The Jewish Museum Announces Final Lineup for Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video

New York, NY – The Jewish Museum’s exhibition series Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video continues this fall with a lineup of month-long presentations featuring recent film and video works from around the world.  These final presentations of the 25-country series include the Philippines (September 2015), Argentina (October 2015), South Africa (November 2015), Colombia (December 2015), and Japan (January 2016). In February 2016, the Sights and Sounds series will conclude with a five-month presentation of highlighted works, featuring one film from each of the 25 participating countries—on view from February 5 to June 30, 2016.

Over the past two years, Sights and Sounds has explored new works selected by twenty-five curators from around the world, introducing New York audiences to the latest developments in filmmaking within the art context worldwide. Each curator selected new film and video works from their respective regions – including Argentina, Vietnam, Angola, Israel, China, and others. Their selections are screened for one month each in the Museum’s newly refurbished media center, which has been transformed into a miniature cinema. The works in Sights and Sounds touch on themes significant to both Jewish culture and universal human experience, including spirituality, exile, language, conflict, family, humor, and history. A full list of participating curators follows below.

Upcoming presentations:

Philippines, curated by Joselina Cruz – August 28 – September 24, 2015

The practice of video art in the Philippines employs a rich, contemporary brand of localism, one marked by extravagant imagery filtered through a twenty-first-century sensibility. Maria Taniguchi’s Untitled (Celestial Motors) is focused on a jeepney, a popular form of transportation and a cultural icon in the Philippines, which has been purged of color and ornament. Anito by Martha Atienza documents the Ati-Atihan Festival— a religious feast that celebrates the Aetas, people thought to be among the earliest inhabitants of the Philippines. Orpheus, by Victor Balanon, is a repetitive, hand-drawn animation based on a classic scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller North by Northwest (1959). Mariano Montelibano’s Pamunit (Fishing) shows a lone fisherman in slow motion, accompanied by the aggressive sounds of a Formula One auto race, a metaphor for the fast-paced globalization of the country.

Argentina, curated by Inés Katzenstein – September 25 – October 29, 2015

Works from Argentina explore the media-saturation of our contemporary world. Earlater by Fabio Kacero shows fragments of daily city life woven together into a non-linear narrative. Leticia Obeid’s Dobles (Doubles) compiles a series of interviews with well-known Mexican voice actors. In Insight, by Sebastian Diaz Morales, a gigantic mirror shatters, destroying a reflected portrait of a film crew. Juan Renau’s Maru y Yo (Maru and I) tracks the activities of a young man on his computer as he views photographs and video of an ex-girlfriend, providing a glimpse into the private routines of our digital lives.

South Africa, curated by Josh Ginsburg – October 30 – November 26, 2015

This group of works engages with various themes in contemporary video practice, including identity, language, and memory. Personal Accounts (Christolene) by Gabrielle Goliath examines the unspoken trauma of domestic abuse by selectively editing video interviews to show only the silences, exhalations, and “in-between” moments of private thought. Jonah Sack’s Exquisite Corpse tells the story of a headless man emerging from a swamp to commit murder, drive a tractor, and dance to a jukebox in a crowded bar in the form of comic-book-like animations. Dineo Seshee Bopape’s is i am sky depicts a woman’s face that is continuously interrupted by digital masking techniques. Lerato Shadi’s Matsogo shows two hands crumbling a slice of cake and reassembling it to a soundtrack of popular Setswana folktales.

Colombia, curated by Juan A. Gaitán – November 27 – December 31, 2015

This selection of videos touches on the persistence of violence and its effects in Colombia. Oscar Muñoz’ Distopía (Dystopia) references George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel 1984 (1949), depicting book pages that are immersed in water with the letters coming off one by one. Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead) by Elkin Calderón shows pigs and children using an abandoned swimming pool on the former grounds of a Caribbean villa built by the Colombian mafia in the 1990s. Miguel Ángel Rojas’ Economías Intervenidas (Intervened Economies) uses coca leaves, the source of cocaine, to explore themes of drug trafficking and socio-political double standards between developing nations and first-world countries. Daniel Santiago Salguero, inspired by a residency in Canada, documents the transportation of his personal effects from Bogotá to Ontario, linking the Americas in a symbolic act of repatriation.

Japan, curated by Yukie Kamiya – January 2 – February 4, 2016

This selection of recent video art from Japan responds to the 2011 Japanese earthquake and subsequent nuclear accident in Fukushima by embracing historical and sociopolitical subject matter. Ishu Han’s Return depicts, in reverse, the artist undressing and throwing his clothing into the sea—which is both a key resource for Japan and the source of the tsunami that devastated the country. Daisuke Nagaoka’s The fire that has been burning for 1000 years and the star that has gone out 8 minutes and 19 seconds ago imagines a post-Fukushima landscape using pencil-drawn animation. In Chair, Genki Isayama references the harsh forces of nature by documenting the disintegration of an unglazed ceramic chair submerged in water. Tadasu Takamine’s Japan Syndrome examines contemporary politics in post-Fukushima Japanese society by reenacting conflicts in quotidian life in a black-box theater.

Sights and Sounds Curators (in alphabetical order):

Nancy Adajania – India (Jun. 2015)

Miguel Amado – Portugal (Sept. 2014)

Jude Anogwih – Nigeria (May 2015)

Emre Baykal – Turkey (Jan. 2015)

Zoe Butt – Vietnam (Feb. 2015)

Natasha Conland – New Zealand (Aug. 2015)

Joselina Cruz – Philippines (Sept 2015)

Patrick D. Flores – Singapore (Oct. 2014)

Juan A. Gaitán – Colombia (Dec 2015)

Daria Ghiu – Romania (Mar 2014)

Josh Ginsburg – South Africa (Nov 2015)

Erin Gleeson – Cambodia (Nov 2013 – Jan 2014)

Yukie Kamiya – Japan (Jan 2016)

Inés Katzenstein – Argentina (Oct 2015)

Miguel A. López – Peru (Apr 2014)

Carol Yinghua Lu – China (Jul 2014)

Mailyn Machado – Cuba (Jul 2015)

Melanie O’Brian – Canada (May 2014)

Luiza Proença – Brazil (Feb 2014)

María Inés Rodríguez – Mexico (Mar 2015)

Suzana Sousa – Angola (Jun 2014)

Tijana Stepanović – Hungary (Apr 2015)

Chen Tamir – Israel (Aug 2014)

Wayne Tunnicliffe – Australia (Dec 2014)

Joanna Warsza – Poland (Nov 2014)