In MANGOES, two expatriate Pakistani and Indian women sit and eat mangoes together and reminisce about their childhood. Their encounter turns sour when they start comparing the diversity of mangoes grown in either country – a comment on the widespread sense of nostalgia and nationalism that exists within the Indian and Pakistani Diaspora. Both women are played by the artist, stressing the idea of a shared history.

ANTHEMS addresses the role of music in the creation of patriotic sentiment and shows a split screen image of two young women (again, played by the artist herself) dancing to popular Indian and Pakistani songs. In an attempt to “out-sound” each other by increasing the volume, the video finally ends in a cacophony of noise.

THE NEWS is a 2-channel video installation mocking a news programme broadcasted on either side of the India-Pakistan border. Presented on two monitor screens, a Pakistani and an Indian news presenter relate separate versions of the same event. The script alludes to a well-known joke about an Indian and a Pakistani. The language used in the video is a Sanskritised Hindi of the official Indian language and a Persianised Urdu of the Pakistani state, a comment on the state’s exclusivist policies and manipulation of the language in its attempt to construct its own identity.

Bani Abidi, born in Karachi, Pakistan, studied at the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan and at the MFA at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, USA. She received a scholarship from the DAAD Berlin Artists-in-Residence Programme. Her work has been shown internationally, in places like Calcutta, Dallas, New York and Kassel. In 2019, she also exhibited her show “They Died Laughing” at Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin. Abidi lives and works in Berlin and Karachi.

Exactly 6 years ago, a migrant boat left the coast of Western Turkey heading to the Greek island of Lesbos. Worn and overcrowded with more than 300 passengers, it sank just a few metres after reaching EU territorial waters. PURPLE SEA tells the story of the shipwreck from the inside perspective of artist and filmmaker Amel Alzakout, who was a passenger on the ship and filmed it sinking with a camera attached to her wrist.
The images are a result of Alzakout’s desperate movements as she attempts to find stability on the boat. The footage captures passing objects and bodies, loose and worn clothing, the signal colours of life jackets and offers little orientation for outsiders as to how the events on the boat unfold. Sea and sky blur into one, the horizon stands upside down. There is no rescue in sight. On a sound level, the sometimes muffled, sometimes clear soundscape of the catastrophe is accompanied by an off-screen commentary in which the director tries to find refuge in other places, in other times.

SHIPWRECK AT THE THRESHOLD OF EUROPE, LESVOS, AEGEAN SEA: 28 OCTOBER 2015 by research group Forensic Architecture analyses the incident by cross-referencing the footage of PURPLE SEA alongside weather data, satellite images and additional footage – whose producers include the Greek coastguard as well as photographer Richard Mosse, who happened to record the event with a high-resolution thermal imaging camera. Their work delivers a precise reconstruction of the events in which at least 43 people lost their lives while shedding light on the larger context of European boarder policies. The NGOs, smugglers, the European border protection agency Frontex, fishermen, who were operating under which conditions? Media reports published after the fatal tragedy which attested to a successful rescue operation by Frontex and the Greek coast guard, are critically examined here. Among other things, it is revealed that the isolation policy was already an established practice months before it was set in stone in an agreement with Turkey.

Forensic Architecture is a research agency based at Goldsmith College in London with a team comprised of software developers, filmmakers, lawyers and scientists of various disciplines. They investigate mechanisms of repression, state and corporate violence and environmental destruction, using various medial forms to present their research findings. The organisation of exhibitions and screenings and participation in parliamentary enquiries and court cases are seen as ways of shaping a counter-public sphere. Their works have been shown at Documenta 14, the Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennale, to name a few.

Amel Alzakout, born in 1988 in Syria, works as an artist and filmmaker and lives in Leipzig. From 2010 to 2013 she studied journalism at Cairo University before studying art at the Weißensee School of Art from 2017 to 2018. In 2019, she enrolled in the media arts class at the HGB in Leipzig. PURPLE SEA is her first feature-length film, co-directed by photographer and filmmaker Khaled Abdulwahed. Her first collaboration, the 8-channel video installation STRANGER’S DIARIES was screened at paradoks in 2019.

Khaled Abdulwahed, born 1975 in Syria, is an artist, photographer, and filmmaker based in Leipzig. Between 1996 and 2000 he studied Fine Arts and Graphic Design at Adham Ismail art school in Damascus, Syria, and at Frederick University in Nicosia, Cyprus. Previous work includes short and feature-lenght films among others Bullet (2011), Tuj (2012), Slot in Memory (2013), Jellyfish (2016), Backyard (2018), Home Sweet Home (2020, with Amel Alzakout).

In Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s video essay FORENSICKNESS, she references an existing film, WATCHING THE DETECTIVES by Chris Kennedy (2017), and investigative efforts discussed therein. These efforts refer to those made by the Reddit online community as they attempted to identify the assailants of the 2013 Boston Marathon attack in the 48 hours following the incident, by analysing surveillance camera and amateur footage available on the internet. This is complemented by footage from Hollywood adaptations of the incident, news reports as well as statements and self-dramatisations by FBI agents involved. Galibert-Laîné has created a sort of “desktop essay” by drawing on both onlinesourced visual material as well as web and software based approaches. Unlike Forensic Architecture, it does not provide any evidence relevant to criminal law, nor does it prove that any crime has been committed. Instead, it opens up a debate on the interpretive nature of images and their susceptibility to hermeneutic fallacies as well as exposing the reality of accusations being made based on racism and how authority establishes itself.

BOTTLED SONGS is an ongoing media project that explores strategies for dealing with online terrorist propaganda. Using desktop essays that cross reference each other, Chloé Galibert Laîné and Kevin B. Lee analyse IS films they have found online. Here they reveal how the stylistic devices of terrorists work as well as analyse their aesthetics inspired by Hollywood blockbusters, their pop cultural codes, and the layers of significance in their videos circulating social media. What the two researchers think and say here is informed by questions related to active, conscious and political perspectives and the significance of emotions, empathy and resilience in times where there is an endless influx of media images.

Chloé Galibert-Laîné (1992, France) is a researcher and filmmaker. She is currently finishing a PhD in the arts at the École normale supérieure de Paris. In addition, she teaches theory classes and artistic workshops on film and media at several institutions across Europe, including the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and Johannes Gutenberg University. Her work mainly explores the intersection between cinema and online media. Galibert-Laîné has directed several award-winning short films and stage productions, and her video essays on film and media are regularly screened in academic contexts and at film festivals. She often works together with filmmaker and media artist Kevin B. Lee; they have presented their collaborative works at IFFR, True/False Film Festival, Open City Documentary Film Festival, Camden International Film Festival and London Essay Film Festival as well as art venues such as the Ars Electronica Festival and the WRO Media Art Biennale.
(Source: IFF Rotterdam)

Kevin B. Lee (1975, USA) is a filmmaker, media artist and film critic. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, pursuing Master’s degrees in Film, Video, New Media and Animation, and in Visual and Critical Studies. In his short films and documentaries, Lee often criticises the medium of film and the film industry. Over the last ten years, he has produced over 360 video essays. His award-winning film Transformers: The Premake screened at several festivals and was named one of the best documentaries of 2014 by Sight & Sound. He regularly works together with filmmaker and media artist Chloé Galibert-Laîné.
(Source: IFF Rotterdam)

This set of short films consists of video works from the 19th Media Art Biennale WRO 2021 REVERSO programme. WRO ART CENTER is a major forum for new media art in Wrocław, Poland, and one of the leading international art events in Central Europe.

The programme connects the past and future of human habitats in relation to the visible and invisible conflicts that arise between emotionally charged habitats, urban structures and the global ambience. Each work explores, to a certain extent, spaces within buildings, cities or even whole islands or natural environments and invites the viewers to look reverso – to look beyond the obvious. The hidden or unseen details that underly memories and emotion are traces of interactions between the human and nonhuman, which take place in urban and habitable spaces. The remaining afterimages are invisible to the naked eye.