Depiction, Perversion, Repulsion, Obsession, Subversion – A Witte de With selection for the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2007

Curated by Renske Janssen and Nicolaus Schafhausen

Witte de With presents a film series in five parts that reveals the underlying thematic strands of Witte de With’s 2007 program: the quest for identity, an exploration of body politics and the mechanics of manipulation in the art world and beyond. In this way, the film series Depiction, Perversion, Repulsion, Obsession, Subversion can be seen as an extended trailer, giving a taste of things to come.
One of the questions this series would like to address is the character of analysis and investigation by contemporary visual artists into the cinematographic medium and its context, the cinema setting. What are the critical aspects in their approach? Are they attempting to subvert – or indeed pervert – the established categories of classification? And what lies between the two extremes? How can we read these different artistic approaches against the backdrop of current genre-crossovers, commercial orders and the cinematographic tradition itself?
The series will be centred around works by artists recently shown at Witte de With or soon to be presented there. A selection of over 30 titles (predominantly shorts) will be formatted into a compilation programme in five parts. At least 10 artists will also be present to introduce their work in a Q&A format and some of them will join a panel discussion to conclude the programme.

Participating artists: Marc Bauer (CH), Johanna Billing (SE), Lonnie van Brummelen (NL) and Willem de Rooij (NL), Gerard Byrne (IRE), Keren Cytter (ISR), Jennifer Allora (US) and Guillermo Calzadilla (US), Runa Islam (UK), Matias Faldbakken (NO), Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard (UK), Jesper Just (DK), Kai Kaljo (EST), Klara Liden (SE), Erik van Lieshout (NL), Ursula Mayer (AU), Sarah Morris (US), Melvin Moti (NL), Tuan Andrew Nguyen (VIE), Marcel Odenbach (DE), Chloe Piene (US), Mark Raidpere (EST), Aïda Ruilova (US), Margaret Salmon (UK/US), Kevin Schmidt (CA), Jeremy Shaw (CA), Markus Schinwald (AU), Matt Stokes (UK), Richard T. Walker (UK), Emily Wardill (UK), Clemens von Wedemeyer (DE) and Jordan Wolfson (US/DE).