Sehenswert: October 2008

October 24, 2008

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (1928)

Silent film, no soundtrack. French subtitles.
Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, with Falconetti and Antonin Artaud.

October 22, 2008

Antonin Artaud

The Situationist International 1956-1972

A video documentary combining exhibition footage of the Situationist International exhibitions with film footage of the 1968 Paris student uprising, and graffiti and slogans based on the ideas of Guy Debord (one of the foremost spokesmen of the Situationist International movement). Also includes commentary by leading art critics Greil Marcus, Thomas Levine, and artists Malcolm Mac Laren and Jamie Reid. Branka Bogdanov, Director and producer. NTSC-VHS 22 min. 1989

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October 21, 2008

La La La Human Steps: Human Sex (1985)

La La La Human Steps performing 'Human Sex'
Choreographer Édouard Lock
Featuring award winning dancer Louise Lecavalier
Montreal's Post-Modern Dance company, who have worked with artists as diverse as David Bowie (Sound & Vision Tour) / Frank Zappa (The Yellow Fish) & more recently My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields.

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October 20, 2008

DV8 Physical Theatre: Enter Achilles (1995)

An excerpt from Lloyd Newson's ENTER ACHILLES (1995), performed and created by DV8 Physical Theatre, directed by Clara van Gool.

A funny, cruel exploration of the male psyche, Enter Achilles is set in a typical British pub, a shabby,
nicotine-stained boozer. Pop songs tumble out of the jukebox, there is football on the TV,
and the eight men lark around, pint glasses in hand. But their blokish fun is balanced on a knife-edge
of tension, for beneath the mateyness lurks a disturbing undercurrent of paranoia and insecurity,
where weakness is brutally exploited and violence covers up vulnerability.

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Jean Baudrillard: Violence of the Image (2004)

Jean Baudrillard thinking and talking about the violence of the image, the violence to the image, aggression, oppression, transgression, regression, effects and causes of violence, violence of the virtual, 3d, virtual reality, transparency, psychological and imaginary. Open Lecture given by Jean Baudrillard after his seminar for the students at the European Graduate School, EGS Media and Communication Program Studies Department, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe, in 2004.

Jean Baudrillard was born to a peasant family in Reims, north-eastern France, on July 29, 1929. He became the first of his family to attend university when he moved to the Sorbonne University in Paris. There he studied German language, which led to him to begin teaching the subject at a provincial lycée, where he remained from 1958 until his departure in 1966. While he was teaching Baudrillard began to publish reviews of literature, and translated the works of such authors as Peter Weiss, Bertolt Brecht and Wilhelm Muhlmann.

Toward the end of his time as a German teacher Baudrillard began to transfer to sociology, eventually completing his doctoral thesis Le Système des objets (The System of Objects) under the tutelage of Henri Lefebvre. Subsequently, he began teaching the subject at the Université de Paris-X Nanterre, a politically radical institution (at the time) which would become heavily involved in the events of May 1968. At Nanterre he took up a position as Maître Assistant (Assistant Professor), then Maître de Conférences (Associate Professor), eventually becoming a professor after completing his habilitation, L'Autre par lui-même (The Other, by himself).

In 1986 he moved to IRIS (Institut de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Économique) at the Université de Paris-IX Dauphine, where he spent the latter part of his teaching career. During this time he had begun to move away from sociology as a discipline (particularly in its "classical" form), and, after ceasing to teach full time, he rarely identified himself with any particular discipline, although he remained linked to the academic world. During the 1980s and 1990s his books had gained a wide audience, and in his last years he became, to an extent, an intellectual celebrity, being published frequently in the French and English speaking popular press. He nonetheless continued supporting the Institut de Recherche sur l'Innovation Sociale at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and was Satrap at the Collège de Pataphysique. He also collaborated at the Canadian philosophical review Ctheory, where he was abundantly cited. He died of illness on March 6, 2007 at the age of 77.