Queer Experimentalism : Screenings at Uppsala Short Film Festival and Umeå European Film Festival

Summary

Queer Experimentalism: The Angel Cycle by Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki

Supported by

Uppsala International Short Film Festival and Umeå European Film Festival/Umeå Europeiska Filmfestival

Description of project

For the first time the works of Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki are presented for a Swedish audience. Klonaris/Thomadaki who both have Greek origins have been working in Paris since the mid-70s. Together, they became known as the first female double auteur artists in the world and they co-signed their work for forty years. They have been leading figures of the French experimental film scene since the late 70s when they also introduced the concept Cinéma Corporel (cinema of the body). In their work they investigate the subversive body, the feminine and androgynous identity, sexuality and the unconscious. Since 1976, they have been working on body as language and in 1977 they published the ”Manifesto for a Radical Femininity, for Another Cinema”. This leads them to work with theories and ideas related to gender and identity. 1985 begins the long-standing and ongoing work on The Angel Cycle out of which four pieces will be shown during the film festival. Through their film language, they create a spatial poetry that affects the physical. The cyclic patterns and the sometimes bombastic, repetitive pulse gives a sense of bodily consciousness in the viewer. Anna Linder, curator The screening is preceded by a presentation by Katerina Thomadaki and followed by a talk with curator Anna Linder, researcher at Valand Academy.

Type of work

Curatorial work / Film Screening

Published in

Uppsala Short Film Festival, Slottsbiografen. 2015-11-22

Umeå European Film Festival (Umeå Europeiska Filmfestival)2015-11-26

Link to web site

http://www.shortfilmfestival.com/program/2015/specialprogram-retrospektiv/queer-experimentalism-the-angel-cycle-klonaris-thomadaki

http://www.klonaris-thomadaki.net/artsite.htm

http://annalinder.se/queer-experimentalism-the-angel-cycle-by-maria-klonaris-katerina-thomadaki

http://annalinder.se/queer-experimentalism-at-ueff-2015-in-umea-the-angel-cycle-by-maria-klonaris-katerina-thomadaki

Other description

Angel Cycle har sitt ursprung i en medicinsk bild på en intersexuell som Maria Klonaris hittade i arkivet hos sin far, som var läkare. För Klonaris och Thomadaki förde det tankarna till föreställningen om änglar. Allt sedan 1985 har Angel Cycle gett upphov till ett trettiotal verk i en rad olika konstnärsfält, däribland film, video, radio, skulptur, installationer och ljudkonst. The Angel Cycle has its starting point in a medical photograph of an intersexual that Maria Klonaris found in the archives of her father, Dr. G. Klonaris. Klonaris and Thomadaki have associated this ambiguous body to the concept of the Angel. Up to now The Angel Cycle includes more than thirty works: expanded cinema, multimedia performances and environmental installations, photo-sculptures, sound pieces, radio broadcasts, an artist’s book, computer animations, video tapes. FILMER - FILMS: REQUIEM FOR THE 20TH CENTURY Här sammanförs änglafotografiet med arkivmaterial från andra världskriget. Resultatet är ett antikrigsmanifest och en elegi. I egenskap av sin annorlunda kropp får änglafiguren en mångtydig roll som betraktare, vittne och domare i en blandning av tekniker. This video brings the “Angel” photograph in relation to archival footage from World War II. It is an anti-war manifesto, an elegy. As a body of difference, a stranger, the “Angel” figure acquires an ambiguous status of observer, witness, victim or judge. This video crosses technologies: Super 8 and 16mm film, photography, computer graphics and video processing. FRANCE/GREECE 1994. Experimental. 14 min. DIRECTION: Maria Klonaris, Katerina Thomadaki. PERSONAL STATEMENT I denna video iscensätts en rad variationer på det ursprungliga medicinska fotografiet. Bilderna framträder vertikalt alltmedan kvinnohänder som tillhör Katerina Thomadaki försöker röra vid denna mutantkropp. Maria Klonaris röst hörs tilltala objektet. Personal Statement stages photographic variations of the original medical document. The images unfold vertically while feminine hands (Katerina Thomadaki ́s) try to touch this mutant body. The off-screen voice (Maria Klonaris) addresses the photographed subject. FRANCE/ GREECE 1994. Experimental. 8 min. DIRECTION: Maria Klonaris, Katerina Thomadaki. PULSAR Pulsar är förkortning för den astronomiska termen pulserande stjärna. Pulsarer föds genom kollaps och är galaktiska objekt som sänder ut intensiv elektromagnetisk strålning. I videon sammankopplas den mänskliga kroppen med astralkroppar. Maria Klonaris improviserade performance blir en extatisk dans på katastrofens rand. Astralkroppen löses upp och sätts samman digitalt. Pulsar is an abbreviation for the astronomical term Pulsating star. Born through copllapse, the pulsars are galactic objects, radiosources which are characterized by an intense electromagnetic emission. Here Maria Klonaris ́s figure occupies the entire screen. Her improvised performance is an ecstatic danse between pleasure and catastrophe, a black and blue body language which grapples with the white of the screen and the luminous suddenness of a firework display. The astral body is disintegrated and recomposed digitally. FRANCE 2001. Experimental. 14 min. DIRECTION: Maria Klonaris, Katerina Thomadaki. QUASAR Kvasar är en förkortning av en astronomisk term, quasi-stellar radio source. Kvasarerna är de allra mest avlägsna av intensivt aktiva galaxkärnor. Deras struktur är bipolär och de stöter ut materia från sina inre kärnor. Quasar är ett dubbelt självporträtt där konstnärernas ansikten sammansmälter med varandra och med astronomiska bilder på stjärnor. Verkets makrokosmos är den okoloniserade yttre rymden som ännu inte blivit science fiction. Quasar är ett kosmologiskt projekt med kvinnliga och intersexuella kosmogonier och, som de övriga verken i cykeln, ett projekt om blick. Quasar is an abbreviation for the astronomical term quasi-stellar radio source. Quasars are the most far away intensely brilliant active galaxies. They have a bipolar structure and eject matter from the interior regions of their nucleus. Quasar is a double self portrait, in which the artist ́s faces hybridize with each other and with astronomic still photographies of stars. The macrocosm in Quasar is a non colonized and non science-fictionalized outer space. Quasar is a cosmologic project of female and intersex cosmogonies, as well as a project on gaze. FRANCE 2003. Experimental. 32 min. DIRECTION: Maria Klonaris, Katerina Thomadaki.