I am Somebody
A film and video program curated by Eli Cortiñas
14 January 2022 at 8 PM
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14 January 2022
Red Clay, Tamale, Ghana
Notes On Gesture
Martine Syms’ work focuses strongly in identity in relation to feminism and black culture. Syms’ deploys a very precise and gifted use of digital media while exploring her subjects through humour and social commentary. Notes On Gesture, a short video from 2015, compares “authentic” and dramatic gestures through the performance of an actress, who uses her body to quote famous, infamous, and unknown women, repeating and interpreting each movement several times.
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Notes On Gesture, 2015, Martine Syms (film still)
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14 January 2022
Red Clay, Tamale, Ghana
In What Is Poetry To You?, Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña, asks beggars, sex workers, policemen, and passersby repeatedly the question “What is poetry to you?” . The surprising answers she gets, reveal not only the richness of the oral culture in Bogotá, Colombia, where she shot this film in 1980, but also how poetry inhabits our societies in all forms, not necessarily linked to a particular cultural, academic or intellectual space.
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What Is Poetry To You?, 1980, Cecilia Vicuña (film still)
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14 January 2022
Red Clay, Tamale, Ghana
And That Ocean Too, Is A Fiction
Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn is an artist from Thailand whose practice involves moving image, performance, text, and installation. Her work examines notions of human and non-human history embedded in geological space and time: she is interested in the history of mankind as remembered by the earth and its landscape. In the video work And That Ocean Too, Is A Fiction, she questions the museum as an imperialist and colonial institution and renders it to the usual ethnographic agents. Not only who looks, but how this look is canonised by an exhibition and institutional practice is a constant question in her work. Skoolisariyaporn's examination is that of a necessary institutional critique which speaks not only about the historical, but also the neo-colonial implications of most exhibition practices.
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And That Ocean Too, Is A Fiction, 2019, Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn
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14 January 2022
Red Clay, Tamale, Ghana
I Am Somebody
Madeline Anderson’s stunning and powerful I Am Somebody brings viewers to the front lines of the fight for civil rights. The film takes place 1969 in Charleston, South Carolina, and follows a group of black female hospital workers who went on strike for union recognition and a wage increase, only to find themselves in a confrontation with the state government and the National Guard. I Am Somebody is considered a crucial document in the struggle for labor rights and a testament to the courage of the workers and activists at the heart of the film. Anderson’s films are both essential historical records of activism and a vital body of cinematic work.
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I Am Somebody, 1970, Madeline Anderson