EXHIBITION: SUPERPOSITIONS THREE | LIVING TOGETHER | CHAPTER III | NARRATING

CURATORS: Katia Anguelova and Lucrezia Cippitelli

OPENING: 23/09/2024, 18.00 – 20.00

Video projections in public space: Alexandra Gelis (Colombia/Panama/Canada) and Jorge Lozano (Colombia/Canada) | Alessandra Ferrini (Italy/UK) | Jihan El-Tahri (Egypt/France).

The third chapter of Living Together, entitled Narration, speculates on the concept of togetherness through the perspective of communities who are neither seen nor heard. 

To us “together” means to build alliances with groups whose story remains invisible and untold. The act of narrating is an integral part of our experience as human beings; it is the field of our alliances, the space where we can sit together while storytelling, listening and learning. It is the act of retracing stories by observing networks of alliances and cooperation; of understanding connections that are not covered by the mainstream history, and thus acquiring of a more complex understanding of our present world, and of our ways of being, thinking, dreaming and remembering. Roland Barthes wrote that narrative “…is present at all times, in all places, in all societies; …indeed narrative starts with the very history of mankind; …there is not, there has never been anywhere, any people without narratives; …all classes, all human groups have their stories” (Roland Barthes, “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative”, New Literary History 6, n.2 (1975):237). 

For the first part of the third chapter of Living Together – Narrating in the Sofia’s Tzarevetz underpass we selected the works of Egyptian author and film maker Jihan El-Tahri, the Colombian/Canadian duo Alexandra Gelis and Jorge Lozano, and the Italian/British researcher and film maker Alessandra Ferrini.

Their audiovisual projects are very different in terms of aesthetics, of materials engaged and of cultural framing. At the same time, all of them intend to give value and visibility while utilizing the audiovisual language, to the very existence of events, communities, lived experiences and history that are either largely unrecognized or hidden. 

Jihan El-Tahri’s short video Flag Moments (2013, video, 6’47’’) is an emblematic introduction to her work as an author, researcher and witness of the history of the Global South, as well as of the spread of alliances and solidarity movements there between the 1960’s and the 1980’s. The video is a filmic and documentary montage of archival images of people celebrating independence throughout Africa, from the Congo to Algeria, from Kenya to South Africa. Flags and music introduce the spectator to the joy, the complexities and the expectations of the “third nations” who liberated themselves from their European colonizers in the second half of the 20th century. It is also an introduction to El-Tahri’s partaking in the exhibition at the ICA – Sofia Gallery, as well as to her carte blanche (in focus) event organized for the Cinema House in Sofia, part of the public program of Living Together. 

The work of Alexandra Gelis and Lozano Kuenta (2012, Short film, 19’15’’), (the alliteration of the Spanish word “cuenta”, which means “storytelling”) is the site-specific version of an environmental multichannel installation dedicated to the life of the Wayúu’s indigenous society in the Guajira Peninsula, in the Caribbean area of Colombia, at the border with Venezuela. Kuenta brings together indigenous land usage, the relation of the landscape to economic factors, in this case salt production, and the metaphor of weaving as a way of constructing reality through minor, everyday actions. Sand, wind, salt, and sea are the main elements of an audiovisual experience which engages the spectators with the daily life of a community which is at the same time marginalized and culturally rich, where material culture and convivence in Nature are fundamental elements of their identity. At the same time these are the very reason why the community has been oppressed within the colonial system which the Europeans established in the indigenous territories occupied since the 16th century.  

Unsettling Genealogies (2024, Video, 24’) by Alessandra Ferrini is a complex film-essay which elaborates on the notion of ‘essayistic mode‘ of film making. It emerged from the field of Film Studies with scholars theorizing film as a ‘thinking form’ that spans across media and resists a clear definition. 

Ferrini’s film investigates the genealogy of La Biennale di Venezia as an institution and particularly the Film Festival. As a vehicle for political propaganda since the 1930’s regime in Italy, it has been the main tool for the occupation of the cultural field and of visual culture in general. Ferrini’s film interlaces the story of the Fascist politicization of culture with its relation to the country’s industrial interests in the colonies, as well as with artists’ memories of those years. It is a dry, powerful and unapologetic picture of the recent history of Italy and its erasure since the end of World War II.

Furtner information: https://ica-sofia.org/en/ica-gallery/exhibitions/item/563:superpositions-three-living-together-projections-chapter-narrating