The Cross Art Projects. Artist Exhibition, Debra Phillips, A talker’s echo. 2023

CAF Dialogues

Film Screening by Alex Martinis Roe. Curator Jasmin Stephens

Saturday 7 February at 3pm

at The Cross Art Projects

Jasmin Stephens is hosting two informal film screenings on Wednesday 28 January at 6.30pm and Saturday 7 February at 3pm at The Cross Art Projects as part of independent platform, Contemporary Art and Feminism.

The film, It was an unusual way of doing politics: there were friendships, loves, gossip, tears, flowers… (2014) is by Berlin-based Australian artist Alex Martinis Roe. The film which is 10 minutes in length will be followed by discussion.

The Cross Art Projects, Artist Exhibition. Film Screening by Alex Martinis Roe. Curator Jasmin Stephens — 7 February 2015

It was an unusual way of doing politics: there were friendships, loves, gossip, tears, flowers…, film still, 2014

Alex is in Australia continuing her work on a film series exploring a genealogy of feminist collectives and networks in Europe and Australia, which affirm sexual difference as a way to create a new social order, rather than seeking to attain ‘equality’ within the existing system. Alex’s first film, A story from Circolo della rosa (2014), which was filmed in association with the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, was shown at UTS Gallery last year in the exhibition Jasmin curated, far and wide: Narrative into Idea.

About the film, It was an unusual way of doing politics: there were friendships, loves, gossip, tears, flowers …

Two mother tongues. Two ways to tell a story. What happened at the week-long meeting in 1972 of Psychanalyse et Politique (which formed within the French Women’s Liberation Movement in 1968 in Paris) and to some of the women who went on to found the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective? This encounter gave rise to a series of practices that continue to distinguish the Italian and French movements. This two-channel film brings a number of voices together to explore a genealogy of political practices that together build a particular culture of gathering. (Alex Martinis Roe)

About Alex Martinis Roe

Since 2009 Alex has lived and worked at Kunsthaus KuLe in Berlin. She is currently a fellow of the Graduate School for the Arts and Sciences at the University of the Arts, Berlin, funded by the Einstein Foundation. Recent exhibitions/events include: Their desire rang through the halls and into the tower, commissioned by Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht, and part of If I Can’t Dance’s Performance Days, Amsterdam (solo, 2014); Once I wrote the story of her life, because by then I knew it by heart, Rongwrong, Amsterdam (solo, 2014); Manifestos Show: Act I, Inessential fathers, Archive Kabinett and Berlin Art Week, Berlin (2014); and Affirmative Practices, organised and hosted by Alex at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2014).

Film Screening by Wendelien van Oldenborgh — 10 December 2014

Independent curator, Susan Gibb, Associate Curator with the organisation If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution in Amsterdam, introduces the film, Bete & Deise (2011), by Dutch artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh. The film is 40 minutes in length.

The Cross Art Projects, Artist Exhibition. Film Screening by Wendelien van Oldenborgh — 10 December 2014

Film still from Bete & Deise (2011), by Wendelien van Oldenborgh.

About Wendelien van Oldenborgh

Wendelien van Oldenborgh has recently been awarded the 2014 Heineken Prize for Art, the Netherlands’ wealthiest art prize. She is based in Rotterdam and her practice explores social relations through an investigation of gesture in the public sphere. She often uses the format of a public film shoot, collaborating with participants in different scenarios, to co-produce a script and orientate the work towards its final outcome, which can be film, or other forms of projection. Tackling social themes, her multi-level projects juxtapose voices, spaces and relationships to re-constitute the invisible and sometimes confusing subtext of our mediatised reality.

Van Oldenborgh studied at Goldsmiths College, London, and Beaux Arts, Paris, and her extensive exhibition history includes the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) and the 4th Moscow Biennale (2011). She will shortly be exhibiting at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2014); in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kerala (2014); and at the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2015). She also teaches at the Dutch Art Institute/ArtEZ, Arnhem, and at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.

About Bete & Deise

Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s film, Bete & Deise (2012) stages an encounter between two women in Rio de Janeiro – Bete Mendes and Deise Tigrona. These women have – in their own way – given meaning to the idea of a public voice. Bete Mendes (1949) has maintained a political career while acting in popular telenovela roles since the 1960s. Deise Tigrona (1979) is a Baile funk singer who rose to international acclaim before stepping back in recent years due to the pressures of combining her music career with her family life in the impoverished community of Cidade de Deus. Together these women talk about their experience with performance and their position in the public sphere, allowing the contradictions they carry to surface. Bete & Deise is the final work in a trilogy of works by van Oldenborgh stemming from her research into the shift towards affective labour in which elements of performance are increasingly incorporated into contemporary labour conditions.

Bete & Deise is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, Amsterdam, and is financially supported by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture and Wilfried Lentz Gallery, Rotterdam. With thanks to Capacete Entretenimentos, Rio de Janeiro, and WORM, Rotterdam.