At Home in Europe
The Big M
The Parade Green
Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 11.00 – 18.00
Monday 24 12.00 – 17.30
During 2007, the Big M is on tour through Europe, showcasing work curated as part of the At Home in Europe international media arts programme, a one-year collaboration between ISIS Arts (UK), BEK (Norway), RIXC (Latvia), and InterSpace (Bulgaria). The programme features films by 15 European artists who have created work around the theme of European identity and asks the question: can we ever really be At Home in Europe?
At Home in Europe involves artist exchanges between the partner organisations, this new co-curated screening programme, a website, publication and DVD.
The Big M was developed and is owned by ISIS Arts. A unique and highly stylised mobile inflatable venue for the presentation of video and digital media, it provides an alternative to the conventional gallery setting and exhibits work by emerging and established artists to diverse audiences. www.isisarts.org.uk/thebigm.html
Ioana Alexe-Ecker
Untitled
Germany, 2005, 4 min 5 sec
‘I made the film after three years of living in Berlin. The song I sing I often played with the violin in my childhood, at the request of my father. At that time it was not the national anthem. It is about the difference between the world I come from and the reality I live now.’
Eleni Bagaki
My Name is Eleni
Greece/UK, 2006, 2 min 41 sec
In this piece the artist is saying ‘My name is Eleni’ repeatedly with different inflections, placing her personal and cultural identity under question. Since European union internal migration has been common. Living in a new country you still carry your name from your homeland, and during social interactions your name is pronounced differently every time.
Arnis Balcus
Arnis Balcus’ Latvia, 1989–1991
Latvia, 2006, 1 min 4 sec
Using family snapshots captured as a child, the artist Arnis Balcus creates short photo stories that give an alternative view of the most significant years in the history of Latvia from the collapse of the USSR in 1989 to independence in 1991.
Christian Bermudez
Screensaver
Costa Rica/Norway, 2006, 2 min 15 sec
The film erases the screensaver’s whimsical nature to present a view of immigration from the inside. Bermudez could recognize his homeland in the images and it is the author speaking as an immigrant in Norway who interrupts the playfulness of the tropical pictures.
Kristine Briede
Your Voice in Europe
Latvia, 2005, 3 min
‘To lick or to bite – there is no other way’ said the great Russian artist Oleg Kulik of his work America Bites Me, I Bite America, where he presented himself as a dog sitting in a cage. In 2003, Latvia voted to enter the EU and in Karosta, a former Soviet military base, new phenomena of tourism and traffic started to appear. The ‘Eurowatchers’ from Karosta have paraphrased Kulik by ‘licking, licking and biting a little’.
Kristine Briede
Sightseeing
Latvia, 2006, 9 min 54 sec
Latvian Liepaja, Russian Liibava or German Libau – today a Latvian harbour town with astonishing and fascinating history. This short architectural sightseeing sequence shows the concept of ‘Eurowatching’ through the eyes of three slightly hung-over French artists and one very enthusiastic local guide.
Pete Hindle
Article 39
UK, 2007, 1 min 41 sec
Article 39 of the EU treaty, presented in the style of Star Wars. Is there anything more futuristic than the right to travel to another country and work there? This is a modern-day liberty that we take for granted, but to have these rights was unthinkable for those such as Huguenots, Quakers, and others who suffered religious persecution.
Borimir Ilkov
Shoes
Bulgaria, 2004, 3 min 45 sec
Shoes was shot and edited during an international cinema seminar at the Du Grain à Démoudre Film Festival in 2004. The video represents different personalities by showing details of each one of us, and it finally seems that we are all the same and belong to our home – Europe.
Rick Niebe
Empire
Germany, 2005, 1 min 9 sec
Empire is an attempt to depict the technological, disciplinary gaze as well as the inhumanity of the urban landscape against which stand the multitude of lives, voices and desires. In this perspective, Berlin’s Europa Center is a sort of paradigm-place of the new global model riven by conflicts and contradictions. Still webcam images of the Europa Center reprocessed in Italy. Voices and sounds from field recordings issued online under Creative Commons Licences.
Iñaki López Ordóñez
Zaandammerplain
The Netherlands, 2004, 3 min 1 sec
A music-documentary about a square in Amsterdam city. A neighbour remembers stories while the other characters build the sound base from their own dubbed movements.
Sara Rajaei
Charismatic Fates & Vanishing Dates
The Netherlands, 2006, 3 min 16 sec
There are moments of déjà vu in our lives, moments of intense recall. Here, the characters of the film are in a continual state of déjà vu. Kids are pure and immortal like ideas and concepts – they remain and remind, break the border between real and unreal. Those who are older retain the memories of their old home to comfort them, but memories are memories, without solidity to support.
Linda Saveholt
Linda and Jordani
Norway, 2006, 2 min 13 sec
Linda and Jordani don’t speak the same language but are dependent on each other for very different reasons. In a simple scene between two people and a camera, this film raises questions about the different positions people in Europe have today. Thanks to Jordani and Galya Dyulgerova.
Corinna Schnitt
Hello Ms. Schnitt (Schönen, guten Tag)
Germany, 1995, 4 min 59 sec
Schnitt’s films inhabit the space between documentary and fiction, intentionally leaving the viewer uncertain about their relation to reality. In Hello Ms. Schnitt, one sees the artist cleaning her apartment and run-down stairwell. Her actions are accompanied by the frail voice of her building’s caretaker, who repeatedly leaves a request on the answering machine.
Borislav Stoyanov
Violeta 25
Bulgaria, 2006, 2 min 34 sec
The film represents the upheavals in Bulgarian society over recent years. As a counterpoint to public history, it shows the personal history of a young lady, who obtains her goals regardless of the environment.
Mike Stubbs
Cultural Quarter
UK, 2002, 6 min 55 sec
It is a perfect summer’s day. From a window we gaze on a group of families enjoying themselves. Cultural Quarter presents the relationships of observation in the city, whilst begging ethical questions about surveillance, the gaze and human behaviour. Within the very current phenomena of city marketing and ‘regeneration’ it exposes some of the gaps between developers’ dreams and citizens’ perceptions of what cultural space means. Produced by Forma.
Theodore Tagholm
The Persistence of Vision
UK, 2006, 5 min 13 sec
Exploring the liminal spaces that surround us and the subliminal connotations of architecture that talks of a shared European history, from the classic to post-war reconstruction.