Travelling Identities

CAMPUS IN CAMPS
Academy of the Arts of the World Cologne, Germany / Akademie der Kühnste der Welt, Köln
August 16th 2013
Videoscreening and discussions
Public Giuliana Racco, Matteo Guidi, Martin Gerner: Videoscreening and discussions.
Gastgeber/Host: Academy of the Arts of the World Cologne

Giuliana Racco, Matteo Guidi: Regenerating relations. Research experience within contexts characterized by the presence of strict and imposed rules. Screening of the video In Between Camps (7”), Travelling Identities (7“).

The two artists, whose work focuses on the tactical nature of certain everyday practices, will discuss their collaboration with Campus in Camps (West Bank). Together with some of the programme’s participants, they set out on a two-day trek from Arroub to Irtas where they disregarded the imposed territorial divisions in favour of the traces of an ancient aqueduct. Walking thus became a way to sense a territory and its history, as well as a research method, which drove the project proposal to transform the abandoned Roman pool of the Arroub refugee camp into a common space for gathering people. The discussion will also include another space near Arroub, the ex-novo stadium, a site, which has shifted in connotation from a place for men’s activities to a place activated by women, as well as more about the artists’ past projects.

Giuliana Racco, visual artist (Canada). Her work focuses primarily on subsistence-related questions such as labour, housing and, in particular, immigration and other forms of individual and collective movement across territories.

Matteo Guidi, artist/anthropologist (Italy). His works focus on observations of everyday life, especially simple actions within rigidly structured contexts with strict or oppressive rules.

Complementary to the discussion by Racco and Guidi, Martin Gerner will present part of his video work on and from Afghanistan. Martin Gerner is an author, filmmaker, journalist and media activist. He is engaged in the building of a new media and cultural landscape in Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11/2001. He works with photography, audio, video and sub-culture in the Western-Islamic context, together with classical documentary film (Generation Kunduz – The war of the others / www.generation-kunduz.com). As a curator, he has initiated a series of cultural exchanges and festivals introducing artists from Afghanistan to the Western intercultural debate. He also works on Afghan and Western film and projects concerning media identity at the Cologne Academy of Fine Arts and Media and as a freelance correspondent.

https://www.facebook.com/events/204518873046436/
Video
https://vimeo.com/214981652