Eye and De Appel are organising a special evening to mark the reprint of the original catalogue to accompany the Works and Words art event in Amsterdam (1979). The evening looks back on the celebrated art show involving artists from Central Europe, which also included a comprehensive film programme presented by De Appel and Holland Experimental Film.
Works and Words was a ten-day art event that took place in Amsterdam in 1979 to focus on contemporary artists from socialist Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia. The programme included lectures, performances, installations, photo exhibitions and film and video screenings. The show was an initiative of De Appel and was realised in association with prominent art centres in the city.
The evening highlights the history and significance of this interdisciplinary international art event in 1979 from a modern perspective.
political tension
The programme includes a selection of experimental films from the original programme by pioneering artists such as Dóra Maurer (HU), Józef Robakowski (PL) and Mladen Stilinović (HR). The screening is additionally framed by a conversation on the fascinating context of Works and Words as a cultural event organised during the politically tense Cold War era
everyday life
Contemporary Polish media artist Wojciech Bąkowski will give a concert performance. Bąkowski’s work explores some of the themes that also engaged the experimental filmmakers of the late 1970s, such as the reframing of the stuff of everyday life through film and video.
The programme is organised on the occasion of the reprint of the original Works and Words exhibition catalogue by De Appel and Roma Publications.
The Program:
Welcome by Anna Abrahams (EYE on Art ) and De Appel director Niels Van Tomme
LIFT, Vladimír Havrilla (Czechoslovakia), 3’15”, b/w, S8, no sound, 1974
Slovak artist Vladimir Havrilla worked as a sculptor before turning to filmmaking in the 1970s. LIFT is a conceptual film that uses pixilation technique to show two women as if they were levitating above a tennis court, systematically capturing their movement through the cinematic space.
TWO TIMES IN ONE SPACE (Dva vremena u jednom prostoru) Ivan Ladislav Galeta (Yugoslavia), 12′, b/w, 2x16mm, 1976-79
With TWO TIMES IN ONE SPACE the Croatian multimedia artist Galeta appropriated Nikola Stojanović’s short film In the kitchen (1969). While the original was filmed in one take, Galeta used an overlapping double projection of this footage, with a time shift of 9 seconds, to alter the time-space structure of the segment and deconstruct the narrative focus of the original.
RELATIVE SWINGS (Relatív lengések), Dóra Maurer (Hungary), 1973, 10′, b/w, 35mm, opt.ds.
Maurer is an artist and graphic designer whose work often involves complex mathematical systems. This film is a playful research into the nature of movement as recorded on film. Through a split screen, we are exposed to the interrelatedness of different moving images: the swinging of geometric objects placed in front of the lens and the camera itself being in motion.
I’M GOING (Idę) Józef Robakowski (Poland), 1973, 3’, 35mm, sound
Robakowski’s wide-ranging experiments on celluloid sought to engage a novel filmic language. I’M GOING places the bodily experience of increased exhaustion in dialogue with the materiality of film. Holding his camera, Robakowski counts his steps as he ascends a parachute tower. As the film is shot in real time in one take, it deconstructs the traditional filmic gaze of narrative cinema.
Conversation with Sonja Simonyi en Kaspars Reinis
RUN AWAY (Bježi), Mladen Stilinović (Yugoslavia) 1973, 7′, color, N8mm, sound
Croatian artist Mladen Stilinović, known by many for his Manifesto of Laziness, produced an idiosyncratic oeuvre of experimental shorts on film. RUN AWAY, shot in Zagreb in one day, is a dynamic exploration of urban life under socialism and the socio-historical and ideological forces that structure it.
SELF-FASHION SHOW (Öndivatbemutató), Tibor Hajas (Hungary) 1976, 13′, b/w, 35mm, opt.sd.
Filmed in a busy square in Budapest by neo-avant-garde artist Tibor Hajas, this film self-reflexively questions the truthfulness of the filmic image. It shows passers-by silently posing in front of the camera, at times separated from their surroundings with a black backdrop. Through an added soundtrack, which alternates internal monologues with probing interrogations, Hajas connects the themes of surveillance, private thought and public space.
STONE CEREMONY, Milan Knížák/Dobroslav Zbornik (Czechoslovakia), 1972, 6,’ b, /w, 16mm
Czech artist Milan Knížák was a central figure of the Fluxus movement, for which he became the “Director of Fluxus East” in 1965. STONE CEREMONY is a re-enactment of a ritualistic performance by a group of young artists. By adding a soundtrack in post-production, the work simultaneously transcends its role as a mere document of an action, and engages the medium specificity of film.
ACTIVITIES (Działania) Przemysław Kwiek, Zofia Kulik (Poland), 1972, 12’, 16mm
The artist duo KwieKulik, active between 1970 and 1988, merged their private lives with artistic experiments in opposition to the authoritative socialist state. ACTIVITIES documents a collective action that encompassed four days of improvised interdisciplinary events, executed by eleven artists at a TV studio. Each gesture unfolded as a reaction to whatever preceded it within this enclosed space.
Concert-performance Wojciech Bąkowski (b. 1979, Poland)
Besides being a visual artist, Bąkowski is also a poet, filmmaker and musician. In his recent musical compositions Bąkowski combines stock sound effects with straightforward melodies. These music collages are enriched by formally uncomplicated poetry, which is comprised of particular chanted words. The concert-performance in Eye will contain the compositions from Bąkowski’s new album “JAZZ DUO” that will be released this winter by Dunno Recordings.
Curator of the Film Programme: Sonja Simonyi
Curator of the performance: Jagna Lewandowska
Curators of De Appel Archive: Kaspar Reinis, Nell Donkers
De Appel website is presenting the film Gallery Alive on the occasion of the reprint of the Works and Words catalogue. This work by famous Polish artist Józef Robakowski from 1975 sketches a fascinating picture of the local avant-garde in that period.
Gallery Alive will be on display from 2 October to 31 October 2018:
http://deappel.nl/en/events/gallery-alive-jozef-robakowski-2
De Appel website is presenting the film Gallery Alive on the occasion of the reprint of the Works and Words catalogue. This work by famous Polish artist Józef Robakowski from 1975 sketches a fascinating picture of the local avant-garde in that period.
Gallery Alive will be on display from 2 October to 31 October 2018
