Europe – Owen Mundy

VIDEOGUD SPRING 2011
Kultur i länet
Uppsala, Sweden

A collaboration between the county councils of Gävleborg, Uppsala, and Dalarna to show video art in public places – for example in libraries, schools and hospitals.

Arts Gävleborg – Video Room

Theme

The theme for this spring’s movies is the human relationship with the city and countryside. Whether the works in the spring program takes place on the coast, in town or in front of a waterfall as they all have in common that they are asking questions about how humans project the feelings and sentiments of the phenomena in nature and in the city.

Common to the five works is that the artists relate to the province or city as the work takes place in. The city or the countryside is not given to the works but its influence is being investigated.

The program begins with Owen Mundy film “Through A Glass Darkly” in which what we normally see as the wings – the landscape now is the focus, Mundy works followed by Hanna Ljungh settlement and dialogue with a waterfall. In Ulu Braun’s film “Atlantic Garden” meet people, landscapes and nature, reality and fiction.

The program concludes with two films “Zwischen” and “The Perfect Hour” which takes place in cities, one in Berlin, the others in Stockholm. In both works, you can choose to see the city as a backdrop or motaktör the main character.

Still from Through A Glass Darkly

Through A Glass Darkly

(translated from Swedish)

Through A Glass Darkly is a remix of the landscape of popular films depicting war. Eerily quiet, but also beautiful, creates images at a contrast between stillness and chaos, between beauty and destruction.

The films are chronologically compiled, ie. first clip is from a film about American War of Independence followed landscapes and scenes from movies depicting war and conflicts in the world until today. Taken out of context becomes important landscapes charged in themselves, while they remind us of nature as a battleground. Examples of some films that used in the work are The Patriot, Gone with the Wind, The Thin Red Line and Apocalypse Now.

Through A Glass Darkly is originally an English translation of a verse in the Bible’s Korinterbrev, in Swedish reads: “Now we see in a dim way, such as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face.” Stanza, Breakthrough A Glass Darkly, has been used in the English translation of Ingmar Bergman’s film “Through a Glass Darkly.”

—Andreas Bjersby
Kultur i länet
Projektledare konst

Poster

Program

3 Feb – 24 Feb
Through A Glass Darkly
Owen Mundy, USA

24 Feb – 17 Mar
How to Civilize A Waterfall
Hanna Ljungh, Sweden

17 Mar – 7 Apr
Atlantic Garden
Ulu Braun, Germany

7 Apr – 28 Apr
Zwischen
Diego Aguilló, Germany

28 Apr – 19 May
The Perfect Hour
Niclaz Erlingmark, Sweden

Display Stations

Gävleborg: Sandviken Public Libraries, Silvanum Gävle, Voxna Valley High School, Show Bilbliotek, Gävle Hospital, Hudiksvall Library, Workshops Port Hedland.

Uppsala: Uppsala University Hospital, Formation Center Jan Fridegård Bålsta, Enköping Hospital, Tierps clinic.

Dalarna County: Dalarna Museum, Falun Public Library, Old Meken Smederevo, Hedemora Public Library’s Cultural Right, Vansbro library.

TINA-B Festival
Nostic Palace, Czech Ministry of Culture, Prague
October 7-24th, 2010

In the October 2010 TINA-B Contemporary Art Festival in Prague, Owen Mundy and Joelle Dietrick will re-stage their 2006 project The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn. Originally developed in York, Alabama, USA, Owen Mundy and Joelle Dietrick borrowed lamps from the residents and installed them in an abandoned grocery store. Each lamp was set to turn on every night, and because of the inexactitude of the timers chosen, did so in an organic fashion, one by one, reflecting not only the participants in the community, but also the history of Alabama’s social movements. In an area where a nearby hazardous waste landfill caused the water undrinkable, the artists and the community collectively revived the vacant commercial space, removing roomfuls of damaged post-Katrina FEMA water boxes and transforming the downtown with the lamps, pulsing at their own pace, human in the imperfections and variety, and more powerful as a collection.

As if a scientific study with controls, the re-staging of the project in Prague and Venice studies the nature of site-specific and community-based art. Both cities provide unusual cross-cultural comparisons about domestic settings and the cultural, geographical and political structures that affect private space. The 2006 installation developed before the U.S. housing crisis, and these 2010 installations will develop as the global economy still recovers from the impact of the current economic downturn. In this context, the simple gesture of gathering of everyday objects and spaces can yield unusual insights into common assumptions about micro-macros shifts—the individual and the state, private spaces and public concerns, local and global.

More information

Tag: Europe

VIDEOGUD 2011

Theme

Through A Glass Darkly

Poster

Program

Display Stations

The Difference Between Then and Now