Date: 03.09.2024 — 11.09.2024
Beginning: 19:00
The screening selection is dedicated to the storytelling of human narratives through animal actors. Current social and systemic issues are reflected through surreal scenes where ostriches chat about sleep deprivation, a family of moles is trying to focus on endless counting, and where lizards are calling for social justice. The selected works thematize the issue of stereotypical portrayal of animal characters and ask about the limits of anthropomorphization – what would a world look like if animals behaved the same as humans?
Curator: Nela Klajbanová
Essay: Štěpánka Zapata
Graphic design: Nela Klímová
Translation and timing of subtitles: Markéta Effenbergerová
Production: Sára Märc, Ida Tausch
Basim Magdy: New Acid, 2019, 14’17’’
Several animals chat via text messages. Between their mundane exchanges of words, conflict and rivalry emerge. Their mirrored physical appearance hints to entrapment inside a reality T.V. show. Is tradition an alter ego of racism? What about nostalgia and nationalism? Have they finally become human?
Diego Marcon: Dolle, 2023, 29’32’’
Marcon’s latest film, Dolle, finds its settings in the underground burrow-home of a family of moles. Father and Mother mole appear amidst reams of paper, together attempting to calculate a series of sums that continuously seem to elude resolution. This repeated painstaking process unfolds to the sounds of coughs and struggled wheezes from one of their infant moles in another room, which grow intermittently stifled. At these moments, the parents pause in strained suspense, before returning to their sums – occasionally punctuated by sinister thuds, cries and trampling of other animals outside the burrow.
Meriem Bennani & Orian Barki: 2 Lizards, 2020, 23’02’’ (8 episodes)
2 Lizards, a film by artists Meriem Bennani (b. 1988, Rabat, Morocco; lives and works in New York, NY) and Orian Barki (b. 1985, Israel; lives and works in New York, NY), depicts a surrealist view of the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic as it unfolded in New York City. In the film, two animated anthropomorphized lizards serve as protagonists, moving through a city gripped by a pandemic, extended isolation, and cries for social justice reform. It highlights the helplessness and uncertainty experienced by many at the time, as well as the unexpected moments of shared community and connection.
