I haven’t seen many films but FOTOKOMORA 2010, series of talks with photographers, curated by Karol Hordziej & Martin Kollar was an interesting experience. I had a pleasure to talk & drink vodka with Lucia Nimcova, Nicolas Grospierre and Nico Krebs. Have a look at their websites !

Lucia Nimcowa

Nicolas Grospierre

TONK

shouldn’t be missed:

ANONYMOUS AMERICA: PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM

CURATED BY DIANE DUFOUR AND DAVID CAMPANY

18 sep – 19 dec 2010, Le Bal, Paris

One of the defining characteristics of the modern era is its anonymity, from the commodification of the everyday and the homogenization of culture, to the standardization of work and our alienation from political power.

Anonymes focuses on North America. Since the 1930s, American mainstream culture has celebrated individuality and the self, while nearly all its important image-makers have addressed the nondescript, the flattening of daily experience, and the pervading sense of anonymity.

For its inaugural exhibition, LE BAL brings together ten photographers and filmmakers whose work experiments with ways to record this anonymity: by definition, an indeterminate, unremarkable notion that escapes visual stereotypes and classification.

An exhibition with: Walker Evans, Chauncey Hare, Standish Lawder, Lewis Baltz, Anthony Hernandez, Sharon Lockhart, Jeff Wall, Bruce Gilden, Doug Rickard, Arianna Arcara and Luca Santese.

Every two years Brighton Photo Fringe coordinates a city-wide festival of exhibitions and events in partnership with Brighton Photo Biennial. In 2010 the festival included over 180 exhibitions, projects and events, included over 300 exhibitors and had an audience in the region of 140,000.

http://www.photofringe.org/

NOTHING IS IN THE PLACE a curatorial project by Jason Evans

AVI, Anonymous (Value Action), Donald Christie, Vicki Churchill, Brett Dee, Nigel Dickinson, Chris Dyer, Jason Evans, Anna Fox, Ken Grant, Nick Knight, Mark Lally, Clive Landen, Gordon MacDonald, Martin Parr, Vinca Petersen, Mark Power, Paul Reas, Richard Sawdon-Smith, Helen Sear, Paul Seawright, Nigel Shafran, Wolfgang Tillmans, Nick Waplington, Jack Webb, Tom Wood, Dan Wootton.

Nothing is in the Place is a subjective survey that remembers life in 1990’s Britain. The show is an introduction to some of the photography that was made at that time offering glimpses of political unrest, social upheaval and analogue youth culture. Everyday lows jostle with esoteric highs to create a compulsive parade. The show is presented in a modular, editorial style and the photographers featured generously allowed the curator to make new versions of their work, often very different from the original contexts and formats intended for the images.

The exhibition was commissioned and had it’s premiere at the Photomonth Festival in Krakow, May 2010 

Vinca Petersen, Raves and Riots 

Artists and photographers include: Wout Berger (NLD), Mohamed Bourouissa (DZ), Alejandro Chaskielberg (ARG), Josef Heinrich Darchinger (DEU), Esteban Pastorino Diaz (ARG), Ju Duoqi (CHN), Stephen Gill (UK), Oscar Fernando Gomez (MEX), Rinko Kawauchi (JPN), Molly Landreth (USA), Oumar Ly (SEN), Dhruv Malhotra (IND), Billy Monk (ZAF), Suzanne Opton (USA), Viviane Sassen (NLD), Alec Soth (USA) and Zoe Strauss (USA).  Many of these artists will visit Brighton & Hove to present on their work during the Biennial Opening Weekend.

My Favourite:

Stephen Gill, Untitled. Extract from “Outside In“, 2010

http://www.nellipalomaki.com/fafa_14.html

During this period Michael Clark has also invited 80 members of the public to join weekly workshops with the company. The group of untrained dancers have learnt a piece of choreography to be performed en-masse in the Turbine Hall over the August bank holiday weekend. These free public showings can be seen Friday 27 & Saturday 28 at 21:30 and Sunday 29 & Monday 30 at 17:30.

Clark has presented work within gallery spaces on many occasions, but this residency will enable him to respond specifically to the iconic architecture through a series of experiments, placing the emphasis on the process.

Following this research and development period Clark will use choreography, film, light and sound to create a site-specific dance event, working with collaborators including Charles Atlas, Peter Doig and Richard Torry. The world premier of the new commission will be performed in the Turbine Hall in June 2011.

Also presented over the bank holiday weekend artist Charles Atlas, one of the premier interpreters of dance, theatre and performance on video, and lighting director for all of Clark’s work, will curate a film programme of his and Clark’s collaborative films. Also featured is the first UK screening of Torse, Atlas’s 1977 two-screen collaboration with Merce Cunningham.

Fridgidaire tells the story of Frigidaire stewardess Cura who maintains an elusive relationship with her fridge.
Cura has obsessive-compulsive disorder. She fills her spare time ritualizing her day so that it does not get out of control. Cura wishes she could lighten up. Her anxiety about experimenting with weightlessness makes her even more aware of the gravity of the situation, especially when she privileges an elusive relationship with her fridge to that with a young man. She becomes obsessed with the primal drone emanating from its interior, which allows her to shut out the rest of the world and rid herself of any excess baggage. When a final romantic encounter with Ben goes awry, Cura totally isolates herself in the frigidaire. Here, she can aviate the confines of time and space and enter into a state of oblivion.

Installation & Film
The work features a hacked fridge in the gallery space, which, when opened, triggers the unfolding scenes. In order to see the next scene, the viewer must open this fridge, compulsorily implicating him in Cura’s neurosis. The work alternatively can be shown as a short film, serially interrupted by Frigidaire adverts.

Cura – Asia Bas
Ben – Ludwig Reuter

Film – Selene States
Editor – Melanie Jilg
Sound Design – Vincent Wikström
Still Photography – Felix Grünschloss
Original Music Her Empty Frigidaire – Paul Sonnenberg

This is the first UK exhibition of the two-screen and multi-screen works of revered German filmmaker Harun Farocki. The survey comprises nine video installations, from his first two-screen project Interface in 1995 toImmersion, 2009, about the use of virtual reality in the treatment of traumatised US soldiers following the occupation of Iraq.

40 Years of Ruptures shows photographers whose initial Rencontres exhibitions were controversially at variance with the accepted standards of the time. In the forefront is Duane Michals with a retrospective; and Nan Goldin, whose Ballad of Sexual Dependency has such an impact and who is also inviting various photographer friends along.

CA ME TOUCHE
NAN GOLDIN’S GUESTS:

Leigh Ledare
Born in 1976 in Seattle. Lives in the United States.

Composed in its entirety of photographs, written anecdotes and ephemera, the materials from Leigh Ledare’s first book Pretend You’re Actually Alive, assert themselves as a searingly intimate investigation of the artist’s complex and ambivalent relationship with his mother.

JH Engström
Born in 1969. Lives between Stockholm and Paris.

”Since I met Amanda in 2005 I’ve photographed her, our environment and our relationship, constantly. Sometimes it’s done with a throwaway camera, other times it’s with a 4×5” camera on a tripod. There is no hierarchy in that, as long as the result speaks to me. The work is driven by my own life, and my strong belief in the truth of what my eyes witness daily. This is a story of a miracle and love, with all its strengths and vulnerabilities. It’s also a story about change and the times we are living in. Life goes on.”

Anders Petersen,
Born in 1944 in Stockholm, Sweden.

”So I keep trying without manners asking the same questions 
knowing there is more hidden than visible.

Always surprised by the unpredictable”

Boris Mikhailov
Born in 1938 in Kharkiv. Lives and works in Berlin.

”1941. I was three years old and I can still remember the bombings, the howling sirens and the searchlights in the wonderfurl, dark blue sky. Blue, blue, light-blue…For some reason we think that one generation will be spared a war. I see this blue series as the second.”

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Duane Michals
Born in 1932. Lives and works in New York.

[ ''This photograph is my proof. There was that afternoon,

when things were still good between us, and she embraced

me, and we were so happy. It did happen, she did

love me. Look see for yourself!'' ]

Duane Michals, Grandpa Goes to Heaven (Series of 5), 1989

The Rencontres d’Arles Awards 2009

and the winner is:

Rimaldas Viksraitis - 
Born in 1954. Lives and works in Lithuania.
presented by Martin Parr

Rimaldas Viksraitis is a Lithuanian photographer who works in and around the villages where he lives, and photographs a way of life that is fast disappearing. In his world, any apparent dysfunctionality, propelled by liberal drinking of home brew, appears to be an asset  because people seem to be having  such a great time. He goes to the parties, he sits and drinks and talks with his subjects. Their lives are not overcome by the gadgets of modern day life, which so often eradicate any meaningful communications between families.  You can tell he is enjoying himself and at ease with his subjects. Viksraitis’s sitters also seem to enjoy taking off their clothes. I assume this helped by the home brew and rather warm temperatures, or perhaps they are all having frequent sex? Against this backdrop, numerous animals seem to be part of daily life. They surreally pop up everywhere; they too seem to fit in effortlessly. They share the family’s domesticity with the greatest of ease. The resulting images, displayed (or published) here are slightly insane and wonderfully surreal. They are quite compelling, and if I spoke Lithuanian, I would love to join in the party. However as this will never happen, Viksraitis provides  us with a ring side seat, with all the emotion, the drink and the ensuing madness. Martin Parr November 2008.

my choice:

Moira Ricci
Born in 1977. Lives and works in Italy.
presented by Giovanna Calvenzi

”This series is born in a moment while I had eyes only for my mother’s photos, she had just disappeared, and it’s just my huge desire to be close to her or to spend the time I didn’t spent, because I was not born yet o because I wasn’t there, with her. Photography becomes the way we can meet in an illusion: I transform myself into an image to be able o be near her and watch her, dressed and haired more or less in the way of the time the photo has been taken, in the simple and modest way she dressed like. Watching her I try to create a stronger link between us, and although people can’t speak inside images, I hope to make her understand she’s in anger by my glance, waiting for her to turn her head to me, and to take her immediately away from the photo. If this won’t happen, I resign myself and remain in the photo, close to her, forever.

I guess in front of just one picture people can’t really  understand the meaning f the work: I think that the disclosure comes by watching al least two images or more, because in all the pictures I glance at my mother and my presence ay look a bit estranged.”