Vtape Presents

MIEKE BAL (Amsterdam)
(with Shahram Entekhabi)

Lost In Space
(installation, 2005, 17:00 DVD loop)

April 15 - May 27, 2006
Opening Saturday, April 15, 2006, 1-5PM
Mieke Bal will talk about this work at Vtape April 15, 2:00pm

Lost In Space is an experimental documentary project by Amsterdam-based academic and artist Mieke Bal (with Shahram Entekhabi). It is an eloquent examination of what "displacement" looks like in modern-day Western Europe, inhabited as it is coming to be with waves and layers of migrations. Structurally minimal, Lost In Space allows the experience of individuals to be analyzed, codified and yet never robbed of their personhood.

First the "cast" of 25 is introduced in short silent sequences; each "character" is identified via the democratically lower-case printed text, a name followed by an identifying phrase (?rwandese asylum seeker, student, mother of 2, amsterdam; bosnian student, skopje; mother of 2, homeless, cleveland, ohio). At the end of this credit sequence, the visual switches. Now we hear what each of the participants were saying but their voices overlay the enigmatic images of ordinary people engaged in actions that seek to ensure their security. Mieke Bal says of these visuals: "punk youngsters sitting, whiling away time, thickening duration while their dog is the only figure trying to do something. A futile but coerced effort to clean the public park after the Love Parade in Berlin occupies the time of the unemployed. Police protect the US and UK embassies, but are unable to prevent bike riders from transgressing the blocked off territory. Fire fighters only manage to destroy, not protect the home on fire. What these visual non-stories have in common is that they inflect, gloss, and further 'accent' the speech we hear, foregrounding the impossibility of narrativity to flourish under conditions of social stagnation".

On the sound track, the speakers, all with distinct voices, accents, some speaking English, others in languages from Farsi to German - are all translated into crisp English sub-titles. Thus all are rendered alike, in spite of their different life experiences, different backgrounds. All are mediated by the act of translation. All are equally "lost in space", existing as disembodied voices. Some offer poetics ("if they want unity let them go to the cemetery because the queen who lies there and the beggar who lies there - they all look alike, while bones, bare teeth"); others are more straightforward ("My heart has a need for many things that are missing. One of these things is to be able to speak our language...")

Mieke Bal is best known for her elegantly written cultural theory and critical analysis and her rigorous academic achievements. However, since 2002, Bal has produced a series of experimental documentaries that address issues of displacement in contemporary Europe, with various collaborators - in this case Shahram Entekhabi. Focusing on individuals who each tell their stories in straightforward, often very personal ways, these experimental documentaries are exercises in critical listening. Their stories are often layered tales of migrations, planned and forced, of disrupted lives and families, of changed expectations and plans.

COMPANION EXHIBITION

Vtape and A Space present
MIEKE BAL

Nothing Is Missing
at A Space, 401 Richmond St. West, suite 110
(4 channel video installation, 2005)

April 13 - April 22, 2006
Opening Saturday, April 15, 2006, 1-5PM
Mieke Bal will talk about this work at A Space April 15, 3:00pm

This work features four interviews - each a monologue in a different language - with four mothers who have been "left behind". As migrating sons, daughters, grand-daughters, grandsons, and combinations of these join the global diasporic communities in flux, Mieke Bal's ground-breaking work offers an elegiac set of portraits of those who remain in the wake of migrations. Laconic, accepting and practical, these "mothers" speak to the effects of this sea change of immi- and emi-gration. And in doing so, gives voice to those most easily forgotten in the global community of ever-restless movement.

Mieke Bal is currently Academy Professor at the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences and also Professor of Theory of Literature at University of Amsterdam. She has written on numerous topics, including art, cultural analysis, semiotics. Recent books include A Mieke Bal Reader. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006; The Artemisia Files: Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and Other Thinking People, The University of Chicago Press, 2005; Traveling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide, University of Toronto Press, 2002.

Shahram Entekhabi is a Berlin-based artist who, from 2001 on, has primarily concentrated on his work as a media artist, producing video art, photography and installations.

Both of these installations are presented in association with the 19th Annual Images Festival, April 13-22, 2006. For more information please visit www.imagesfestival.com

speakers' series presented by Images
Friday, April 14, 3 to 5 PM
A Space (401 Richmond Street West, Suite 110)
"Biography entangles the biographer"
In presenting another person's story, does one inevitably tell a story of oneself?
Dutch artist and cultural analyst Mieke Bal
in discussion with Canadian film/video artist Mike Hoolboom,
creator of Images' Opening Night feature Fascination.
Moderated by Lisa Steele.

Vtape
401 Richmond St. W., #452
Toronto, ON M5V 3A8
416 351-1317

Tuesday-Friday 11am-5pm, Saturday 12-4pm
For more information, contact info@vtape.org

www.vtape.org

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