Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art

December 1, 2022–March 11, 2023

e-flux Screening Room
172 Classon Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205
www.e-flux.com

Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art

e-flux Screening Room presents Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art, a four-part series of screenings and discussions inspired by the works of the French filmmaker duo Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub.

With Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, Pedro Costa, Harun Farocki, Liam Gillick and Anton Vidokle, Louis Henderson, Laura Huertas Millán, Deimantas Narkevičius, Rosalind Nashashibi, Uriel Orlow, Matt Peterson, Matías Piñeiro, Martha Rosler, Keith Sanborn, Oraib Toukan, Ana Vaz, Clemens von Wendermeyer, Nele Wohlatz, and more to be announced

Curated by Lukas Brasiskis

“What we try to explore are things that are outside ourselves. We address ourselves to texts that offer us resistance. We try to test them out; we make audiovisual objects out of them, which consist of movements, movements within a visual frame, movements of light and sound.” —Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub

The series is conceived as a way of initiating discussion about the reverberations of Straub-Huillet's ideas in contemporary moving-image art. “The aesthetics of resistance”—a concept associated with Straub and Huillet as well as with Peter Weiss—is defined here as an opposition to both: the spectacularization and the uniformization of complex issues. In contrast to the idea of political filmmaking as the production of closed and easy to identify narratives that aim at instilling consensus among audiences, this series showcases works by artists and filmmakers who openly and audaciously examine the political potential of the film form and of post-dramatic storytelling. The screenings and discussions in this series will scrutinize ways of reenacting the past in the present; performing the archeology of historical texts; treating landscape as a depository of traces of colonialism and class tensions; making films together with local communities; and pushing the limits of the direct use of voice and sound; among other politically motivated strategies of filmmaking that bear either direct or indirect lineage from, or function as parallel vectors to, the works by Straub-Huillet.

Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art unfolds in four, multi-day chapters taking place at e-flux Screening Room from December 2022 through March 2023, each consisting of screenings of works by contemporary artists and filmmakers, and a screening of a select film by Straub-Huillet, accompanied by discussions.

The series opens with the first chapter, titled “In the Present, the Scripted Past Is Performed,” with events on Thursday, December 1; Saturday, December 3; and Tuesday, December 6. Scroll down for more details on the program, times, and participants.

Aesthetics of Resistance: Straub-Huillet and Contemporary Moving-Image Art is produced and organized by e-flux, with the support of the German Film Office, an initiative of the Goethe-Institut and German Films.