calendario eventi  :: 

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28/6/2004

Two exhibitions

Witte de With, Rotterdam

Yto Barrada
A Life Full of Holes – The Strait Project

The Strait is an ongoing photographic project initiated in 1998 by Yto Barrada (b. Paris, 1971). It examines the hope of migration and its influence on the Tangier cityscape. The title refers to the Strait of Gibraltar, the narrow channel that divides Europe and Africa, but for Yto Barrada, Strait is another word for the temptation of departure, a commonplace that gives the streets of Tangier the form of an imaginary space into which all the obstinate dreams of leaving the country are engulfed. What she seeks to capture in her photographs are the temptations of leaving, rather than veritable attempts, in a reportage-like style.

''Even a life full of holes, a life of nothing but waiting, is better than no life at all''. Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi, A Life Full of Holes (1964).

Even in its collapse, the colonial dream has left us the heritage of an iniquitous regime of managing and perceiving the mobility between the North and the South of the Mediterranean. In this bottleneck known as the Strait of Gibraltar, visiting rights are now unilateral.

This territory of the in-between has the astonishing particularity of being marked by the coincidence between a physical space, a symbolic space, an historical space, and finally, an intimate space.

In Arabic as in English, strait conjugates narrowness (dayq) and distress (mutadayeq). In clear weather, the horizon of the Moroccan coasts is Spanish; but the Strait has become a huge Moroccan cemetery. This immigration differs from the preceding ones. It has its vocabulary, its legends, its songs and rituals. People no longer say ''he emigrated,'' but h'reg: ''he burnt,'' he burnt his papers, his past. The exploits of the burnt crop up everywhere, their stories stoke the desire for elsewhere. An enclave long forgotten by national investments, Tangier is now the city where thousands of hopes come up short. Rather than any nostalgia for an international ghetto, what I want to show in this city is the inscription of this stubborn urge for departure which marks a people, first of all.

I have sought to suggest the metonymical character of the Strait in this series, by insisting in my images on the tension between allegory and snapshot. Strait is another word for the temptation of departure, and a commonplace (which has become a common bond), ceaselessly agitating the streets of Tangier. This slippage gives the streets the form of an imaginary space, into which all the obstinate dreams of leaving the country are engulfed. The would-be immigrant forges a collective identity here, by dint of being legally obstructed from crossing the Strait. This obstacle is not without consequences on the state of dispossession that emerges, and on the indignity attached to his position. This new immigration (a temporary, individual movement) is perceived in Europe as being closer to a migration (a massive shift of population). We are in the era of suspicion.

Our Moroccan cities are shaped by urban migrations, but also by and for tourism; these two great mass movements which are directly connected to the machinery of globalization. This transformation requires a reconfiguration of the geography of differences, while new trajectories imply new identities (the rural exodus, the return of emigrant Moroccan workers on their summer visits), identities which themselves are forged in resistance to the domestication of space.

When I take photographs in Tangier, I can hardly ignore the fact that I am in my father's native city, where my mother came to lose her way. I do not seek to dedramatize the tension and dangers of departure. Yet I've never quite known where I am myself when I walk through this city, in what history. I can photograph all the inhabitants who want to leave it, but myself, I always come back, and I live there in the comfort of the maternal home. In my images I no doubt exorcise the violence of departure (the others' departure), but I give myself up to the violence of return (to home). The estrangement is that of a false familiarity. I photograph temptations, and not veritable attempts, in a reportage-like style. As soon as I am back in Tangier, I am once again in a state of absence, I become absent. Perhaps there is a relation between my highly personal experience and the situation of a population seeking to leave the country, having not found its place there. I began to photograph my mother's house, the violence of domestic relations; and of course, what I find nearby, much closer, are the people dreaming of absence.

Yto Barrada
The exhibition in Witte de With consists of approx. 50 pictures taken in Tangier from 1998 to 2004, and the film The Magician (2003, 18 min.).

Yto Barrada was born in Paris in 1971. She studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and the International Center of Photography in New York. She now lives and works in Paris and Tangier. This double connection has informed her films and photographs. In her recent work, Barrada pursues her photographic and filmic recording of contemporary Morocco. Her photographs offer an effective and overdue antidote to the aesthetic fetishism that has long characterized Western representations of this part of the world.
The Strait , initiated in 1998, is an ongoing project examining the hope of migration, the representations it gives birth to and its influence on the Tangier cityscape.

SYMPOSIUM
June 26, 2004, 11 a.m. – 4.30 p.m.
On the occasion of the presentation of Yto Barrada's photographic work, Witte de With is organizing a series of debates. The discussions will address the issue of migration in contemporary Moroccan society.
Participants are: Yto Barrada, Sylvaine Bulle, Aboubakr Jamaï, Bouchra Khalili, Fouad Laroui, Anaïs Masson, Stefania Pandolfo, Maxence Rifflet, and Nadia Tazi. Catherine David will chair the proceedings.


Karel Doing and Lulu Ratna
Indonesia Under Construction

Special events: June 29 and July 1, 2004

The Netherlands and Indonesia are inextricably connected because of their history. Many Dutch people and Indonesians still have personal memories of the direct links with the colonial society that the Netherlands imposed on Indonesia. Karel Doing and Lulu Ratna met each other in Jakarta while Doing was carrying out research for his film Een ontdekkingreis naar Tarakan [A journey to Tarakan]. Lulu Ratna, who supports independent film in Indonesia with her organization Boemboe, introduced Doing to the relatively new independent group of filmmakers and video artists who are active in Indonesia.
A period of intensive collaboration and exchange of materials and ideas between Lulu Ratna and Karel Doing ensued. In 2003 they organized a film festival in Amsterdam and Rotterdam called 'Indonesia Calling!', with films and videos by independent Indonesian directors.

Connections
Karel Doing and Lulu Ratna worked together on a video installation, titled Connections, for Witte de With. Using video fragments and e-mail, they have corresponded about their day-to-day activities and work over recent months. What linked them was their shared interest in movement and traveling by public transport, and the coincidental encounters that take place there. Karel Doing found old footage of the Nederlandse Indische Spoorwegen [Dutch Railways] in Indonesia in the Filmmuseum, and integrated it in the installation. The video installation Connections is about the visible and hidden relations between the two countries, the personal and more universal similarities and differences.
Sound: Pierre Bastien

Video library
Besides the installation Connections there will be a library of videos in Witte de With, mostly by Indonesian makers, for the public to browse. From his first encounters with Indonesian independent film- and videomakers, Doing was impressed by the high quality of their work, often realized with a minimum of means. Despite the immense social and economic problems that the country has to deal with, the makers strive to create a personal space with their work and to build up a network. Artists' initiatives such as Ruangrupa and more activism-orientated collectives such as Off Stream work alongside each other. Lulu Ratna made a selection of work for the video archive: an initial sketch to chart the diverse methodologies of Indonesian film- and videomakers.
With works by: Ariani Darmawan, Dimas Jayasrana, Forum Lenteng, Lulu Ratna, Wisnumurti, Tintin Wulia, Yufik, Andibachtiar Yusuf, Oliver Zwink.

Karel Doing (b. Canberra, 1965) studied at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Arnhem (Arnhem Academy for the Arts). Immediately after graduating he established Studio één, a low-budget workshop for experimental and independent filmmakers. He produced two episode films (Vitaal Filmen on Super 8 and Rainbow Stories on 16mm) and has collaborated with performance groups such as Loophole Cinema (UK) and Metamkine (France). Since 1999 his attention has shifted towards documentary film.

Lulu Ratna (b. Jakarta, 1972) studied anthropology at the University of Indonesia. Since then she has worked as festival manager for the Jakarta International Film Festival (1999) and in 2000 she established the Kofiden Foundation, which supports the interests of independent film- and videomakers in Indonesia. In 2003 she organized the Indonesian film festival, ‘Indonesia Calling!', in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, together with Karel Doing. In 2003 she also established the Boemboe film distribution company, specialized in Indonesian short film, and made her first documentary, The City Bus.

Tuesday June 29, 7.30 p.m.
Location Lantaren/Venster
Screening (with introduction) of TABEE, a film by Nico de Klerk and Frank Roumen; Dutch Filmmuseum, Amsterdam 2002
7.30 p.m. introduction by Nico de Klerk, about the production of the film Tabee and the scale and meaning of the Dutch-Indian film collection of the Dutch Filmmuseum.
8 p.m. screening film Tabee, directors Nico de Klerk and Frank Roumen; production Dutch Filmmuseum, Amsterdam 2002; duration 53 minutes.

Historical black-and-white archive material from 1914-1945, gives a view onto the decline of the Dutch colony that was occupied by the Japanese in 1942. A voice-over describes – against the background of a captivating archipelago – the history of Indonesian nationalism and the economic crisis of the 1930s.

Image: Yto Barrada

Witte de With, center for contemporary art, Witte de Withstraat 50, 3012 BR, Rotterdam

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