Online Film Screening
with works by Veronika Eberhart, Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Wendelien van Oldenborgh and Monika Uchiyama

This online event took place on 11.05.2022 at 7 pm CEST. The recording of the event, including all the films, is available to view via this link until 05.06.2022.

An online film screening about political histories, labour and resistance, featuring short films by Veronika Eberhart, Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Wendelien van Oldenborgh and Monika Uchiyama. This event forms part of the public programme for the current exhibition "Kristina Benjocki: At sunset we retreat once again, up the hill, to where we can watch the skeins of water reflect colours we’ve never seen before" at IKOB.

Focusing on textile production as a vehicle for re-examining dominant historical narratives, Kristina Benjocki's exhibition is a poetic interrogation of how textiles and the very practice of weaving intersect with technological progress, national histories, and the construction of cultural identity. The selection of films places a particular focus on the arising themes of labour and industry and the relationship between human bodies and machines. The works reflect on the changing nature of labour structures, suggesting that the transition to a capitalist, post-industrial economy is an ongoing struggle that continues to demand and provoke political resistance.

The screening includes a short introduction to Kristina Benjocki's exhibition, and is followed by a Q&A with the artists Kristina Benjocki, Veronika Eberhart, Wendelien van Oldenborgh and Monika Uchiyama.

FILM PROGRAMME:

Veronika Eberhart, 9 is 1 and 10 is none, 2017, Video, 22min
The resurrection of a closed-down wood workshop through performative interventions: In pantomime, dance-like choreographies, machines are put back in operation. Working processes are reproduced in their specific rhythms of movement. A mythical invocation of the past and an artistic reflection on femaleness in a capitalist society.

Monika Uchiyama, a new use, 2018, single-channel video, 24min
An observational documentary about a Tokyo family business that has made wax products for generations. Amidst the light banter and pleasant routines of a day’s work lie growing concerns about the family’s future.

Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, The Invisible Hand of My Father, Video, 2018, 24min
The film tells the story of the artist's father, a former car-factory manager in the Soviet Union turned migrant construction worker who lost his hand on a job in Portugal just as the financial crisis of 2009 was wreaking havoc all over the world. His lost hand is still somewhere out there, a rogue phantom limb, working invisibly.

Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Pertinho de Alphaville, 2010, slide projection with soundtrack, 20min
In this work the massive strikes in the São Paulo industries of the late 70's form a background for reflecting today's changing conditions of labour and the effect this has on the contemporary self. The film was made through encounters with a group of women working in a jeans factory near Alphaville São Paulo.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES:

Veronika Eberhart is a visual artist and musician based in Vienna. The use of media in her works is distinguished both by its high musicality and the negotiation of conceptual issues with the sensitivity of artistic practices of feminist positions and art history. She studied Sociology at the Universities of Vienna and Copenhagen and Fine Art at the Academy of Fine Arts. She has presented solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Graz (2022), New Jörg, Vienna (2019), Bazament Art Space, Tirana (2018), Neue Galerie Graz / Studio (2017) and has appeared in group exhibitions at The MAK Center, Los Angeles; Belvedere21, Vienna, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; and A-Gallery, Tokyo among others. veronikaeberhart.com

Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze (b. 1983 in Kutaissi, Georgia), lives and works in Berlin. He studied Fine Art at the State Academy of Arts in Tbilisi (2001–2007) and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague (2008–2010), as well as Experimental Film and Video with Hito Steyerl at the University of the Arts in Berlin (2012–2016). In his works, Gagoshidze considers issues such as the moving image, the political background of its production and distribution, and its socio-political significance. Read an interview with the artist about his film The Invisible Hand of My Father.

Wendelien van Oldenborgh (b. 1962) studied at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Exhibitions of her work have been staged at CA2M in Madrid, The Showroom in London, and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. In 2017 she represented the Netherlands at the 57th Venice Biennale. Van Oldenborgh won the 2014 Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art and the 2011 Hendrik Chabot Prize. wendelienvanoldenborgh.info

Monika Uchiyama is an artist from Tokyo working in documentary film and video. Her films have screened and exhibited at the Film at Lincoln Center in New York City, Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, and Goethe Institut China in Beijing. She received her BA from CUNY City College of New York and her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from the University of Pennsylvania. monikauchiyama.com