La galerie Nadja Vilenne participe à Loop Fair Barcelona et montrera le dytique « The Day the Clown Cried » de Charlotte Lagro. Eleni Kamma participe à Loop Festival Barcelona. Elle y projette « Yar bana bir eğlence. Notes on Parrhesia », dans le cadre de l’exposition Without Pause, Dialogues, un projet dont Imma Pietro est commissaire.
Curated by Imma Prieto, « Without Pause, Dialogues » is the result of a collaboration between LOOP Barcelona, Argos – Centre for art and media, Flanders Arts Institute and Flanders Image.
Without Pause, Dialogues is an exhibition project made up of a dozen perspectives that establish six common lines of research. It is built around two determining factors: a formal one, which is concerned with matters unrelated to the work itself, and a conceptual one, which emerges from the desire for dialogue between the works in the form of diptychs (two adjacent screens). The dialogue fostered by the diptychs reinforces and highlights the contents of each one of the projects, thus creating a feedback loop between them.
María Ruido (Lo que no puede ser visto debe ser mostrado) & Sarah Vanagt & Katrien Vermeire (The Wave)
Lúa Coderch (ARKADI. A guide for the perplexed) & Ria Pacquée (As long as I see birds flying I know I am alive)
Jordi Cané (Una batalla más) & Pieter Geenen (Relocation)
Raquel Friera (Space of Possibles-Istanbul) & Els Opsomer (10th of November |09:05)
Patricia Dauder (March 5th 1979) & Elias Heuninck (I’ll be late for dinner)
Jordi Colomer (Svartlamon Parade) & Eleni Kamma (Notes of Parrhesia)
Reial Cercle Artístic
Carrer Arcs, 5, 08002, Barcelona
26 May — 10 June 2016
Yar bana bir eğlence. Notes on Parrhesia.
a single screen film by Eleni Kamma
duration: 37 min 24 sec (2015)
In her first cinematographic film, artist Eleni Kamma revisits the tradition of the Karagoz Theatre and its role in the creation of a political voice.
Although Karagoz is a local character symbolizing the “little man” within the limits of the Ottoman Empire, he belongs to a larger puppet theatre family. He speaks of what the people want to hear and what the people want to say.
Until 1870, despite the “absolute monarchy and a totalitarian regime”, Karagoz “defied the censorship, enjoying an unlimited freedom”. Through the use of empty phrases, the illogical, the surrealistic, extreme obscenity and repetition, Karagoz theatre was often used as a political weapon to criticise local political and social abuse.
By 1923, this multi-voiced empire gave way to a Turkish-speaking republic within which the caricatures of ethnic characters no longer made sense. With the rise of new media, the popularity of Karagoz and Orta Oyunu declined even further.
Yar bana bir eğlence. Notes on Parrhesia. reflects upon the term “parrhesia”, which implies not only freedom of speech, but also the obligation to speak the truth for the common good, even at personal risk, by questioning how the notion of entertainment relates to personal expression and public participation.
This is where the artist links to the Gezi Park protests in 2013, in which humor and creativity were key elements in mocking the political regimes. Filmic fragments from National Cypriot television archive alternate with the voices of Cypriot, Greek and Turkish Karagoz masters discussing language, history, the tools and the political role of the medium.
The film is a visual essay in which pressing contemporary political matters intertwine with history and abstraction; and in which meticulousness of research meets with poetics of associations. How to move forward? Can we learn something from the old masters? At times the gaze is directed back to the viewer. To speak your mind, you must first overcome fear by taking a deep breath.
[sociallinkz]