Screening and discussion: Ana Vaz, Oraib Toukan, Deimantas Narkevičius, and Martha Rosler

Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Tuesday, January 31 at 7pm for a screening of Ana Vaz’s The Age of Stone (2013), Oraib Toukan’s Palace of the Slave (2017), Deimantas Narkevičius’s Europa 54 54′-25 19′ (1997), and Martha Rosler’s Chile on the Road to NAFTA, Accompanied by the National Police Band (1997), followed by an in-person discussion with Deimantas Narkevičius and Martha Rosler.

The screening constitutes the third event of “Landscapes To Be Deciphered,” the second chapter of the four-part series Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art taking place at e-flux Screening Room in monthly chapters between December 2022 and March 2023. Read more on the series here.

Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art is produced and organized by e-flux; with the support of the German Film Office, an initiative of the Goethe-Institut and German Films. e-flux would like to thank the Lithuanian Cultural Institute and Gražina Michnevičiutė, Lithuanian Cultural attaché in New York, for their additional support in organizing this screening.

Films

Ana Vaz, The Age of Stone (2013, 29 minutes)
“Brasília is artificial, as artificial as the world must have been when it was created.” (Clarice Lispector)
A voyage into the far west of Brazil leads us to a monumental structure—petrified at the center of the savannah. Inspired by the epic construction of the city of Brasília, the film uses this history to imagine it otherwise. Through the reading of geological traces, the film unearths a history of exploration, prophecy, and myth that encourages us to rethink the dangers of constructing the future. A journey into unknown territory in Brazil leads us to discover a monumental structure and immerses us in the forms and texture of stone. This film, inspired by the construction of the country’s modern capital, is a science-fiction documentary, an astonishing object standing between the cinema of Glauber Rocha and the visual arts. A visionary vertigo that will take your breath. (Visions du Réel, 2014)

Oraib Toukan, Palace of the Slave (2017, 9 minutes)
Palace of the Slave departs from the open mouth of a sculpted lion and a cub’s gaze. It takes a Hellenic ruin in Jordan to compare pixel to strata and to analyze the mechanics of gazing at the digital representation of ruin, via historical record.

Deimantas Narkevičius, Europa 54 54′-25 19′ (1997, 8 minutes)
”One Friday morning I got the urge to go and see the center of Europe.” (Deimantas Narkevičius)

Chile on the Road to NAFTA, Accompanied by the National Police Band (1997, 10 minutes)
A bouncy music-video burlesque shot in and around Santiago, Chile, entwines reminders of U.S. corporate presence and of past political terror, with national and international musical strains. Chile, at the southernmost end of South America, was in 1997 on the fast track to admission into the economic alliance known as the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Chile was enjoying its reputation abroad as a free-market success—a reputation promulgated by those who aided or supported the fascist coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, which had violently overthrown the elected government in 1973 and which led to the deaths of the President, Salvador Allende, and thousands of others, and the exile of tens of thousands of political refugees. To the strains of The Blue Danube Waltz, a taxi drives down a back road, passing a horse-drawn cart and a gigantic upraised fist that turns out to be a Coca-Cola billboard. Warships are seen from a hilltop in Valparaíso, the home of the coup; a newly unveiled memorial to coup victims is viewed by visitors to the cemetery in which it is located. Back in Santiago’s festive town square, members of the national police’s “Odeon” band play a Star Wars medley, while a tot in military uniform dances to the music. Away from the square, a blind singer mourns lost love in front of a row of shuttered shops, and Indian schoolchildren listen to men playing a folk tune on Andean pipes. At the airport, a boy stealthily caresses a lit-up Coca-Cola sign. The video’s drive-by style suggests the thematic backdrop of tourism and internationalizing elites versus the indigenous poor. For those whose historical memory needs jogging, a short epilogue details the 1973 coup and its aftermath.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility           
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.         
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.