Saturday, 14th April 2007: When Objects Dream @ SiCKL
::WHEN OBJECTS DREAM (Music + Film + Short Films)::
The event begins with Synaethesia label owner and sound artist, Mark Harwood, who will take on the role of experimental music dee-jay for the night.
This is followed by the screening of ‘When Objects Dream’, soundtrack by Mark Harwood and Anthony Pateras. Finally, the screening of short films by Jan Svankmayer, Czech surrealist film-maker extraordinaire.
Saturday, 14 April 2007
8.00pm – midnight admission by donation
::at:: studio in cheras kl No75, Tingkat 3, Amber Business Plaza,
Jalan Jelawat 1, Cheras 56100
(You can take Star LRT, Sri Petaling line, stop at Cheras Station. SiCKL is right next to the Star LRT- Cheras Station. Only a minute walk.)
::Films::
WHEN OBJECTS DREAM
Directed by Pia Borg
Soundtrack by Mark Harwood and Anthony Pateras
“Australian artists Pia Borg’s “When Objects dream” crosswire animation and live footage in a surrealist tableaux, beautifully rendering complex montages into unheimlich dream sequences that obliquely document the displacement of memory and disturbed mental states, with an eloquent soundtrack from Anthony Pateras and Mark Harwood”– The Wire April 2007
When Objects Dream depicts the pathos that ensues when the decline and disintegration of mind and memory of one elderly woman in the throes of dementia occurs as her physical surroundings are also being deconstructed.
Her attempts to sort her objects laden with meaning, sometimes apparent, sometimes inherent, sometimes imagined mirror the discarding of the post-industrial society in which she has both consumed and been consumed. The mystery of the homing pigeons instinct to use memory, colour and the earth’s magnetic pull to locate its loft is a leitmotif, reflecting a parallel and at times intersecting existence of seeking to overcome the loneliness and isolation of mental and physical dislocation enforced on the woman with the construction of a massive highway that slowly encroaches on her backyard.
The paradox that confronts the protagonist is to find the intangible value that resides in the tangible objects that represent the sum total of her life’s labour. The narrative is expressed as a poetic visual sequence where a series of disjointed vignettes are juxtaposed in a chaotic manner reflecting the distortion of a mind suffering from dementia. A combination of diverse visual and aural styles are collaged together mirroring the act of remembering, here the distinction between reality and non-reality is blurred just as our imagination, our dreams and our lives are forever invading our memories.
THE COLLECTED SHORTS OF JAN SVANKMAJER
For the past forty years, Jan Svankmajer (ALICE and LITTLE OTIK) has been hailed as one of cinema’s most consistently surprising, wildly imaginative and remarkable surrealists of our time. Utilizing a delirious combination of puppets, humans, stop-motion animation and live action, Svankmajer’s films conjure up a dreamlike universe that is at once dark, macabre, witty and perversely visceral.
Dimensions of Dialogue
12 minutes, 35 mm, color, 1982
A dizzy, passionate kaleidoscope of debris and bones of contentions that make any dialogue and understanding impossible.
Down to the Cellar
15mins color, 1983
A young girl encounters a series of disturbing obstacles while on an errand to fetch potatoes from the cellar.
The Pendulum, the Pit and the Hope
16 minutes, 35 mm, colour, 1983
A terrifying live action take on Poe’s Classic tale of toture and repression
Meat Love
1 min,1988
A tale of sudden passion and tragedy between two steaks
Flora
20 seconds,1989
A Dark ecological tragedy
The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia Colour
35mm,1990
Svankmajer’s first film after the fall of communism provides short history of Czechoslovkia since World War II and a recounting of the absurd horrors of Stalinism.
Food
17 min Color 35mm 1992
A surrealistic breakfast, lunch and dinner.
contacts:
Yandsen – 012-9198031 | email
Yin – 012-3205 181 | email
map:
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