Erika Balsom

Hila Peleg

Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image

Haus der Kulturen der Welt

Richard William Hill

One of today’s most important documentary filmmakers, Alanis Obomsawin has dedicated her life’s work to shining a light on the injustices experienced by Canada’s Indigenous peoples. This retrospective monograph features an extensive interview with Obomsawin and includes images and written reflections on her entire career, including her most recent series devoted to the rights of Indigenous children. Never shying away from controversy, Obomsawin’s films have played a critical role in exposing ongoing systemic bias toward Indigenous populations—from fishing rights and education to health care and treaty violations. Obomsawin is also a graphic artist, and she incorporates her often dream-inspired etchings and prints into many of her films. The book includes illuminating essays exploring Obomsawin’s practice and mission as well as personal commentary from collaborators, archival material, and photographs from the filmmaker’s personal life and professional practice. As Obomsawin approaches her ninth decade of life—fifth behind the camera—this beautifully illustrated record of her astounding body of work is an inspiring celebration of the power of film to change the course of history. Authors include Karrmen Crey, Richard Fung, Monika Kin Gagnon, Candice Hopkins, Jessica L. Horton, Elizabeth Povinelli, Lisa Steele, and Jesse Wente.

Lifework

Alanis Obomsawin

Anselm Franke

Ape Culture traces the long cultural and scientific obsession with humanity's closest relatives. In the Western historical representations of modernity, depictions of apes were traditionally used to show the absence of culture. Standing as a liminal figure separating humans and animals, the ape has, since ancient times, played a central role in the narrative of civilisational progress. This book, which appears in conjunction with the exhibition of the same nameseeks, however, to go beyond the mere examination of apes as signifiers of difference. The juxtaposition of artworks with documents taken from popular culture and the history of primatology gives the reader an insight into what the science historian Donna Haraway has termed the primate order -- a hall of mirrors reflecting the scientific and cultural projections that turned the ape from an instrument of humanity's self-definition into an integral element in testing out the possibility of reconstructing human nature. Ape Culture will be shown at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt from 30 April to 6 July 2015.

Ape Culture

Contemporary engagements with documentary are multifaceted and complex, reaching across disciplines to explore the intersections of politics and aesthetics, representation and reality, truth and illusion. Discarding the old notions of "fly on the wall" immediacy or quasi-scientific aspirations to objectivity, critics now understand documentary not as the neutral picturing of reality but as a way of coming to terms with reality through images and narrative. This book collects writings by artists, filmmakers, art historians, poets, literary critics, anthropologists, theorists, and others, to investigate one of the most vital areas of cultural practice: documentary. Their investigations take many forms -- essays, personal memoirs, interviews, poetry. Contemporary art turned away from the medium and toward the world, using photography and the moving image to take up global perspectives. Documentary filmmakers, meanwhile, began to work in the gallery context. The contributors consider the hybridization of art and film, and the "documentary turn" of contemporary art. They discuss digital technology and the "crisis of faith" caused by manipulation and generation of images, and the fading of the progressive social mandate that has historically characterized documentary. They consider invisible data and visible evidence; problems of archiving; and surveillance and biometric control, forms of documentation that call for "informatic opacity" as a means of evasion. ContributorsAriella Azoulay, Zach Blas, Christa BluÌ^mlinger, Stella Bruzzi, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Kris Fallon, Evgenia Giannouri, Ben Lerner, SylveÌre Lotringer, Antonia Majaca, Sohrab Mohebbi, Volker Pantenburg, Veìreìna Paravel, Christopher Pinney, Ben Rivers, and Eyal Sivan Copublished with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin

Hila Peleg

About

Books

Join the club