Transeuropa-Festival - Die Grammatik des Körpers und der empathische Blick auf den Anderen

Transeuropa-Festival - Die Grammatik des Körpers und der empathische Blick auf den Anderen

ARSENAL- Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V.

6.-15. Mai

Transeuropa - The Body as Grammar and the Empathic Awareness of the Other
Transeuropa is a decentralized festival that is taking place all over Europe for the second time from May 6th to May 15th. With different formats, such as film screenings, performances, guided city tours, debates and workshops, Transeuropa offers local participants and initiatives a versatile structure that can be played about with. The idea is to use artistic methods and activism to work towards a "transnational" vision for Europe and to set local priorities. The scope is unlimited. This open experiment now covers 12 cities and is taking place in Berlin this year for the first time. The two-day guest program at Arsenal has been co-curated by Bonaventure Ndikung and Tobias Hering.

Bonaventure Ndikung started out by posing the question: What does "transnational" mean and how could I explain the notion to my neighbors? The video program "The body as grammar… in the language of transnationality" (May 14) examines the body's double role: as a means of expression and as a surface on which everything that lies beyond common language can be projected. In their eclectic variety, the videos provoke, bring to mind clichés and open themselves up to a critical reading. Can the political be negotiated with the vocabulary of the body?

In the first part, (RENATE, Antje Engelmann, D 2005/2011, THE PHANTOM DESIRE, Sergio Roger, D 2009, TERRITORY OF INTIMACY – TRANSCAUCASIAN IDENTIFICATION, Verena Kyselka, Armenia 2009) different images of intimacy are juxtaposed. Desire for the other and the economies that feed upon this are the theme, as are identity and belonging, whose last guarantor is often the body because it has the longest memory. In the second part, two works that examine the role of the observer will be shown. ARCADIA, DOWNTOWN (Yaron Lapid, Israel 2009) shows a naked man wondering down a street at night. Is he in pain or in a trance? Is he an exhibitionist? PANDORE (Virgil Vernier, F 2010) sets its focus on the entrance to an upmarket Paris club. Who gets to go in? Who remains outside? A night that is full of coquetry, vanity and humiliation. Bonaventure Ndikung talks with Antje Engelmann, Verena Kyselka and Sergio Roger (tbc).

On the second day of the Transeuropa guest performance (May 15), Tobias Hering will show two more recent documentary films that confront the complicity of becoming a witness to the suffering of others with the question of acting out of solidarity. In fall 2010, Eliza Petkova and Hannes Marget sought out several Roma families who had just been deported from Germany to Kosovo. Their film WILLKOMMEN ZUHAUSE (D, Kosovo 2011) is a sobering report about German Roma policy and at the same time a straightforward commentary in the discourse about "European identity". In CEUX DE PRIMO LEVI Anne Barbé focuses on the "Association Primo Lévi" a center for victims of torture and traumatized migrants in Paris. She concentrates entirely on the body of professional staff that is made up of therapists, legal experts and social workers. How does a person react when s/he witnesses the suffering of another? What happens to him or her? Tobias Hering talks with Eliza Petkova, Dorothée Bruch from Xenion, a center in Berlin that provides counseling to people who have been persecuted for political reasons, and with people from the Berlin-based Roma initiative Amaro Drom e.V. (Tobias Hering)

www.euroalter.com/festival