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LOBBY > FULL PROGRAMME > LIVE SCHEDULE > SHORTS: THE WORLD IS YOURS

FRIDAY 30 APRIL
21:00 – 22:25 BST

Race and ecology intersect. Do the privileged powers own the moon and sun? If so, time to reclaim them. A programme of five films guest-curated by Greg de Cuir Jr.


PROGRAMME NOTES
by Greg de Cuir Jr

This is what I wrote in 2019, in preparation for a program that did not happen in 2020…

The natural world as seen through the eyes and lenses of artists who are not primarily associated with an ecological aesthetic but who nevertheless have made relevant and important contributions to its numerous concerns. When it comes to people of colour and the Global South, those contributions and concerns are not often measured on the same, Western value scale. Or, to paraphrase the artist Kevin Jerome Everson, when he experienced latent resistance to his interest in the solar and the lunar in image-making: do the privileged, hegemonic powers also own the moon and the sun? If so, the time has come to reclaim them. This program offers cinematic visions literally from the ground up, to the heavens and beyond, with the subtle reminder that the world is yours, and everything in it.

Cut to 2021, in the grip of a global pandemic… 

Is the world still ours, or have the forces of nature reclaimed it? Not all viral outbreaks are measured equally, certainly not when international health systems are controlled by big business and geopolitical interests. Forget about WFH – ecological catastrophe is the new normal, and the mass migration of all things online only quickens the fall. Writing these notes on an energy-dependent laptop hastens the predicament, as does uploading these words to an energy-rapacious cloud, as does sending this piece attached to an email, as does pressing play on a streaming program for an audience plugged in from around the globe. Nevertheless dear reader-viewer, enjoy. And remember, as Cauleen Smith noted in her low-key viral Covid Manifesto: ‘The internet is not the answer.’ True enough. Let the struggle continue then by asking the right questions.

Featuring (not so) recent work by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Kevin Jerome Everson, Baloji, Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann, and Cauleen Smith.


GREG DE CUIR JR
Greg de Cuir Jr is an independent curator, writer, and translator who lives and works in non-European (Union) Belgrade, Serbia, where five different vaccines are available, but where the emergency ward for respiratory illness is on the eighth floor of a hospital with a broken elevator.


PROGRAMME

FARMACOPEA
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz – 5’38 – Puerto Rico – 2013

ROUGH AND UNEQUAL – OCEANUS PROCELLARUM
Kevin Jerome Everson – 21’17 – USA – 2017

PEAU DE CHAGRIN / BLEU DE NUIT
Baloji – 9’49 – Belgium/Democratic Republic of Congo – 2018

SEEDS (SKETCH 1)
Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann – 4’07 – Kenya – 2016

SONGS FOR EARTH AND FOLK
Cauleen Smith – 11′ – USA – 2013


Title image: Peau de chagrin / Bleu de nuit, Baloji, 2018

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