Artists' Film International 2021

August 14, 2021 - February 27, 2022

Istanbul Modern hosts the Artists' Film International program featuring videos, animations and short films by artists from different geographies of the world. Following the online exhibition of Artists’ Film International, Istanbul Modern now presents the program as an exhibition at its temporary space in Beyoğlu. This year’s videos focus on “care”.

The need to care about all the elements that bring life together is becoming more and more urgent – from nature to the environment, from animals to plants and people. It is also crucial to address the forms of relationships we establish with each other as countries and individuals carefully. Today, the phenomenon of “care” is felt even more deeply especially after a year of lockdowns across the world due to a virus, which confined people to their homes and prompted them to focus on their ability to act collectively upon the same needs in order to continue their lives.

The selection of Artists' Film International in 2021 presents different insights on the theme of “care” addressed through various frameworks and forms of expression. This year, following up on the invitation of Istanbul Modern, artist Sena Başöz is participating in the program. Başöz's video titled “The Box” is shown both at Istanbul Modern and at the program’s international partners in 2021.

Established by the Whitechapel Gallery, London in 2008, Artists' Film International includes 22 global partner organizations. In this regard, each organization selects an exciting recent work on that year’s specific theme by an artist from their region, which is then shared amongst the network. In the past years, Istanbul Modern has participated in the program with videos by Ali Kazma, İnci Eviner, Sefer Memişoğlu, Bengü Karaduman, Burak Delier, Vahap Avşar, Zeyno Pekünlü, Cengiz Tekin, Pelin Kırca, Senem Gökçe Oğultekin and Ergin Çavuşoğlu.

Within the scope of the program, nine videos are shown in the exhibition, with the curatorial selection of Istanbul Modern. In this context, the artists participating in the exhibition are: Sena Başöz (Istanbul Modern, Turkey); Thania Petersen (Bag Factory, Johannesburg, South Africa); Clare Langan (Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland); Giulio Squillacciotti (GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy); Himali Singh Soin (Project 88, Mumbai, India); Agnė Jokšė (CAC, Vilnius, Lithuania); Rehana Zaman (Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK); Patty Chang (Ballroom Marfa, Texas, USA), Kiri Dalena (MCAD, Manila, Phillipines).

Program / Content: Öykü Özsoy Sağnak, Nilay Dursun

Sena Başöz
The Box, 2020
Single channel video | 4’ 31’’
Istanbul Modern, Turkey

About the video:
Sena Başöz explores gestures of care and compassion in "The Box" as hands gently stroke a woman’s hair revealing symbolic objects hidden in her locks. Başöz’s video consists of a sequence of various objects hidden inside thick, dark, long hair being picked over sometimes by a male and sometimes by a female hand. The artist works with the notions of compassion and care, which triggers the phenomena in contrast such as concealment and revelation, holding on and letting go, death and life.

Clare Langan
Flight from the City, 2015
High Definition video single channel film, sound | 6’ 44’’
Music: Jóhann Jóhannsson
Camera and Editing: Clare Langan
Performers: Tristan Gribbin & Leela Lynn Arni
Clare Langan, courtesy of the artist & Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt and Nichido Contemporary, Tokyo
Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland

About the video:
Clare Langan’s “Flight from the City” is about connection, love, separation and transition. Starkly shot in ‘black’ water – in the hot springs at Flúðir, Iceland – Langan focuses on the powerful bond between a mother and daughter. Whilst the film addresses universal concerns of humanity in the intimate relationships between a child, a parent or a partner, the title of the film might also suggest flight from the safety of home. The projection of our experiences become part of the film’s narrative and the entwined and distanced bodies, which we view on screen, ultimately become our own. The film was shot especially for Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s (1969 – 2018) composition Flight from the City.

Giulio Squillacciotti
What Has Left Since We Left (Italy, The Netherlands, 2020), 2020
Short Film
Single Channel - 4K Video 1.33:1 English Audio Stereo | 20'
Courtesy of the artist and Care of Milan (I), Kingswood Films (NL)
GAMeC / Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bergamo, Italy

About the video:
Giulio Squillacciotti’s work concentrates on overcoming feeling of loss. Decades later, the Treaty on European Union was signed in the Dutch city of Maastricht (1992), the representatives of the last three countries left in Europe meet again in the very same room where it was signed, this time to deliberate on the permanent shutdown of their Union. In what seems to be a looped therapy session, the three characters - helped by a British interpreter as a self-appointed analyst - try to deal with their feeling of loss for a Europe that doesn’t exist anymore. The conversation allows their political and personal bonds to be woven together metaphorically, compelling them to face their identity crisis and acknowledge what no longer is, what is left and what still can be of that Union.

Kiri Dalena
Mag-uuma (Farmer), 2014
Single channel digital video, black and white, with sound | 2’ 06’’
Courtesy of the artist
MCAD, Manila, Philippines

About the video:
Mag-uuma (Farmer), features a young female dissenter from Mindanao whose performance during a peasant demonstration caught the attention of filmmaker and visual artist Kiri Dalena.

The young woman agrees to be documented while singing the song which she sang during the rally and the artist starts to film her in the middle of a rice field while farmers submerged in knee-deep paddies continued to plant. However, the young woman performes another song, compelling those around her to take pause and listen. This song of protest which she sings in the video is an old ballad learned from her mother, its verses speaking of a history of exploitation and poverty, circumstances that continue to cast a shadow on their community and personal lives.

Patty Chang
Invocation for a Wandering Lake Part 1 & 2, 2016
Color, two-channel video | 12’
Courtesy of Patty Chang
Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, Texas, USA

About the video:
Patty Chang’s “Invocation for a Wandering Lake: Part 1 & 2” calls for contemplation of human and non-human lives, the natural environment, and destructive governing forces, as we witness the artist in ritual acts of care and mourning.

In the video, the lifeless body of a whale floats off the coast of Newfoundland’s Fogo Islands, a former fishing hub. The artist is seen meditatively washing the deceased animal. With similar attention, she scrubs the shell of an abandoned ship in the desert of Muynak, Uzbekistan, a defunct seaport on the receded Aral Sea. These repetitive acts seem almost absurd and unnecessary, as these entities could never return to life. Nevertheless, she continues to perform rituals of care, perhaps as a way to process their fateful ends.

Agnės Jokšė
Dear Friend, 2019
Single-channel HD video, color, sound | 24’ 17’’
Courtesy of Odeta Riškutė
Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania

About the video:
Lithuanian artist Agnė Jokšė’s “Dear Friend” is a video, which performed by the artist, is based on a letter-form text written in contemplation of friendship as platonic love between queer women. The confession-like work openly and sensitively speaks about various forms of love, affection and care in the contemporary world.

Himali Singh Soin
Setting the Stage for a Gathering of Friends, 2020
Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser)
Video, Colour, Stereo Sound | 10’ 35’’
Project 88, Mumbai, India

About the video:
Himali Singh Soin’s “Setting the Stage for a Gathering of Friends”, which was made in the heart of the pandemic of 2020, in Delhi, is about uncertainty, fear, chance, missed connections, false promises. The work is a return to something we once felt and a repetition of something we had never experienced. It charts the path of an Ensō (a special circle form in Zen Buddhism), a depiction of a “whole” or a “void”, a different cosmology, depending on the way you look at it, up-close or at a distance. The circle in the video holds together the improvised elements of free jazz and the disparate footnotes found in fortunes opened at random. It sets the stage for a gathering of friends and proposes that waiting can be a form of love.

Rehana Zaman
Sharla, Shabana, Sojourner, Selena, 2016
HD video | 22’
Courtesy of the artist and LUX, London
Whitechapel Gallery, London, United Kingdom

About the video:
In Rehana Zaman’s“Sharla, Shabana, Sojourner, Selena” sees six female narrators share personal experiences in an audition roll call, some scripted, some spontaneous. Their testimonies describe perverse scenarios where racialisation and gender dynamics inflect the encounters of each protagonist in the workplace, religious spaces or sexual trysts. The script for the film references group dynamics (Experiences in Groups by W.R Bion) and experimental feminist films (Soft Fiction, by Chick Strand and What You Take for Granted by Michelle Citron). Stories are intercut with moments of physical contact in a beauty salon, a space where inter-corporeality and pleasure is offered as an alternative to the anxieties of collective experience.

Thania Petersen
KASSARAM, 2020
Video | 12’ 10’’
Bag Factory, Johannesburg, South Africa

About the video:
“KASSARAM” interrogates the artistic strategies historically used by European colonial forces to demarcate oppressive hierarchies of people in South Africa. Named after the old Malay word kassaram which means a “big mess” or things being “out of place” or  ”upside down”, Thania Petersen’s work highlights how present-day imperialist agendas perpetuate these practices by continuing to impose contemporary “orientalist” views onto diverse communities worldwide.