Screening

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.

Noski Deville, *Loss of Heat* (still), 1994.

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.

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.

L. Franklin Gilliam, *Now Pretend* (still), 1991.

Dialoge is a discursive program organized by the newly founded Center for Contemporary Art at the University of Graz, which will take place from May 16-21 at the Grazer Kunstverein. Under the title Art – Political Responsibility – Social Justice the program examines current socio-political issues. The program focuses on political conflict zones in Europe, diversity in the context of questioning and redefining concepts of identity, as well as social justice, colonialism, and imperialism.

Theoretical and artistic responses to stereotyping and attributions related to gender form the core of the third Dialog. With contributions by David Getsy (lecture), Alexandra Hammond (performance), Furusho von Puttkammer (performance), Masha Godovannaya (lecture), and Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca (screening).

For the most recent schedule, please visit the website of the Center for Contemporary Art, University of Graz.

The second Dialog, entitled Trust & Intransigence, will place a special emphasis on European conflict zones. It provides a platform for exchange between scholars and artists. With contributions by Saddam Jumaily (Artist Talk), Marita Muukkonen, Ivor Stodolsky (Conversation), Jasmina Cibic (Artist Talk), Alexandra Hammond (Performance), Ekaterina Degot (Statement), Vedran Dzihic (Lecture) and Anri Sala (Screening).

For the most recent schedule, please visit the website of the Center for Contemporary Art, University of Graz.

The first Dialog includes contributions by Wolfgang Meixner (book presentation), Marc Hill (book review), Steffen Schneider (statement), Renate Hansen-Kokoruš (lecture), and Djordje Čenić (artist talk and screening).

For the most recent schedule, please visit the website of the Center for Contemporary Art, University of Graz.

In the frame of Diagonale’22 – Festival of Austrian Film, the Grazer Kunstverein and Kunsthaus Graz join forces. In Rensonance, a joint film program, connects their exhibitions by Sandra Lahire and The Golden Pixel Cooperative, a Vienna-based feminist association for moving images. Drawing from their back catalog, The Golden Pixel Cooperative members respond to Terminals (1986), one of Lahire’s films. The program includes films by Christiana Perschon, Lydia Nsiah, and Enar de Dios Rodríguez, and examines practices of (self-)observation and the vulnerability of images, bodies, and environments. Together, they resound in a cinematic and intergenerational encounter.

The program includes:

Christiana Perschon, Double 8, 2016. 3 min.
Lydia Nsiah, distortion, 2016. 5 min.
Sandra Lahire, Terminals, 1986. 20 min.
Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Liquid Ground, 2021. 32 min.

The screening will be followed by a discussion between Katrin Bucher Trantow (Interim Director and Chief Curator Kunsthaus Graz), Enar de Dios Rodríguez (artist, GPC), Tom Engels (Artistic Director Grazer Kunstverein), and Antonia Rahofer (curator, GPC). The conversation will be moderated by Daniella Shreir (Another Gaze).

You can book tickets via the website of Diagonale’22.

In Resonance is realized in cooperation with Kunsthaus Graz and Diagonale’22.

The Golden Pixel Cooperative (GPC) is an association for moving image, art, and media founded in 2014. Located at the interface between exhibition space and cinema, its goal is to develop sustainable structures for the distribution, production, and mediation of moving image works by contemporary artists and to promote exchange and mutual support between them. Indizien, The Golden Pixel Cooperative’s exhibition is on display at Kunsthaus Graz between 05/04 and 18/04/2022.

Lydia Nsiah, *distortion* (still), 2016. Courtesy of the artist and sixpackfilm.

This selection of films aims to provide a partial survey of the work of Sandra Lahire’s contemporaries and collaborators, including friends, mentors, and fellow members of the London Film-makers Cooperative such as Tina Keane, Lis Rhodes, and Tanya Syed. This eclectic mix of film and video contains reflections on some of the concerns that pervade Lahire’s work, and that were prevalent at the time, including anti-nuclear activism, constraints placed on women’s bodies, and manifestations of lesbian sexuality and desire. The films will be interspersed with readings of texts and reflections by Lahire and some of the other artists included in this program.

The film program includes:

Tina Keane, Hey Mack, 1982. 13 min.
Jo Davis & Lis Rhodes, Hang on a minute: No 8 Bus, 1983. 2 min.
Jeanette Iljon, Focii, 1974. 9 min.
Tanya Syed, Chameleon, 1990. 4 min.
Martine Thoquenne, Faster Princess, 1982. 8 min.
Sarah Turner, She Wanted Green Lawns, 1989. 4 min.
Sandra Lahire, Eerie, 1992. 1 min.
Annette Kennerley, Sex, Lies, Religion, 1994. 6 min.
Helena Goldwater, Fierce Detail, 1995. 4 min.

The program is curated by Charlotte Procter (LUX, London) and Daniella Shreir (Another Gaze).

Charlotte Procter (b. 1984, United Kingdom; lives in London) is Collection and Archive Director of LUX, the UK’s most significant collection of artists’ moving image. In 2013 she joined the Cinenova Working Group, a collective dedicated to the care and distribution of the feminist film collection Cinenova. From 2018 to 2021, she co-directed the research project Their Past is Always Present at Elas Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastián, Spain), and she is co-editor of Living on air: the films and words of Sandra Lahire (2021).

Daniella Shreir (b. 1993, United Kingdom; lives in London) is the founding editor of Another Gaze, a print and online journal exploring films and feminism. She is also the founder and programmer of Another Screen, an irregular streaming platform, free and available worldwide with subtitles in multiple languages. She works as a literary and non-fiction translator from the French, with her translation of Chantal Akerman’s My Mother Laughs receiving a PEN award in 2019.