PRESENTS 2023
A screening of short videos.
Available to watch online from 13.09.2023 -13.11.2023 at presentsscreening.de.
Digitally screened by: Berlin Art Week, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU4), the Dreamy Place Festival (UK), and Video Club (UK)
Screened in person at:
21.09.2023 at VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver Canada
20.10.2023 at HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU2), Berlin Germany
Featuring work from: April Lin 林森, Brothers Sick, Chloe Pascal Crawford, Hang Linton + Laura Lulika, Katrin Bittl + Saioa Alvarez Ruiz, Khairani Barokka, Misra Walker, RA Walden, Seo Hye Lee, Venesse Guy, and Zinzi Buchanan.
PRESENTS is a selection of video works that don’t require an abled or physically present body in order to be performative. Thirteen sick, disabled, d/Deaf, and care-giving artists come together to expand the idea of ‘performance’, presenting work that is embodied and immediate without forcing bodies to conform to ableist norms of art-making.
In addition to their video, each artist has created a score for you to perform alongside the work. The scores are instructions, prompts, invitations, or challenges from the artist to the audience. They create a sense of connection to an artist who isn’t physically there, but who speaks to us while we watch their video, and asks us to embody the performance of their artwork.
This second iteration of PRESENTS offers many tiny gifts from the artists, reaching out to us from far away, teleporting into our computer screens, homes, or theatres; at times sharp, soft-edged, slow, stratospheric, whipsmart, oblique, raging.
We hope you enjoy your presents.
-Frances Breden and RA Walden, PRESENTS curators.
THE VIDEOS
Some videos ask us to consider our performances online on social platforms, such as Traveling Solo ASL Story via Zodiac Signs which plays with online influencer Instagram culture, or OHYUNG: now i close my eyes the world i see is so beautiful which creates a virtual world where avatars of the living and dead reunite and are projected back onto the body.
Others invite us to the most morbid dance party of our lives, such as apocalypse core which asks us to scream-sing our favourite song as the world burns, or the music video where Hang Linton sings Blue Light Hike as they’re chased through a wage-labour nightmarescape by a violent police system embodied in a rapping pig.
Artists also grapple to represent the unrepresentably cruel systems of ableism and colonialism we live under: Upright Nationalism’s relentlessly parades military personnel being forced to stand up and serve their country, while In the Belly of the Beast creates an experimental horror film to depict the rot of colonisers like Christopher Columbus that lie at the heart of the American empire.
Artists perform with mythical beings who could be our downfalls, our or saving graces: we dance a perilous dance with the ancient baby God of love in Cupid’s Shuffle; and sculpt Golems for our and our community’s protection in Alchemy of the Ill.
Finally, our simple daily routines are elevated to performance: Dust Prayer shows the beauty of the rituals of ablutions, Cranes shows the power of solidarity of simply sharing a cigarette in silence, and Sound of Subtitles shows how the act of deep listening (not with our ears, but with our bodies) can be an act of creation.
