In this the final of three screenings presenting the 2018 Artist Film International Programme of Artist Moving Image focusing on the theme of truth, the following film’s creators are responding to reality through their use of found footage and collage approaches to filmmaking and storytelling.

Length of programme: 70 mins 21 seconds

First person shooter - 23 mins 20 s
Untitled (Briones North) - 8 mins 1 s
Ørjan Amundsen’s Life is Like - 3 mins 28 s
Le Xuan Tien’s Untitled - 15 mins 32 s
I’m Talking to You - 11 mins
Shadowland - 15 mins

(Programming assistant: Um Mohamed)

About the works:

1. Ballroom Marfa, Texas Selection - Jibade Khalil Huffman’s First Person Shooter (2016|23mins)

Is a layered audio-visual collage that illuminates issues of racial anxiety, digital overstimulation, and the ingenious nature of many cultural practices. The piece’s fragmented soundscape consisting of repurposed audio from African-American pop culture along with foley and canned effect, disorientates with fleeting moments of clarity. The dated videogame animation featured throughout the piece and often layered with video shot by the artist speaks to being understood by the world through predesigned archetypes. A combination of the outer space/industrial setting of much of the film, along with the inconclusive interruption of empty speech bubbles, frustrates and alienates in equal measure. While the poetic narrative throughout creates a layer that provides forward momentum while actively being opposed to meeting expectations. The piece overall revealing the disconcerting social truths that inform the black experience in North America and will leave you feeling uneasy, but captivated throughout.

What the artist says; “I’m driven by ideas, not any kind of ideology. I like working with media that already exist and exploding them with poetry. Leveling hierarchy is also important to me, both ethically and formally.”

2. Fundacion PRÓA, Buenos Aires, Argentina selection Juan Sorrentino’s Untitled (Briones North) (2015| 8 mins 11 secs) explores the visual language of nature, in this case Briones Regional Park in California, in this single channel video as we follow an unpainted canvas through a field of trees highlighting moments of natural beauty be it the shadows of leaves or a branch. Isolating them from these elements from their environment, allowing them to be fully appreciated for a while. As the artist leads us through this exploration, much of their body is concealed by the large canvas they are carrying, while the artist's legs is visible at times. As if to remind us of the role of the artist in focusing our attention without input, reminding us to question the role of others influence in how we experience the world.

What the artist says; “My work is based on inquisitive interactions with objects and materials through sound [...] The action is both simple and complex— infinitely changing.”

3. Tromsø Kunstforening, Tromsø, Norway selection - Ørjan Amundsen’s Life is Like (2015 | 3 mins 28 secs) is a fast-paced single channel collage of images drawn from the internet, television and cinema, highlighting the exciting and overwhelming nature of technology, both real and sci-fi, and existence. Ørjan Amundsen's artistic practice is characterised by the use of appropriation, re-editing and manipulation of pre-existing audiovisual, literary and musical material.

4. Hanoi DOCLAB, Hanoi, Vietnam selection - Le Xuan Tien’s Untitled.mp4 ( 2017 | 15 mins 32 secs) is a found footage film with material and videos appropriated from the Internet, exploring different scenarios that once occurred, are occurring or could possibly occur.The artist has sourced videos and images from the less visible edges of the internet, from collages of early internet images and gifs to archive footage of men in the countryside , construct a montage of sometimes disturbing and surreal scenarios that may or may not have taken place.

5. GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy selection - Elena Mazzi’s I’m Talking to You (2016-2018 | 11 mins)

Consists of a series of recordings that the artist filmed in the homes of people living in the Maunula neighbourhood in Helsinki. As these figures are being illuminated by their screens alone, we bear witness to their honest reactions to the news that they are consuming. The artist deliberately avoided any allusion to art and focused her research on the relation between people and what is commonly understood as our source of information: the media. By observing the subjects varying reaction we are given insight into how they react differently depending on their proximity to the stories being reported, raising the question is it human nature to center ourselves in such conversation and prioritise this over the truth.

What the artist says; “The territory is always the most important thing in my practice. The interest for a specific area, or for a specific culture comes from the reality I live and I experience. It’s a need I had since I was very young: understanding the places that I was visiting, and getting deeply into them.”

6. Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden selection - John Skoog’s Shadowland ( 2014 | 15 mins) interrogates transient truth of place making and how easily something can be manipulated to appear to be the only truth, not just in the film industry but also in politics and society. The conventional approach to filming reflects the linear narrative approach to storytelling characteristic of hollywood films, and the audio accompanying the images are a mixture of field recordings and dialogue fragments and music from the films produced at each place. Shot on 16mm black and white film the places the artist has chosen to portray in Shadowland are former shooting locations in the Hollywood film industry. The California landscape with its shifting topography has been the background to events that took place in Afghanistan, Tibet, the French Alps and the rivers of Alaska as well as fictional places such as Aladdin’s Cave and the Garden of Eden.

What the artist says; “The quick changes of the Californian topography really made a huge impression on me. Coming from northern Europe where one can travel a day and still being in more or less the same type of landscape, it was hard to take in a place that in a few hours could go from desert to snowy mountains to big, beautiful beaches.”

On Artist Film International:

Artist Film International (AFI) is a collaborative project of which Hanoi DocLab and 17 other international institutions are partners, initiated by the Whitechapel gallery in London in 2008. The 2018 series with the theme of TRUTH will showcase 17, and the 2019 series -- GENDER. The 2018 series include Hanoi DocLab's nominated work of Le Xuan Tien, while the 2019 series is with our nomination for Nguyen Hai Yen's film.

On "Around the World in 80 Days":

The 3-month long screening program focusing on artists films and moving image is within Hanoi DocLab's project "Young Moving Image Curators Program" supported by a British Council's Small Grant for the Arts and Creativity. 'Around the World' is also funded by Indochina Arts Partnership.