“A fierce and loving assessment of the social movements of the 1960s from the vantage point of the 1990s culture wars. The film features interviews with three of the most influential Black feminist intellectuals of our time: Angela Y. Davis, Alice Walker, and June Jordan. The trio asserts the centrality of Black women’s labor and the necessity of intersectional movements for the liberation of all people—past, present, and future.” —Leigh Raiford

A Place Of Rage (55 min., 1991) is shown in the context of The Work We Share, a film program of ten newly digitized films from the Cinenova collection. Produced between 1972 and 1994, the films address oppositional histories and questions of difference through the lenses of gender, race, sexuality, health, and community.

The Work We Share gathers a number of films that previously existed in precarious conditions, in some cases, with negatives being lost or distribution film prints being the only copy. This program intends to acknowledge Cinenova’s interdependency: from organization to filmmakers, cultural workers, communities, and individuals. How can we acknowledge our interdependent relationships? How can we recognize our place in a network of communications, relationships, and resources, particularly as an un-funded volunteer organization? What different strains of labor does our work rely on? How do we sustain this work mutually?

Cinenova is a volunteer-run charity preserving and distributing the work of feminist film and video makers. It was founded in 1991 following the merger of two feminist film and video distributors, Circles and Cinema of Women, each formed in 1979. Cinenova currently distributes over 300 titles that include artists’ moving image, experimental film, narrative feature films, documentary, and educational videos made from the 1910s to the early 2000s.

Pratibha Parmar (b. 1955, Kenya) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, video artist, and professor. Awarded The Visionary Award from the One in Ten Film Festival and the Frameline Film Festival Life Time Achievement Award, Pratibha is Writer/Director/Producer of over 16 documentaries. She is the author and editor of several groundbreaking books, notably The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 1970s Britain, and editor and publisher at Sheba Feminist Press, the first UK publisher of Audre Lorde. Pratibha was Visiting Artist at Stanford University, Theatre & Performance Studies Department (2013) and is currently an Associate Professor in the film department at California College of the Arts, San Francisco.

“A Question of Choice (18min., 1982) features a small group of low-paid women workers – two cleaners, a cook, a lollipop lady – and a male caretaker in a school in Walkley, Sheffield. The participants describe the limited employment choices available to women when family remains their first priority. While the work they do is hard and poorly paid, it does offer them flexibility, with hours that fit in with their family lives, as well as affording them close contact with the community and their children’s education. Beyond the work that they do in the school, these women run activities at a local community centre and organise events for children in the local area. Displaying some optimism about the way the women successfully organise community activities and support one another, the film raises particular questions that other women viewing the film might recognise in their own lives, with the aim of provoking discussion.” —Emma Hedditch

A Question of Choice is shown in the context of The Work We Share, a film program of ten newly digitized films from the Cinenova collection. Produced between 1972 and 1994, the films address oppositional histories and questions of difference through the lenses of gender, race, sexuality, health, and community.

The Work We Share gathers a number of films that previously existed in precarious conditions, in some cases, with negatives being lost or distribution film prints being the only copy. This program intends to acknowledge Cinenova’s interdependency: from organization to filmmakers, cultural workers, communities, and individuals. How can we acknowledge our interdependent relationships? How can we recognize our place in a network of communications, relationships, and resources, particularly as an un-funded volunteer organization? What different strains of labor does our work rely on? How do we sustain this work mutually?

Cinenova is a volunteer-run charity preserving and distributing the work of feminist film and video makers. It was founded in 1991 following the merger of two feminist film and video distributors, Circles and Cinema of Women, each formed in 1979. Cinenova currently distributes over 300 titles that include artists’ moving image, experimental film, narrative feature films, documentary, and educational videos made from the 1910s to the early 2000s.

Sheffield Film Co-op. In the early 1970s, the second women’s liberation movement was engaging in raising consciousness about issues women faced in their domestic and work lives. It was soon clear that there was a need to disseminate feminist ideas about the issues to a wider audience than those women already attending meetings. A small group of women with young children in Sheffield realized that film could be a powerful means of giving women the voice they did not have in the mainstream media. A Question of Choice was Sheffield Film Co-op’s fourth film, made in 1982 on 16mm with a crew of two and shown on projectors in community and adult education centers. With funding from Channel 4’s Independent Film and Video Department, SFC later went on to make films for broadcast and to help train new women filmmakers.

Scuola Senze Fine (School Without End; 37 min., 1983) was made in collaboration with students from the adult education 150 Hour Secondary School diploma course with whom Adriana Monti had been working for a year.

The 150 Hours Courses were an educational experiment implemented in Italy beginning in 1974, available to factory workers and farmers initially, and expanding to include women a couple of years later. The courses were non-vocational; they were not intended to improve one’s productivity at work, but rather to allow for personal and collective growth. The courses sought to help workers reflect not only upon their working conditions but also on their lives.

The film shows how the experiment extended into the lives of women taking the course, most of whom were housewives. The film was produced in collaboration with these students as part of their studies for the class, turning the curriculum’s questions about the representation of women into questions about the representation of themselves. After the group of former housewives had completed their 150-hour secondary school diploma course in 1976 they did not want to stop learning. With the help of their teacher, they formed a study and research group. Monti shot the film about them from 1979–1981, with the first half of it being made collectively by the group.

Scuola Senza Fine is shown in the context of The Work We Share, a film program of ten newly digitized films from the Cinenova collection. Produced between 1972 and 1994, the films address oppositional histories and questions of difference through the lenses of gender, race, sexuality, health, and community.

The Work We Share gathers a number of films that previously existed in precarious conditions, in some cases, with negatives being lost or distribution film prints being the only copy. This program intends to acknowledge Cinenova’s interdependency: from organization to filmmakers, cultural workers, communities, and individuals. How can we acknowledge our interdependent relationships? How can we recognize our place in a network of communications, relationships, and resources, particularly as an un-funded volunteer organization? What different strains of labor does our work rely on? How do we sustain this work mutually?

Cinenova is a volunteer-run charity preserving and distributing the work of feminist film and video makers. It was founded in 1991 following the merger of two feminist film and video distributors, Circles and Cinema of Women, each formed in 1979. Cinenova currently distributes over 300 titles that include artists’ moving image, experimental film, narrative feature films, documentary, and educational videos made from the 1910s to the early 2000s.

Adriana Monti (b. 1951, Italy) is an Italian-Canadian independent producer, feminist filmmaker, and author. She started her career in Italy in the late 1970s by developing a collaborative and experimental style that allowed the women who were the subjects of her research to take an active and creative role in her films. Monti founded the experimental film school Lanboratorio di Cinematografia – Albedo, where she taught and managed while she was finishing Scuola Senza Fine in 1983. She also taught film history and film production at the Women’s Free University and the Film and Television School in Milan. Monti moved to Canada in 1996, where she worked for fifteen years as a reporter and story producer at OMNI Television Rogers Media and started her own company A&Z Media Ltd.

Loss of Heat (1994, 20 min.) is an evocative portrayal of queer love that challenges preconceived notions on the “reality” of living with the invisible disability of epilepsy. It is a poetic, immersive interpretation exploring the interplay of the emotional and the physical across boundaries of sexuality, dependence, and desire.

Loss of Heat is shown in the context of The Work We Share, a film program of ten newly digitized films from the Cinenova collection. Produced between 1972 and 1994, the films address oppositional histories and questions of difference through the lenses of gender, race, sexuality, health, and community.

The Work We Share gathers a number of films that previously existed in precarious conditions, in some cases, with negatives being lost or distribution film prints being the only copy. This program intends to acknowledge Cinenova’s interdependency: from organization to filmmakers, cultural workers, communities, and individuals. How can we acknowledge our interdependent relationships? How can we recognize our place in a network of communications, relationships, and resources, particularly as an un-funded volunteer organization? What different strains of labor does our work rely on? How do we sustain this work mutually?

Cinenova is a volunteer-run charity preserving and distributing the work of feminist film and video makers. It was founded in 1991 following the merger of two feminist film and video distributors, Circles and Cinema of Women, each formed in 1979. Cinenova currently distributes over 300 titles that include artists’ moving image, experimental film, narrative feature films, documentary, and educational videos made from the 1910s to the early 2000s.

Noski Deville (United Kingdom) is a cinematographer and film artist working across film, music, and sound. As Workshop Co-ordinator at the London Filmmakers Co-Op in the 1980s, she developed her skills on the JK Optical Printer. Deville has over 25 years of experience as a cinematographer and is well known for her award-winning work with internationally acclaimed artists, including Isaac Julien, Steve McQueen, Alia Syed, Daria Martin, and Jananne Al-Ani. In 2015 she won the Jules Wright Prize for her cinematography in the field of visual arts. An industry-recognized Director of Photography and member of the Guild of British Camera Technicians, Deville is also a committed film educator, having headed up the Cinematography Department at UCA, Farnham Film School.

Now Pretend (1991, 10 min.) is an experimental investigation into the use of race as an arbitrary signifier. Drawing upon language, personal memories, and John Howard Griffin’s 1959 text, Black Like Me, it deals with Lacan’s “mirror stage” theory of self-perception and the movement from object to subject.

Now Pretend is shown in the context of The Work We Share, a film program of ten newly digitized films from the Cinenova collection. Produced between 1972 and 1994, the films address oppositional histories and questions of difference through the lenses of gender, race, sexuality, health, and community.

The Work We Share gathers a number of films that previously existed in precarious conditions, in some cases, with negatives being lost or distribution film prints being the only copy. This program intends to acknowledge Cinenova’s interdependency: from organization to filmmakers, cultural workers, communities, and individuals. How can we acknowledge our interdependent relationships? How can we recognize our place in a network of communications, relationships, and resources, particularly as an un-funded volunteer organization? What different strains of labor does our work rely on? How do we sustain this work mutually?

Cinenova is a volunteer-run charity preserving and distributing the work of feminist film and video makers. It was founded in 1991 following the merger of two feminist film and video distributors, Circles and Cinema of Women, each formed in 1979. Cinenova currently distributes over 300 titles that include artists’ moving image, experimental film, narrative feature films, documentary, and educational videos made from the 1910s to the early 2000s.

L. Franklin Gilliam (b. 1967, United States) believes that, in a broken world, the vision and creativity of artists are critical to transformative systems change. Gilliam’s creative practice is research-based and multidisciplinary. It has taken the form of film/video art, installation, games, and illustrated lectures. Gilliam’s projects explore the interplay between obsolete technology formats and the faulty transmission of historical knowledge and difference. Their projects have been screened and presented at the 1997 Whitney Biennial (New York), the New Museum (New York), the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, the Institute for Contemporary Art (London), and are featured in Anäis Duplan’s book BLACKSPACE: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (2020). They have taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Vermont College of Fine Arts. They held various positions at Bard College, including director of the Integrated Arts Program. In 2022, they were artist-in-residence at the Centre for Afrofuturist Studies in Iowa.

If green is elemental, terrestrial, fundamentally of the earth—sharp blade of the palm, soft chorus of the grass, superabundance—it is also thoroughly modern. Green screen, chroma key, green as a ghost. Neon, billboard, bleeding light. What green did she see?

Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously (2023) is a newly commissioned video essay and installation by the Bosnian-Dutch artist Miloš Trakilović that explores visibility and freedom in the digital age through the lens of his family history. The work is rooted in the account of his mother, Milijana Mendeš, who survived the atrocities of the Bosnian War and fled to the Netherlands with her two children in 1995. In 2018, Trakilović conducted an extensive interview with her about her experiences from the Bosnian War. In this conversation, she vividly recalls some of her first moments once outside of the war zone: “When I arrived in The Netherlands as a refugee, the first thing I remember doing was sitting in a park for hours. I could not stop staring at the grass. It was so lush and green. I’ve seen grass many times in my life before, but I’ve never again seen it so bright. I remember sitting there and thinking; this grass here is so green, it is free, and in that moment, I felt free too. I felt liberated from my past.” 

Twenty-eight years after their arrival, Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously embodies Trakilović’s speculative quest to make his mother see that same shade of green once more. Trakilović entwines her heartfelt triangulation between green, grass, and freedom with the coded and simulative nature of digital technologies in which green plays an imperative role, such as the green screen or chroma key, and computer-generated imagery. Filmed in the Netherlands and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and oscillating between simulated and “real” landscapes, Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously unfolds as an inquisitive and poetic dream sequence that challenges the hegemonic role of vision and truth in the narratives of war and visual culture at large. Here, Trakilović invokes the invisible, unrelenting spectral forces that constitute the experience and memory of war and its aftermath.

Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously will be presented alongside All But War Is Simulation (2020), a two-channel video installation that explores representations of violence and the visualization and mediatization of warfare in an age of digital expansion. Blending historical record with speculation and theory, it takes as its starting point an artifact from the Bosnian War: a soon-to-be refugee’s Post-It note detailing a list of possessions to be taken before the family’s eviction. All of the items are related in some way to the preservation of memory—highlighting both the longing for an ideal past and a boundedness to the everyday experiences of war, where survival becomes routine and one’s life is reduced to a few simple objects. Neither an image nor a poem, the yellow record speaks to the multiple dimensions of loss associated with the experience of war and displacement.

Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously is accompanied by a publication of the same name, with contributions by Edwin Nasr, Jelena Petrović, and Miloš Trakilović. It is edited by Tom Engels and designed by Julie Peeters.

Miloš Trakilović (b. 1989, SFR Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina) is an artist based in Amsterdam and Berlin. Recent exhibitions include All But War Is Simulation, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen (2021), and Callie’s in collaboration with FRAGILE, Berlin (2020); Things we sense about each other, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2021); ISKRA DELTA: MGLC 34th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts (2021); Perception of Contemporaneity, Danube Dialogues, Novi Sad (2019); Farocki Now: A Temporary Academy, Harun Farocki Institut, Berlin (2017); and The Clouds is Where We Want To Be, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2017), among others. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: BELANCIEGE (2019), a video installation developed in collaboration with Hito Steyerl and Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze was presented at Trafó Gallery, Budapest (2023), MMCA (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art), Seoul (2022), MUNCH Triennale, Oslo (2022), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2022), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2021), K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2020), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2020), and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2019). Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously is his first institutional solo presentation in Austria.

Colorless Green Freedoms Sleep Furiously is commissioned by Grazer Kunstverein and realized with the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund, Dommering Foundation, and Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten. The exhibition is supported by ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and Stichting Stokroos.

BILL is a “magazine without words” conceived and edited by Grazer Kunstverein’s in-house graphic designer Julie Peeters. Each year, BILL publishes an issue that uses the logic of the image to collect photographic stories and archival material from artists, architects, photographers, fashion designers, and graphic design colleagues, including Martin Margiela, Hans Hollein, Rosalind Nashashibi, Jason Dodge, Linda Van Deursen, and Jochen Lempert, among others. As part of the opening weekend of sekretas by Marija Olšauskaitė, BILL celebrates the launch of its 4th issue. The presentation of BILL4 will be accompanied by the release of a newly conceived limited-edition newspaper.

Benedikt Reichenbach in Camera Austria about BILL: “In terms of empowerment, where identity is typically formed merely in relation to a dominant structure, looking at BILL seems to bring you closer to yourself, without ever leaving it static at what that is. […] By putting you in the middle of its content, which at no point has anything to prove, you’re asked to articulate your own point of view to what you’re seeing. And if Peeters merely refers to the ornithological meaning of name and logo, it might just express the nature of BILL: a refusal to speak or have things resolved.” 

Julie Peeters (b. 1983, Belgium) is a designer and editor based in Brussels. Since 2022 she has been responsible for the graphic identity of the Grazer Kunstverein in collaboration with Sophie Rentien Lando (digital) and Chiachi Chao (typeface). She is the founder and creative editor of BILL, an annual magazine of photographic stories and a publishing project focusing on the printed image.

As part of the opening night of sekretas, Antanas Lučiūnas / Ragemore introduces the opening weekend by way of a listening session. A long-standing friend and collaborator of Olšauskaitė, Lučiūnas builds a sonic environment in which sampling, field recordings, and their own compositions set the stage for a sensory unraveling of the exhibition. 

Antanas Lučiūnas / Ragemore (b. 1997, Lithuania) is a visual artist and musician living in Vilnius. Their work combines performance, writing, and sculpture with a strong emphasis on collaboration. Intimacy, subculture, and desire systems are the focal points of their work. Lučiūnas’ work unfolds itself through the mannerisms of popular music and club-like situations, often complemented with leisured choreography and imbued with tropes of physical culture. 

As part of the opening night of sekretas, London-based music producer Lauren Duffus joins with dancehall-indebted rhythms, layered atmospherics, and beguiling vocal samples. Duffus’ natural flair for emotional expression has quickly singled her out as a captivating addition to London’s experimental electronic scene. Simultaneously playful and tender, her unique chopped-n-stretched, hyper-choral sketches articulate something heartfelt and cinematic in the offbeat vocals, dub-pop rhythm, and ambient. Duffus’ debut EP Sulk was released on the Body Motion imprint in 2021.

Annie Parker about Lauren Duffus’ music: “Listening to her productions, it’s clear that the uncanniness of these inspirations is right on brand. Tangible are the bad-dream atmospherics, chopped ‘n’ screwed beats, and irreverent tones which paint the witch house genre (grey), as well as the cinematic drill instrumentals typified by Chicago rapper Chief Keef. But far from the codeine’d quality of Salem’s quasi-noise productions, the antagonism in Duffus’ music is often appeased with blithe glimmers, sometimes even choral singing. Her music’s equal proclivity for both caustic indignation and moments of tenderness justify previous comparisons to the likes of aya and Loraine James, both of which extend to her fusion of prismatic club beats and soft melodics.”

Excuse My Dust is a music program selected and performed by the pianist Han-Gyeol Lie. Responding to sekretas, Marija Olšauskaitė’s exhibition, Lie’s program meanders from French Baroque to late 20th-century composition, ranging from Jean-Philippe Rameau to Gérard Pesson. The pieces are gathered based on resemblances and affinities in tonality rather than geographical or temporal criteria and are organized according to the key in which they are performed. Throughout, slight shifts in key occur as the concert progresses. Related but different keys hide within each other, parallel tonalities rub against counter-parallels, holding the pieces together in amicable accord. The program will be performed on an untuned Grotrian-Steinweg grand piano built in 1927.

Gérard Pesson, Excuse my Dust, 1999-2008
Ludwig van Beethoven, Bagatelle in C major op. 33.5, 1803-1804
Frédéric Chopin, Prélude in C major op. 28.1, Prélude in a minor op. 28.2, 1836-1839
Jean Philippe Rameau, Allemande, from Suite in a minor, 1727
Johann Sebastian Bach, Prélude, from English Suite No.1 in A major, 1715
Franz Schubert, II. Andantino in fis moll from Sonata in A-dur D 959, 1828
Ryūichi Sakamoto, Germination, 1983
Elena Narbutaitė, blue diamond, 2019
John Cage, Dream, 1948
Gérard Pesson, La Lumière n’a pas de bras pour nous porter, 1994/1995

With the support of Klavierhaus Streif, Graz. 

Han-Gyeol Lie (b. 1982, Germany) is a pianist living in Vienna. Her repertoire focuses on the French Baroque and the late piano works of Franz Schubert and Frédéric Chopin. With philosopher Gabriele Geml, she is the founder and director of .akut – Verein für Ästhetik und angewandte Kulturtheorie (Association for Aesthetics and Applied Cultural Theory). She curated concerts for the Austrian Film Museum, the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Wien Modern, Tanzquatier Wien, and the Vienna Folk Song Society. As a visiting lecturer, she lectures on music and art at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius and the Sandberg Institute – Department of Fine Arts in Amsterdam, influenced by the aesthethic theories of Theodor W. Adorno. Currently, she works closely with dancer and choreographer Alix Eynaudi and sound artist Paul Kotal in various constellations.