Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Tuesday, January 31 at 7pm for a screening of Ana Vaz’s The Age of Stone (2013), Oraib Toukan’s Palace of the Slave (2017), Deimantas Narkevičius’s Europa 54 54′-25 19′ (1997), and Martha Rosler’s Chile on the Road to NAFTA (1997), followed by an in-person discussion with Deimantas Narkevičius and Martha Rosler.
The screening constitutes the third event of “Landscapes To Be Deciphered,” the second chapter of the four-part series Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art taking place at e-flux Screening Room in monthly chapters between December 2022 and March 2023. Read more on the series here.
Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art is produced and organized by e-flux; with the support of the German Film Office, an initiative of the Goethe-Institut and German Films. e-flux would like to thank the Lithuanian Cultural Institute and Gražina Michnevičiutė, Lithuanian Cultural attaché in New York, for their additional support in organizing this screening.
Films
Ana Vaz, The Age of Stone (2013, 29 minutes)
“Brasília is artificial, as artificial as the world must have been when it was created.” (Clarice Lispector)
A voyage into the far west of Brazil leads us to a monumental structure—petrified at the center of the savannah. Inspired by the epic construction of the city of Brasília, the film uses this history to imagine it otherwise. Through the reading of geological traces, the film unearths a history of exploration, prophecy, and myth that encourages us to rethink the dangers of constructing the future. A journey into unknown territory in Brazil leads us to discover a monumental structure and immerses us in the forms and texture of stone. This film, inspired by the construction of the country’s modern capital, is a science-fiction documentary, an astonishing object standing between the cinema of Glauber Rocha and the visual arts. A visionary vertigo that will take your breath. (Visions du Réel, 2014)
Oraib Toukan, Palace of the Slave (2017, 9 minutes)
Palace of the Slave departs from the open mouth of a sculpted lion and a cub’s gaze. It takes a Hellenic ruin in Jordan to compare pixel to strata and to analyze the mechanics of gazing at the digital representation of ruin, via historical record.
Deimantas Narkevičius, Europa 54 54′-25 19′ (1997, 8 minutes)
”One Friday morning I got the urge to go and see the center of Europe.” (Deimantas Narkevičius)
Martha Rosler, Chile on the Road to NAFTA (1997, 10 minutes)
The low hills fronting the main California road artery of Highway 5 exhibit a beautiful spectrum-like pattern of stripes formed by the fields of flowers being grown there for commercial sale. The camera zooms in from a paused vehicle across the highway, revealing workers, many of them very likely to be undocumented, stooping in the fields—but barely noticeable to cars flying past at highway speed. Later, in a run up Highway 5, the immigration police at their mobile roadblock pass by in a flash, as does a mobile Bank of America banking facility, roadside hitchhikers, and people riding horses. The road trip ends among the palm trees and glowing sunset of a Southern California night.
For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.
