenting the group exhibition "time timeless" with film and video projects by the following international artists: Ute Klein (Munich), Alice Musiol (Cologne), Ana Opalic (Dubrovnik), Marietta Schwarz (Cologne), Clare Strand (Brighton), Harald V Uccello & Mai T Segura (Barcelona) und Helga Weihs (Cologne). For most of the participating artists, these film projects are an enhancement of their work as sculptors, painters or photographers. In spite of the uniqueness of each artistic approach, most of the films and videos have something in common: the search for personal contextualisation and identity. This can be expressed in attempts to reconstruct origins or in examinations of social contexts, in the observation of everyday but strange phenomena or in ironic and subtle interrogations of reality. All projects make it clear that they are not so much concerned with looking for a secure place in an ever-changing global society, but with the pursuit of a specific, sometimes private and occasionally rather unusual location for the self that emerges beyond all societal determination. 

 

Curator: Dr. Ann-Katrin Günzel

 

Opening: October 23 2009, 6 - 10 p.m.

Exhibition: October 28 - November 28 009, Tues-Sat 1-6 pm and by appointment