top of page

Site 22: Video-Screening Program

Grace Dodge Hall Basement, Room 70

Sille Storihle & Jumana Manna

The Goodness Regime, 2013

21 minutes

The Goodness Regime is an experimental documentary written and directed collaboratively by Manna and Storihle. With the help of a cast of children, the film investigates the foundations of the ideology and self-image of modern Norway – from the Crusades, via the adventures of Fridtjof Nansen and the trauma of wartime occupation, to the diplomatic theatre of the Oslo Peace Accords. The Goodness Regime was shot in Norway and Palestine, and combines the children's performances with archive sound recordings including US President Bill Clinton speaking at the signing of the Oslo Accords, and Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik's New Year address to the Norwegian people in 2000. The film attempts to capture the apparatus that perpetuate the image of Norway as a peacemaking nation and absolve the nation from the power structures it upholds. The Goodness Regime premiered at Kunsthall Oslo exactly twenty years after the conclusion and signing of the Oslo Agreement by Israel and the PLO in August and September 1993, and has since then been shown in a number of exhibitions and festivals around the world.

Sasha Litvintseva

Evergreen, 2014

27 minutes

Evergreen explores the crisis of grand narratives in the face of the photographic image. The documentation and technological memorizing of a disappearing world does not prevent subsequent amnesia, while parks are built to commemorate events, of which no memory remains. Global shipping infrastructure is put to use in the transportation of the ephemeral and the construction of an immanent utopia, while tourism takes over from archaeology. As the protagonist wonders through a world on an undefinably temporal or spatial journey, we ponder whether the locations are physically present, numerous and simultaneous; or whether they are all one, merely a closed loop of rebuilding and forgetting. Heritage as spectacle, spectacle as heritage, nature as both.

Litvintseva

Saša Tkačenko

Under Control, 2014

4 minutes, 43 seconds

The sound performance in this and Tkačenko’s other video work installed at Site 21, examine the relations between sound and space in a direct manner. The sound used for further development of performance’s structure is a rhythmical fragment taken from the pop song “Under Control” by The Strokes. A drummer performed the rhythm in the open space of the Atrium of Tirana’s National historical Museum in the pre-given time lapse, which is transmitted in different parts of the Museum’s interior. In that way the sound becomes a form that materializes the space deprived of any added connotation. This project was originally produced by TICA – Tirana Institute of Contemporary Art in the framework of AIRLAB residency program supported by the Prince Claus Fund.

Tkacenko

Shelly Silver

5 lessons & 9 questions about Chinatown, 2009

9 minutes, 54 seconds

You live somewhere, walk down the same street fifty, a hundred, ten thousand times, each time taking in fragments, but never fully registering the place. A building comes down, and before the next one is up you ask yourself ‘what used to be there?’ Ten square blocks. Past, present, future. Three languages, thirteen voices, 152 years. In 17,820 frames, 9 minutes and 54 seconds.

Silver

Shelly Silver

in complete world, 2008

53 minutes

This feature-length documentary consists of street interviews done throughout New York City. Mixing political questions (Are we responsible for the government we get?) with more broadly existential ones (Do you feel you have control over your life?), the film centers on the tension between individual and collective responsibility, particularly pertinent in today’s political climate. The film can be seen as a user's manual for citizenship in the 21st century, as well as a glimpse into the opinions and self-perceptions of a diverse group of Americans. It is a testament to the people of the city in this new millennium, who freely offer up thoughtful, provocative, and at times tender revelations to a complete stranger, just because she asked.

Silver 2
bottom of page