Berlin International Film Festival 2015

The Forum Expanded Exhibitions 2015 a Group exhibition at Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg

The title of this year’s programme is "To the Sound of the Closing Door": when a door closes, it does not necessarily mean that a possibility ends. The works selected challenge this sense of finality by tracing the echo of the slammed door. They seek out the points at which projects and utopias are able to come into being and the way in which historical ruptures and upheavals generate visions and expectations for the future. Yet the movements and narratives created by closing, opening and stepping through these metaphorical doors also imply the possibility of exclusion and the failure of new projects – but how does one measure success or a lack thereof anyway? 

The 17 works in the group exhibition create parallel worlds, counter- narratives and – to stick with the language of cinema – both rear projections and multiple ones

APT artist Jen Liu is participating the exhibition “To the Sound of the Closing Door” with her work “The Machinist’s Lament”  a Single-channel video installation, Sound, Colour & black/white of 18”.

When economists and politicians talk about bringing industrial production back to America, it’s a response to real economic problems: particularly, a blighted Midwest region, the former heart of America’s postwar boom, now a string of ghost towns. If the factories come back, they would bring back jobs and money, that is true – but what makes it so compelling as a subject of economic policy is what else is promised: that social dynamics, family relationships, political mechanisms, everything will work properly again, as it was intended, as we all desire.

The Machinist’s Lament speculates on re-industrialization, retaining the magical thinking that drives such unrealistic policy. It imagines a non-specific future populated by female factory workers. Here, alienation is implicit in putting on a welder’s mask – a separation between performer and viewer, past and present, what is possible and unattainable fantasy. Footage was shot in Ohio, part of the Midwestern Rust Belt region. Voice-over text sources include industrial manuals, Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères, and Adorno’s Minima Moralia.

Artists:

CONCERT C WITH DOOR David Askevold (USA)
VIVENTES Frederico Benevides (Brasilien)
OPAQUE Pauline Boudry, Renate Lorenz (Deutschland/Frankreich)
HYSTERICS/AUTODIDACT Jeamin Cha (Republik Korea)
PRACTICING LIVE Yu Cheng-Ta (Taiwan)
A SPECTACLE OF PRIVACY Roy Dib (Libanon)
EIN HELLES KINO Martin Ebner (Deutschland)
WIE SOLL MAN DAS NENNEN, WAS ICH VERMISSE? Antje Ehmann, Jan Ralske (Deutschland)
IN ROM Jeanne Faust (Deutschland)
THE CHILDREN OF UZAI, ANTINARCISSUS Mireille Kassar (Libanon) 
MACHINIST'S LAMENT Jen Liu (USA)
MED BLINDPASSASJEREN INN I OLJEALDEREN OG BEYOND Eline McGeorge (Norwegen)
THE NAMELESS Ho Tzu Nyen (Singapur)
ONE HUNDRED SINKHOLES/INKS Jenny Perlin (USA)
INVISIBLE PRODUCERS. KAPITEL 1: PANORAMIS / PARAMOUNT / PARANORMAL Constanze Ruhm, Emilien Awada (Österreich/Frankreich)
JE PROCLAME LA DESTRUCTION Arthur Tuoto (Brasilien)
BEAUTY AND THE RIGHT TO THE UGLY Wendelien van Oldenborgh (Niederlande)