ROB JOHANNESMA
THE CINEMA
Geographic Paradigms Curated by Lorenzo Benedetti, Director of de Appel Arts Centre Amsterdam
Geographic Paradigms explores different situations in the world from six oblique perspectives. The complex definition of time and identity are seen in an historic perspective, in which myth and nostalgia are a filter for a modern image. It can be seen in the void in the Greek parliament, or in the black balloons in an anti-government protest in Sofia, creating moments of surrealism, or in the metaphysical architecture of Rome, showing the times of a desolated past. A confrontation with the past is also visible in the poetic or ironic personal or collective perspectives of the detectors of change.
THE CINEMA is located in Hall 3, underneath the large main staircase designed by B-ILD. The films run in a continuous loop. Total programme running time: 47’22”. AV Installation: Vidisquare. THE CINEMA is located in Hall 3, underneath the large main staircase designed by B-ILD
1. Stefanos Tsivopoulos (GR, b. 1973) Geometry of Fear, 2012 6′ Courtesy Kalfayan Galleries, Athens/Thessaloniki
2. Pravdoliub Ivanov (BG, b. 1964) Black Balloons, 2013 1’10” Courtesy SARIEV contemporary, Plovdiv
3. Rob Johannesma (NL, b. 1970) Sparkles of Day and Dusk, 2005 9’27” Courtesy Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam, Rotterdam
4. Nedko Solakov (BG, b. 1957) Nostalgia, 2010 1’22” Courtesy of the artist, Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv and Galleria Continua, Beijing, Paris, San Gimignano
5. Michael E. Smith (US, b.1977) Dope dog, 2008 0’38’’ Courtesy KOW, Berlin
6. Elise Florenty (FR, b. 1978) & Marcel Türkowsky (DE, b.1978) A Short Organon For The Hero, 2012 15′ Courtesy Grimmuseum, Berlin
7. Margaret Salmon Oyster, 2014 14’25” Courtesy Office Baroque, Brussels
More about the work by Rob Johannesma: The video Sparkles Of Day And Dusk(2005) is a two channel video work. In the left part of the screen a camera films the area around the famous Palazzo dello Civiltà in Rome’s EUR. We are looking at a rhythmically moving camera that pulls along a fence and occasionally focuses on the fence, building materials, statues and weeds.Deliberately the camera tries to focus through the openings of the fence on the fascist architecture of the building. The front façade and the side façade of the building are surrounded by scaffoldings equipped with giant reproductions of the building’s façade in a life-size scale. The camera often swings from the building to the blue sky and into the bright sun. Then again the camera scans with a swipe the bushes near the fence to expose the presence of a man, a homeless man or a refugee. In the right part of the screen, a camera films the distinction between the debris of the destruction of the bourgeois interior and the original marble interior of the building. As time progresses in the video it becomes unclear if the original architecture is also part of the destruction. The camera focuses on dust, broken glass, damaged marble and so on. The movements of the camera are emphasised by ‘noise’ and industrial sounds. Every now and then the sound completes with the movements of the camera in the movie; then again there is a sudden silence and we can hear the sound of the original sound recordings of the area, which creates a sense of a real commitment to the place. The video Sparkles Of Day and Dusk contains contrasting elements: the sun versus the camera-lens, the black man versus the white horse, the demolition and the renovation (preservation) and the history versus the here and now. These counter dictating moments are often used in the cinema of the sixties, like L’Eclisse or Il Deserto Rosso by filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, in which the empty “new” post-war architecture is served as a metaphor for a fundamental loneliness or the inability of people to really communicate.
