Nedfall: marxism today (prologue) og use! value! exchange!
, 19:00
Tickets: 40,- / Free for members of Bergen Kunsthall/Bergen filmklubb
Phil Collins’ short film marxism today (prologue) (2010) is shown together with the companion video, use! value! exchange! (2010), which together explore through archive footage and contemporary interviews what became of Marxist Leninist teachers’ expertise after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.
marxism today (prologue) first shown at the 6th Berlin Biennale, focuses in on the subjective experiences of three female ex-teachers after the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989. The film mixes contemporary interviews alongside archive material in which snapshots of life in the old GDR. How the lessons of Marxist-Leninist ideology were constructed and what forms of ideological imprint were part of structuring them, is seen both from instructional pedagogical films and personal recollections from the teachers. The teachers also talk about how they related to teaching in a society of state socialism that so heavily relied on the continual announcement of its ideology also through pedagogical means.
use! value! exchange! (2010) revisits key concepts in the toolkit of Marxist economic analysis. One of the teachers from marxism today (prologue) was asked to teach a lesson in Marxist economy to students of today as she would have taught it before 1989. The film follows the logic of a lesson, and in consequence the viewer will literally take a lesson in Marxist economy during the film.
The two films investigate what happens to you, the single person, “In the tides of history, when the waves comes in, and goes back out again, and you are left somehow on the sand” where do you turn and what becomes of you. When the expertise of Marxist-Leninist teachers of Eastern Germany devoured after the unification in 1989, what happens then to that kind of knowledge?
Phil Collins is a British artist living in Berlin. His recent solo exhibitions and projects include The 6th Berlin Biennale (2010), Tramway, Glasgow (2009), Aspen Art Museum (2008), Dallas Museum of Art (2007), Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2007), Tate Britain, London (2006-7), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2006), sala rekalde, Bilbao (2006) and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent (2006). Recent group exhibitions include Ostalgia, New Museum, New York (2011), The Making of Art, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2009), Acting Out: Social Experiments in Video, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2009), Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image. Part II: Realisms, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington (2008), Life On Mars, 55th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2008), Double Agent, ICA London (2008). Phil Collins was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2006.
Nedfall is Bergen Kunsthall´s own series for film and video art. Nedfall is curated by Bergen Kunsthall (Ingrid Erstad and Åse Løvgren) and is organised together with Bergen Film Society.
Originally Nedfall is the title of a short film by Erik Borge from 1964, and is my many regarded as the first free artistic film from Norway. It paved the way for a period of experimentation within new Norwegian cinema that represented a break with established conventions and values.