Contemporary Past

Kamal Aljafari is an internationally-recognized filmmaker and artist whose work searches for home while also questioning the boundaries between “documentary” and “fiction”. His portfolio includes Port of Memory (2009), The Roof (2006), Visit Iraq (2003) and My Father’s Video (2009). Blending a potent mix of personal ethics, transnational politics, and video and film aesthetics, Aljafari reinvents the long take, the slow tracking shot through space, and widescreen mise-en scene-once keynotes of European art cinema-in films where time and place take precedence over story and character. Aljafari’s films represent a new kind of domestic ethnography - “home movies” in which his family members come to represent all who wait, survivors of a decimated nation, forever looking for what has vanished, confined to an ever eroding domestic orbit, in a war with no end in sight.

Aljafari studied theater at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned a master’s degree in film at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany. He had been a Film Study Center Fellow and Benjamin White Whitney Scholar at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute (2009-2010) where he worked on an interdisciplinary media project titled “A Cinematic Occupation”. Aljafari has been a guest lecturer at UC/Berkeley, California College of the Arts, University of California Santa Cruz, Harvard University and Duke University.

Personal website: www.kamalaljafari.com

Jasper Rigole (born in 1980, Bruges) is a Belgian artist who graduated from the film department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (KASK) in 2004. In December 2008, he finished a two-year post-graduate course at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK). Currently he is working on a PhD at the University College Ghent.

His work includes single screen video works as well as installations. His main project at present is the 'International Institute for the Conservation, Archiving and Distribution of Other People's Memories' (IICADOM).

Exhibitions, screenings and projects (selection), 2010-2011:

Expanding documentary: de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (NL); Vierjaarlijkse Prijs voor Beeldende Kunst van de Provincie West-Vlaanderen; Zweierlei: Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel (CH); Temps Mort: Secondroom, Gent (BE) Manifesta8: Murcia (ES); The past is a foreign country: CoCA, Torun, (PL); Flat Character: 't Brantijser, University Antwerp (BE); Flachlandfest: Arena, Berlin, (DE); EHMN: Cinema Odeon, Vicenza, (IT)

Deimantas Narkevičius born in 1964 Utena, Lithuania. Lives and works in Vilnius. He started using film during the early nineties. His films exercise the intricate practice of memory and portray a contemporary society confronted with the painful processes of history.

The camera offered him the possibility of exploring different narratives, allowing him to play with the course of time. In film he found a perfect medium for exploring both sound and visual language. The disjunctions between words and images in Narkevičius’s films make manifest the impossibility of an objective documentary. He eschews the close-ups that are a common feature of contemporary documentaries, used to demonstrate the veracity of an interviewee’s testimony. The central characters of Narkevičius’s narratives are often absent from the screen, replaced by objects, drawings and other surrogates.

Selected group exhibitions:

2010 'There's Always a Cup of Sea to Sail In', The 29th Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo; 2009 'What Keeps Mindkind Alive?', The 11th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul; 2007 Skulptur Projekte Münster 07, Münster; 2003 The Viewer's Dictatorship, the 50th Venice Biennial, Venice

Selected solo exhibitions:

2009 Deimantas Narkevičius, BFI Southbank Gallery, London; 2008 'The Unanimous Life', Meseo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; ”Among the things we touched”, Secession, Vienna; Deimantas Narkevičius, The Lithuanian Pavillion, the 49th Venice Biennial, Venice.

Nerijus Milerius was born in 1971, in Vilnius, Lithuania. Bachelor of Philosophy at Vilnius University (1994), Master of Philosophy at Vilnius University (1994), Diploma of Advanced Studies (Diplome d’Etudes Approfondie) at Paris XII University (1999), Doctor of Philosophy at Vilnius University (2001).

From 2001 Milerius works at Vilnius University, Department of Philosophy where he now holds the position of Associate Professor. He is also teaching in Vilnius Academy of Music and Theatre, and EHU-International. Milerius also taught in the Centre of Religious Studies of Vilnius University, and Vilnius International School of Management. He was Visiting Lector in the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), gave public lectures in Chandigahr, Goa, Delhi (India). He was a tutor of the international projects “Cultural and Visual Studies Reconsidered”, “Visual Studies of Immedia: Exploring Postmodern Immediacy of Mass Media” and a member of the project “Europe in Cinema, Cinema in Europe” sponsored by the European Science Foundation. In 2009-2010, Milerius has spent an academic year in New York University (USA) as Fulbright visiting scholar.

Milerius was coeditor of “P.S. Landscapes: Optics for Urban Studies”. Vilnius: EHU Publishing House (2008) (with B.Cope) and “Urban changes in Eastern and Central Europe: architectural, cultural and social aspects”. Vilnius: Vilnius University Publishing House (2008) (with V.Dranseika, U.Tornau). He has also published dozen of articles in Lithuanian, Russian and English languages.

In the last ten years he has participated in numerous seminars and conferences in the universities of Stockholm (Sweden), Copenhagen, Roskilde (both Denmark), Prague (Czech Republic), Warsaw (Poland), Paris (France), Southampton (England) and Washington D.C. (USA).

A member of the Council of the Lithuanian Society for Philosophy, Milerius works in the field of film philosophy and urban studies.

Esther Shalev-Gerz, born in Lithuania, moved to Jerusalem where she studied at the Bezalel School of Art and Design (1975-1979). Now the artist is based in Paris. Esther Shalev-Gerz is internationally recognised for her seminal contributions to the field of art in the public realm and her consistent investigation into the nature of democracy, cultural memory and the politics of public space. For over 20 years her work has focused on interventions and projects in public space, taking the form of collaboration and exchange with the audience. Her installations and photographic work raise questions on group memory and its interaction with personal history and souvenir. In these commemorative monuments, installations, video and photographic works, questions about history are posed, and its relationship with collective memory is explored and investigated.

Esther Shalev-Gerz is currently professor at Valand School of Fine Arts, Gothenburg University, Sweden. The creative work of Esther Shalev-Gerz was the subject of a major show in 2010 at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. In 2012 the artist will have a retrospective at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne.

The Lithuanian artist Irma Stanaitytė is a lecturer at the department of Photography and Media Arts at Vilnius Academy of Arts. She specializes in the field of audiovisual and interdisciplinary arts. Since 1997 Irma has participated in numerous exhibitions, audiovisual art and film festivals, artist residencies and creative symposiums in Lithuania and abroad. Her professional areas of interest are creative self-expression, interaction between an artist and an authority, personal identity in different socio-cultural circumstances, relationship between idealism (ideology) and reality (history).

Salla Tykkä was born in 1973 in Helsinki, Finland, where she lives and works today. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki 2003. She has been working with photography, video and film since 1996. Her work mainly deals with audiovisual memory and the power structures within the everyday life visual narratives.

Her latest solo exhibitions include:

Hayward Gallery Project Space, London, 2010; Norrköping Konstmuseum, Norrköping, 2009; City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, 2007; Chapter Gallery, Cardiff, 2006; S.M.A.K., Gent, 2006; De Appel, Amsterdam; Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York, 2006.

She has participated in numerous group shows in museums and public institutions among others:

17th Biennale of Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art, 2010; Momentum, Moss, 2009; Sguardi da Nord - Reflecting with images, Galleria Civica di Modena, Modena, 2007; Tropico-Vegetal, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2006; La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2001.

Salla Tykkä's films have been shown at international film festivals like:

36th International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, 2007; 21st Brest European Short Film Festival, Brest, 2006; Tribeca Film Festival, New York, 2003; International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Oberhausen, 2003 and 2002.

Salla Tykkä is currently working as the acting professor at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

Eugen Moritz was born in 1959 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, where he studied at the painting department of Fine Art Academy "Ioan Andreescu". Since 1992 he has become a member of the Artists’ Union of Romania.

Eugen Moritz teaches Photo-Video and Computer Aided Image at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca. He leads video projects and gives lectures on video, video installations, history of photography and photographic techniques. In 2008 the artist received a PhD in Visual Arts. His professional interest is in the relationship between traditional arts and digital technologies. Eugen Moritz is known as a multimedia artist that mixes traditional techniques with new high-tech contemporary means. He works in the areas of video art, photography, infography, painting, graphics and advertising

For the last seven years Lukas Brašiškis has worked in film education, theory and production. In 2005, after earning his bachelor degree in Vilnius University (Lithuania), he was among the founders of the first non-government Film and Media Education Center (www.menoavilys.org) in Lithuania. There he worked on implementation of a number of film education projects and reviewed films in Lithuanian cinema-devoted magazines and on Lithuanian National TV. Since then Lukas has been contributing to the biggest film devoted magazine in Lithuania “Cinema” (“Kinas”). In 2006 Lukas was one of the directors (together with Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė and Dovydas Petravičius) of the experimental documentary “K City”. This film received The Best Youth Documentary Award in the Lithuanian film contest organized by Goethe institute and was selected to be screened in the International Munich Film Festival for Film Schools among other international film festivals.

In 2009 Lukas has received Fulbright Scholarship and currently he is pursuing MA degree in Film and Media Studies Program at the New School University. In New York City Lukas continues to focus his attention on film theory, in particular on the temporal aspect of moving images and their exceptional rapport with reality. Lukas also creatively examines film as he produces his theory-and-practice based master’s thesis on “Cinematic Realism beyond Representation”. As a part of his thesis Lukas has also worked on three-channel video installation “any-space-whatever” (http://aswnewyork.tumblr.com) as well as on a creative documentary “Moving Memories”.