In Visible Colours: Remediated 2022
Screening 1: Taking Care of our History
Friday, September 23, 2022.
Introduced by Ana Valine, SCCS
Programming Note
A Surface of Emergence: A Micro Programming
Given the urge to dissent, the homogenization of discourse, the erasures of selective memory registers, the neoliberal universities, the redeployment of the 1980s vocabulary with different import, a generation grapples with an erased past. How does one narrate an event from the past—30-year ago—to the audience of the present day? The decision to go with such micro programming stemmed out of my interests in Micro-History. The excess of theorization as well as the longue durée tend to erase the living reality of the individuals, full of instabilities, change and emotions. That is a fundamental issue because what is the point of looking at the past if we are unable to display and reveal the lived reality?
Under the influence of famous historians such as Carlo Ginzburg, Carlo Poni and Giovanni Levi, micro-history inscribed itself in the intellectual tradition of Benedetto Croce which had a particular interest for the aesthetic of the singular. They focused on the individual scale and tried to understand the norm through the intense use of primary sources. What Ginzburg calls “paradigma indiziaro” offers a way forward in order to make an interpretation about a past event that we do not have access to. It is this method of micro-history which foregrounded culture and yet was not a method with doctrinal injunctions, but rather a way of interrogating research and its ambitions.
I have selected the films to bring together the above thematics addressed by In Visible Colours as well as reflect on the lived reality of the times and the women filmmakers. In Visible Colours offered ‘a surface of emergence’ and it is hoped that these works give an impetus to the possibility to open up new lines of inquiries into In Visible Colours and its legacy.
Zainub Verjee
Screening
Description
This collection of works underlines the imperatives of “taking care” of our history. Though “taking care” has been appropriated by the embedded neoliberalism of contemporary times, here “taking care” invokes the poetic impetus which Audre Lorde offered in 1988. “Taking Care” is part of our collective history and is primarily an act of resistance.
Selected films/videos are from the original programming of In Visible Colours (1989).
View Screening 1 Brochure
Paz Para Sebastián Acevedo
Lotty Rosenfeld
Chile, 1985, 3min.
No sound for first minutes.
English captions
A tribute to all those who have died protesting against the dictatorship in Chile, this video centres around the death of Chilean worker Sebastian Acevedo who immolated himself to protest against the arrest of his two sons by Chilean Security Forces. Surrounding the red flaming tongues of fire are a series of symbolic acts which signify the extent to which Chilean people have had to go in order to contribute their fight against the military regime.
You Take Care Now
Ann Marie Fleming
Canada, 1989, 10min.
English captions
“Fleming’s perilous travelogue recites, in first person voice-over, a tale of two cities. The first is Bridiski, where the patent sexism of her surround leads her to seek refuge in the hotel room of her unscrupulous tour guide. The second moves closer to home – where the simplest of street crossings becomes a nightmare journey of dark collisions, broken bones and ambulance drives.” – Mike Hoolboom
The Displaced View
Midi Onodera
Canada, 1988, 52min.
Language: English and Japanese
English captions for English language only
“The Displaced View” traces a personal search for identity and pride, within the unique and suppressed history of the Japanese in Canada. Through an examination of the emotional and cultural links between the women of one family, the processes of the construction of memory and the re-construction of history are revealed.
The artist prioritizes the Japanese language in this film. Lack of translation is deliberate.