New Maltese short films premiering during the third instalment of the 16th Kinemastik International Short Film Festival taking place in three partner cinemas around Malta and Gozo today and tomorrow.
These are Stephanie Sant’s film Perpetual Child, Samira Damato’s short Ħallini Ħanini and Liquid Dreams by Malta-based Columbian film-maker Andres Felipe Algeciras Marquez.
Other local film-makers competing this year are UK-based, Maltese artist Roxman Gatt with his experimental film But Love Left No Room for Hydration and Amy Azzopardi’s Room 23, which won the Most Creative and Original Concept award at the Malta Youth Film Festival 2020.
The programme, curated by Emma Mattei, consists of 16 short films in total, from 12 different countries, which will be shown at the Spazju Kreattiv Cinema in Valletta, Eden Cinemas in St Julian’s and Citadel Cinema in Victoria.
AI is a pun. It is the pronunciation of “love” in Chinese pinyin, and at the same time, stands for “Artificial Intelligence” in English. The two alphabets express the exhibition’s focus, which is to present the love that this generation has acquired in the age of social networking. The exhibition discusses the emotional decisions under the influence of algorithms, love affairs in the online environment, and the physical intimacies in long-distance relationships (Eros); It also resonates the sympathies woven by big data, which gathers people with similar ideologies and excludes those who disagree (Philia). Luc Ferry once said that “love never comes without hatred; they are probably two inseparable passions, if only because love leads us to hate those who hurt the people we love.”
The exhibition is designed as a dichotomous structure. Inspired by the typical “swipe right to like, swipe left to dislike” mechanism, it starts with a virtual online dating app that leads the audience to two different spaces. It is a metaphor for our manipulated emotions and speaks about romantic online relationships through an intertextual narrative. These romantic relationships have been perceived as “natural” interactions without being in the same physical space, groundless affection, and even remote performances of sexual desire. For millennials, the internet provides more freedom for expressing their instinctual egos while the physical world and people seem to be distant. These subtle emotions connect to our “inner-selves” are spread across the fiber optic network ubiquitously, raising the question that if our connection to the virtual domain means the detachment to the real world. Simultaneously, the layout of the exhibition is a spatial representation of our online behavior, meaning that every time one chooses to like or dislike, click or unclick, the algorithm generates the user’s data packet and direct the online route through the privacy permissions. We have literally no authentic choice among the numerous options. By “collaborative filtering” and “autocomplete” function (e.g. “Recommended for you” on Amazon, “Who to Follow” on Twitter, and “Topic you might like” on Quora), network science follows its default logic: “Birds of a feather flock together.” It generates social bubbles, which leads to discourse polarization, the proliferation of identity politics, and deeper divisions of our cultural and political landscape.
Now connect to the Internet, type in “AI” and searched for “Love”, I see people shouting, singing, mourning, feeling, fantasizing, and contemplating in struggles about gaining and losing love. It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.[1]With regard to Love and AI, we experience the featured artists’ tales through the spectrum of their works, and rethink the emotional and technological circumstances of our time.
Jenny CHEN Jiaying, writer and curator. She is now having a PhD program of Western Philosophy at Eastern China Normal University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the Department of Art History of China Academy of Art and received her Master of Arts degree from Lancaster University in the UK. She has contributed to media such as Artforum (CN), Artshard and NOWNESS. Recent Projects include: “Copernicus”, E.M.Bannister Gallery of Rhode Island College, Providence, U.S.A (2019); “Li Hanwei: Liquid Health”, Goethe Space, Shanghai (2019); “First edition of the Shanghai Curators Lab”, Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai (2018). Jenny’s other academic activities include the First Annual Conference of Network Society “Forces of Reticulation” roundtable and Huayu Forum of Art, etc.
Her article “Post-Internet Art Inside and Outside the Chinternet” was included in the collection of essays Forces of Reticulation published by China Academy of Art Press. Co-writing and editing of Shanghai Contemporary Art Archival Project 1998-2010, was published by MOUSSE in 2017.
About Hyundai Blue Prize
The Hyundai Blue Prize prioritizes creativity and sustainability over experience level when evaluating applicants. Each year, emerging Chinese curators submit exhibition proposals based on a theme that reflects Hyundai’s long-term vision. Up to six shortlisted curators will be offered a ‘One-on-One Mentorship’ from junior and senior jury members, who help applicants to prepare their final proposals, make connections within the art world, and explore their full potential.
About Hyundai Motorstudio
Hyundai Motorstudios are brand experience spaces that reflect the company’s artistic spirit and experimental approach to art, design and technology. This is where “motor,” a word used in the automobile industry, and “studio,” a word used to describe a space for contemplation and creation, meet in a manner accessible to the public.
dorothea.space in FontanaIn Dark Times we Must Dream with Open Eyes
In Dark Times We Must Dream With Open Eyes
Nico Vascellari‘s flag In Dark Times We Must Dream With Open Eyes makes it all the way to Gozo as it flies outside Dorothea Space Gozo. Visit blitzvalletta.com to purchase your own flag for €40 and support @africanmediamalta @foodbanklifeline #bluedoorenglishmalta#maltamicrofinance. More flag locations around Valletta will be added soon. Join our initiative and fly the flag at your own location.
The exhibition Out of Time presents a collection of works on paper and mixed-media paintings selected from the last ten years of the artist’s studio production, including work produced during the Covid-19 lockdown.The exhibition centres on the artist’s ongoing concern of our relationship with time and what it means for a human being to exist temporally in the stretch that we call our lifetime.The works exhibited are selected from the following bodies of work:The Terrain Vague Series (2010-2011): The concern with attempting to locate and to define the undetermined divide between two opposing forms. In landscape theory, the concept of terrain vague, wasteland or ambiguous space, refers to the undescribed territory that separates the city from nature. The artist used this termas metaphor for our relationship with our surroundings.Two works entitled “Between Ash and Dust” are shown from this collection. The works in charcoal and mixed media on wood, speak of implausible distances and detached spaces splitting up such evasive elements as smoke and sky. They are as much about the process of drawing/painting as they are about the current war imagery of destruction taken from tabloids or television. These metaphoric memorials sway unclearly between human intervention and natural phenomena and embody an act of restitution through the same material they are made of (charcoal being fire’s residue), a destructive force embalmed through its very remains.The Lichtung Series (2019 – today): This ongoing series of works were inspired by Martin Heidegger’s term Lichtung as the “Clearing”, and makes reference to Heidegger’s quote: “In the midst of beings as a whole an open place occurs.There is a clearing, a lighting… Only this clearing grants and guarantees to us humans a passage to those beings that we ourselves are not, and access to the being that we ourselves are.”The artist uses this title to refer to a series of works that relate to the genre of the landscape,but plays with the philosopher’s definition in German, ‘eine Lichtung ist,’ literally meaning‘a clearing is,’ suggesting the kind of clearing one finds in the woods or the forest, where light seeps through the less dense parts of the branches precisely referring to the ‘lightened’ patch of the forest. The artist is, however, more interested in Heidegger’s use of ‘Lichtung ’in the sense of ‘shedding light’ on something, referring to our capacity to give meaning(in this case to landscape) through our own memory. The works therefore refer to the artist’s memory as the shedding light that creates these ‘could have been’ landscapes, a tribute to Simon Schama’s assertion in his book ‘Landscape and Memory’ that “Before it can ever bea repose for the sen ses, landscape is a work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much fromstrata of memory as from layers of rock.”The Mounds, Canifantasma and Nell’Ombra della Torre Series (2018): These collections of works were created in Umbria, Italy during the artist’s residency at Civitella Ranieri castle in 2018. The works selected for the exhibition are a direct reaction to the experience of space and history on the artist.The ‘Mounds’ collection, are the more abstract and take their inspiration from landscape forms around the area. These works preceded and also fed the current ‘Lichtung’ series.The ‘Canifantasma’ and ‘Nell’ Ombra della Torre’ series were inspired by the history and architecture of the Civitella Castle in Umbria and the Ranieri family who were the original owners of the castle.The Swath Series (2020): The series which started during the COVID-19 outbreak is inspired by rituals of birth and death in historical and contemporary societies.The title ‘swath’ as the noun and ‘swathe’ as the verb reference the way we envelope both babies at birth and corpses in bags prior to burial.The series concerns the aesthetics of the clothing at the two extremes of the human lifespan(birth and death) and reflects the ‘thrown projection’ into this world (and its consequential abrupt truncation through death) in Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’. The works, which show bodies wrapped in what seems like a cloth or a swathe of bandages, equally make reference to news images of Covid fatalities and to victims of a road accident or death at sea. These forms have a striking resemblance to the swathing of newly-born babies throughout history.
Times of Malta published a review of highlights of the 23 years long Xarabank TV show run: “The Friday after winning the 2008 general election, Lawrence Gonzi made a full appearance on Xarabank, analysing election results and surveys putting more of the PN’s electoral manifesto to the public.”
In the moments after being elected leader of the Labour Party, a Xarabank journalist asked Muscat whether he would be on Xarabank next Friday, to which he promptly replied, “yes, of course”.
Ahead of the 2013 general election, Muscat was also the subject of a popular day-in-the-life video which aired on Xarabank, introducing his wife Michelle and then infant twin daughters to the public at large.
Gonzi and Muscat frequently tousled on the program and in the run-up to the 2013 election, Xarabank dedicated a full episode to a leadership debate between the two.
On the former prime minister’s own suggestion, in 2002 the Xarabank team interviewed Dom Mintoff in an outside broadcast in his hometown of Cospicua.
The show also regularly tackled social issues, perhaps most prominently in the debate leading up to the referendum on divorce. The “yes or no” question was put to members of parliament, leading to loud and hot arguments between the camps.
Despite often facing criticism for its lack of nuance, Xarabank was also one of the first television programmes to feature the experiences of Maltese gay couples in 2008 and how some resorted to living overseas in order to get married.
Another highly viewed episode is Xarabank’s interview with Simon Bugeja, the only survivor of the Simshar shipwreck tragedy which claimed the lives of four people, including Bugeja’s father Karmenu and his 11-year-old son Theo. Bugeja captured the public’s sympathy on Xarabank as he tearfully recounted his son’s final moments reciting the rosary and the act of contrition as they became increasingly desperate and fearful that no rescue would come.
In 2012, one of Xarabank’s most highly viewed episodes was one dedicated to Carmen Camilleri, the sister of seven-year-old Valletta murder victim Twannie Camilleri. Twanny and Carmen’s parents, Ġiġa and Leli were convicted for the boy’s murder on the strength of then seven-year-old Carmen’s testimony.However, on her Xarabank appearance revisiting the scene of the crime, Carmen recanted her testimony and declared her parents innocent, a fact that served to incense the public as well as its insinuation that the killer was still at large.
Xarabank also famously entertained its own version of the satanic panic, dedicating a number of episodes to the discussion of satanism, giving airtime to exorcists and people who claimed to have had a close brush with the occult.
The programme also found ways to stroke controversy in unconventional ways, with its interviews on sex and relationships often going viral, such as the time a counsellor explained that research indicated Maltese people watched more pornography during general elections.
Xarabank was always in touch with its philanthropic side, helping bring to prominence the story of Bjorn Formosa, who spearheaded activism for sufferers of ALS in Malta and helped raise hundreds of thousands of euros for care homes dedicated to people suffering from ALS.
Xarabank Highlights written by Jessica Arena (Times of Malta)
The Louise Michel is a former French Navy boat we’ve customised to perform search and rescue. She is as agile as she is pink. Measuring 30 meters in length and capable of over 28 knots, she was bought with proceeds from the sale of Banksy artwork – who then decorated her with a fire extinguisher. She is captained and crewed by a team of rescue professionals drawn from across Europe. She runs on a flat hierarchy and a vegan diet.
LONDON — Street artist Banksy has released a video with a strong political message explaining why he became involved in a search-and-rescue ship helping migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.“Like most people who make it in the art world, I bought a yacht to cruise the Med,” the artist wrote in captions accompanying the video, which was posted to his Instagram account Saturday. “It’s a French Navy vessel we converted into a lifeboat.”“Because EU authorities deliberately ignore distress calls from ’non-Europeans’,” the subversive artist continued. “All Black Lives Matter.”The video featured footage of migrants at sea and clips of the vessel, called the MV Louise Michel, which is painted bright pink and features a mural depicting a young girl holding on to a heart-shaped safety float.The Louise Michel crew has said it is sponsored by Banksy, whose real name remains a mystery. Details of his financial involvement were not available.The crew has in recent days reported picking up several groups of migrants in the central Mediterranean in what appeared to be its maiden rescue voyage. Associated PressHide CaptionBanksy spray-paints London train with COVID-19 messageBanksy’s back, this time with a message about COVID-19.Buzz60LONDON — Street artist Banksy has released a video with a strong political message explaining why he became involved in a search-and-rescue ship helping migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.“Like most people who make it in the art world, I bought a yacht to cruise the Med,” the artist wrote in captions accompanying the video, which was posted to his Instagram account Saturday. “It’s a French Navy vessel we converted into a lifeboat.”“Because EU authorities deliberately ignore distress calls from ’non-Europeans’,” the subversive artist continued. “All Black Lives Matter.”The video featured footage of migrants at sea and clips of the vessel, called the MV Louise Michel, which is painted bright pink and features a mural depicting a young girl holding on to a heart-shaped safety float.The Louise Michel crew has said it is sponsored by Banksy, whose real name remains a mystery. Details of his financial involvement were not available.The crew has in recent days reported picking up several groups of migrants in the central Mediterranean in what appeared to be its maiden rescue voyage.In a series of tweets over the past few days, the ship’s crew has strongly criticized the European Union over its migration policy. It said it contacted both Italian and Maltese coast guards seeking a port to disembark migrants, but received no response.The tone of the tweets has grown more urgent in the past 24 hours after the crew reported that the numbers of migrants on board were getting too high, that the ship was essentially stranded and that the crew was seeking a port to disembark the passengers. It reported women and children were among the dozens on board and in an adjacent dinghy, as well as the corpse of a migrant.“We need immediate assistance,” the crew tweeted via its @MVLouiseMichel handle on Saturday. “We are safeguarding 219 people with a crew of 10. Act #EU now!”In an email Saturday, the crew said the vessel was now heading to Sicily to seek shelter for the migrants.Another humanitarian aid group ship, the Mare Jonio, said Saturday it was leaving the Sicilian port of Augusta to come to the Louise Michel’s aid. The Mare Jonio, which has been active in the Mediterranean for years, said it was moving up its scheduled departure by 48 hours to help the Louise Michel out.
Inspired by the innovative thinking of Marshall McLuhan, academics, artists, designers, raconteurs, innovators, and thinkers from around the globe explored the mosaic of the metaphoric Global Village in light of the current scenario. The collectivity of our global thought, actions and generational evolution are the defining principles of the global human condition which we explored.
Join dance artist Rochelle Gatt and musician Luc Houtkamp as they meet on a rooftop in Senglea in this challenge of artistic boundaries.
Credits:Video filmed and edited by Sam Chetcuti – Cyberspace AV Dancer and choreographer – Rochelle Gatt Live electronics, programming, composition – Luc Houtkamp Edwin Balzan – sound engineer Footage (Drone) – Ruben Zahra
Malta International Arts Festival 2020 – Online Edition other highlight: Aquasonic Aquasonic – an innovative and visually stunning underwater concert. Learn more about what inspired this spellbinding performance:Footage Credits: Roberto Sarcia
The curators exhibition statement: If it were a sentence, this first online exhibition would have been conceived in future perfect tense, as an action started in the past and expected to be completed in the future. It is a caustic prelude, but it comes with hope. One of the most iconic and reproduced images of our time was taken on 7 December 1972 by the crew of Apollo 17 on their way to the Moon. It was the first photograph of the Earth as seen from 45,000 km away, a distance too far to distinguish human settlements or disruptive events, even though the Tamil Nadu cyclone is shown forming in the lower part of the image. In that same period, there was a significant surge in environmental activism in the U.S., and the image of our planet – one small, vulnerable entity floating in the giant Milky Way Galaxy – quickly became its symbol[1]. From up in space, the image also collectively inspired a mass sentiment to protect nature and humanity as a whole rather than focus on petty economic and political interests. Although this sentiment is often subjugated by systemic forces such as globalization and the belief in perpetual economic growth, many share it today and in particular now, as we contemplate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. NASA’s so-called Blue Marble photo shows us that everything is connected, yet we live in an imperfect world, which rewards competitive behavioral patterns and keeps us plugged in, diluting our survival instinct with solid fictional narratives. In fact, the presence of the Tamil Nadu cyclone has never prevented appreciation of the picture, despite the fact that it killed 80 people in South East Asia. Covid-19, by contrast, has affected everyone because of its highly infectious nature and global spread. In less than a few months, our routine has been collectively disrupted and the precarious architecture of our lives suddenly exposed, together with the imaginary structural strength we believed to be the base of our carefully calibrated plans and actions. Covid-19 does not make us equal – we can assume UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson accessed better health care than a random individual in a less wealthy country – but it rattles our desire for certainty and comfort more than anything in our lifetimes, more than a collision with an asteroid or the alarming signs of climate change. As we adjust to a state of emergency and contemplate the unknown that awaits us on the other side, switching on the life of yesterday at will seems deceptive. We should not be blind to the fact that things could be different. Myths as diverse as exponential growth, social equality and anthropocentrism have been exposed, and new narratives are emerging. In 1970, two years before the Blue Marble photo was taken, a founding myth of 20th century human society came into the spotlight – the escalating consumer society and the predatory behavior that it elicited. Two seminal books tackled this specific issue – Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle and Raoul Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life. Besides being the intellectual pillars of the Situationist International (SI) – a revolutionary organization of the European avant-garde active between 1957 and 1972 and critical of capitalism – the books championed the end of market exploitation and consumerism in order to allow a genuine human society to emerge. Will their claims reverberate as an effect of the Covid-19 pandemic? Could this be the time to reveal the glitches in our social, economic and environmental systems, and take action? The six invited artists and collectives – David Claerbout, Jonathas De Andrade, Elena Mazzi / Sara Tirelli, Aernout Mik, Laure Prouvost and Pilvi Takala – have animated the gist of the recent debate on art and society, with their contribution offering significant insights in different aspects of life: the cultural shifts of the digital world, our relations with others, techno-capitalism, and ecology and catastrophes. Their practices have something in common; they produce a distancing effect that makes us question the things which society would have us believe are inevitable, and natural. It is this distancing effect – achieved with storytelling, irony and new media technology – that engages the viewers and inspire them to judge critically, and The Eye of the Storm seems to be an apt metaphor for these undertakings. In spoken language, it has come to epitomize the risks of finding yourself stuck at the center of a difficult situation. Yet in meteorology the eye of the storm is the calmest zone of a cyclone, where skies are clear and wind milder. It is deceptively calm, but possibly the best place to be for a short time while processing the state of things. As the Covid-19 pandemic challenges the conventions of time, the very existence of public space and the social canons that regulate living together, science alone cannot address the flaws and prospects of a new society. Art will stay at the center of the storm, expose the fractures of the world and push for change. The chance is there. As put by philosopher Timothy Morton, who studies the ecologies of the Anthropocene: “Things are open. Open also in the sense of potential […]. Something happening in one specific place (say a feather falling on pavement) would mean the whole universe changes everywhere. Things are connected but in a kinda sorta subjunctive way. There is room for stuff to happen. Or, as the anarchist composer John Cage put it, “The world is teeming. Anything could happen.[2]” – Sara Dolfi Agostini, curator
Ctrl Z is a collective digital arts exhibition that features our final dissertations and respective artistic projects. Every artist has personally designed and curated a variety of elements that come together in an intricate and meticulously planned art project, that is backed by thorough research in the respective field. No two projects are the same, as each revolves around a subject that the artist is personally passionate in pursuing, expressed through their preferred medium/media of choice. The exhibition as a whole features a wide range of themes, amongst which are explored the topics of identity, duality, homelessness, LGBT relationships, video game and film adaptations, VR and fashion. There is an over-arching theme of questioning and delving into that which is deeply and innately human. Ctrl Z is an opportunity for each artist to showcase their skillset through a project they believe in, and which is the culmination of a year’s worth of trials and error, research, and dedication.
