Introduction to the End of an Argument and Ouroboros
Seventh Cinema (Guest curated by Kori Miles and Lucie Loy)
14
March 2024
14
Mar
2024
Seventh Gallery Lawn
Seventh Cinema (Guest curated by Kori Miles and Lucie Loy)
Introduction to the End of an Argument and Ouroboros
14
March 2024
14
March
2024
Seventh Gallery Lawn
We are pleased to introduce Seventh Cinema, a free public cinema season spanning seven weeks.
Teaming up with guest artist Kori Miles, we have curated a series of film programs on a temporary outdoor cinema on the gallery's adjacent lawn. This inaugural season is dedicated to exploring the intersections of neo/colonialism and global climate change, zooming in on global colonial expansion and its persistent effects on the environment, human rights, and cultural landscapes.
Join us for weekly film screenings where each session showcases a short film followed by a feature. Through the films that we have selected, we aim to spotlight the resilience ingrained in the struggles for self-determination within global First Nations and other hegemonised and racialised communities. Themes of storytelling, family, social justice activism, home, and transformation weave through our program, highlighting the powerful and enduring role of struggle and resistance.
See the full Seventh Cinema program here.
꩜ ꩜ ꩜
Introduction to the End of an Argument, 1990, 45 minutes. Dir. Jayce Salloum and Elia Suleiman.
With a combination of Hollywood, European, and Israeli film; documentary; news coverage; and excerpts of 'live' footage shot in the West Bank and Gaza strip, Muqaddimah Li-Nihayat Jidal (Introduction to the End of an Argument) critiques representations of the Middle East, Arab culture, and the Palestinian people produced by the West. The video mimics the dominant media's forms of representation, subverting its methodology and construction. A process of displacement and deconstruction is enacted attempting to arrest the imagery and ideology, decolonizing and recontextualizing it to provide a space for a marginalized voice consistently denied expression in the media.
"Intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the Occupied Territories, has come to us courtesy of the media. And it is through the media that our impressions of the uprising have accreted via image and text. Jayce Salloum, a Lebanese-Canadian artist; and Elia Suleiman, a Palestinian filmmaker living in New York, have taken on our accumulated (mis)impressions by tracing their genesis in cinema and television. This highly kinetic tableau of appropriated sights and sounds works most earnestly to expose the racial biases concealed in familiar images. The storehouse of misconstrued ideas about Arab culture is shown in all its cinematic splendor, from the denigrating seraglios in films such as Elvis Presley's Harem Scarum and Valentino's The Sheik, to the dehumanization of Arabs as evinced by epics like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Speaking for oneself... it would be compelling if it were nothing more than this compendium of Arab stereotypes, but it is much more. Taking snippets from feature films (Exodus, Lawrence of Arabia, Black Sunday, Little Drummer Girl, etc.) and network news, Salloum and Suleiman have constructed an oddly wry narrative, mimicking the history of Mideast politics. Through key political phrases... we see repetitive distortions transformed into foreign policy. The injustice, of course, is that this is our history of their struggle. Speaking for oneself... is a first attempt at making the image and the act one and the same."
— Steve Seid, Pacific Film Archives
꩜ ꩜ ꩜
Ouroboros, 2017, 75 minutes. Dir. Basma Alsharif.
Ouroboros is acclaimed visual artist Basma Alsharif's first feature film. This experimental film is an homage to the Gaza Strip and to the possibility of hope based on the eternal return. The film follows a man through five different landscapes, upending mass-mediated representation of trauma. A journey outside of time, marking the end as the beginning, exploring the subject of the eternal return and how we move forward when all is lost.
— Momento Films
Image Description: This image is a film still from Ouroboros, and shows a person with shaven hair presenting fanned out playing cards to a caucasian person with short blonde hair inside a home.
We are pleased to introduce Seventh Cinema, a free public cinema season spanning seven weeks.
Teaming up with guest artist Kori Miles, we have curated a series of film programs on a temporary outdoor cinema on the gallery's adjacent lawn. This inaugural season is dedicated to exploring the intersections of neo/colonialism and global climate change, zooming in on global colonial expansion and its persistent effects on the environment, human rights, and cultural landscapes.
Join us for weekly film screenings where each session showcases a short film followed by a feature. Through the films that we have selected, we aim to spotlight the resilience ingrained in the struggles for self-determination within global First Nations and other hegemonised and racialised communities. Themes of storytelling, family, social justice activism, home, and transformation weave through our program, highlighting the powerful and enduring role of struggle and resistance.
See the full Seventh Cinema program here.
꩜ ꩜ ꩜
Introduction to the End of an Argument, 1990, 45 minutes. Dir. Jayce Salloum and Elia Suleiman.
With a combination of Hollywood, European, and Israeli film; documentary; news coverage; and excerpts of 'live' footage shot in the West Bank and Gaza strip, Muqaddimah Li-Nihayat Jidal (Introduction to the End of an Argument) critiques representations of the Middle East, Arab culture, and the Palestinian people produced by the West. The video mimics the dominant media's forms of representation, subverting its methodology and construction. A process of displacement and deconstruction is enacted attempting to arrest the imagery and ideology, decolonizing and recontextualizing it to provide a space for a marginalized voice consistently denied expression in the media.
"Intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the Occupied Territories, has come to us courtesy of the media. And it is through the media that our impressions of the uprising have accreted via image and text. Jayce Salloum, a Lebanese-Canadian artist; and Elia Suleiman, a Palestinian filmmaker living in New York, have taken on our accumulated (mis)impressions by tracing their genesis in cinema and television. This highly kinetic tableau of appropriated sights and sounds works most earnestly to expose the racial biases concealed in familiar images. The storehouse of misconstrued ideas about Arab culture is shown in all its cinematic splendor, from the denigrating seraglios in films such as Elvis Presley's Harem Scarum and Valentino's The Sheik, to the dehumanization of Arabs as evinced by epics like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Speaking for oneself... it would be compelling if it were nothing more than this compendium of Arab stereotypes, but it is much more. Taking snippets from feature films (Exodus, Lawrence of Arabia, Black Sunday, Little Drummer Girl, etc.) and network news, Salloum and Suleiman have constructed an oddly wry narrative, mimicking the history of Mideast politics. Through key political phrases... we see repetitive distortions transformed into foreign policy. The injustice, of course, is that this is our history of their struggle. Speaking for oneself... is a first attempt at making the image and the act one and the same."
— Steve Seid, Pacific Film Archives
꩜ ꩜ ꩜
Ouroboros, 2017, 75 minutes. Dir. Basma Alsharif.
Ouroboros is acclaimed visual artist Basma Alsharif's first feature film. This experimental film is an homage to the Gaza Strip and to the possibility of hope based on the eternal return. The film follows a man through five different landscapes, upending mass-mediated representation of trauma. A journey outside of time, marking the end as the beginning, exploring the subject of the eternal return and how we move forward when all is lost.
— Momento Films
Kori Miles
Kori is an interdisciplinary and process-based takataapui artist, currently working and living on sacred Wurundjeri land in Naarm/Melbourne. They are of Maaori (Ngaati Raukawa, Ngaati Ahuru, Tainui/Waikato), Italian, Scottish & Anglo-Celtic descent, but born and raised in so-called Australia. They predominantly utilise performance, installation, sculpture, photography, video and poetry as mediums to explore/articulate ideas, knowledge and stories.
Kori’s practice is guided by the stories of Maaui—the trickster demigod of Maaori mythology—and how Maaui’s clever wit combined with the powers of shape-shifting and interdimensional travel are used to undermine structural authority and cause a paradigm shift in power distribution - a social and systemic change that benefits those with less privilege and access. Kori’s practice manifests visions that confront the ongoing damage of colonial and heteronormative social structures, whilst concurrently fostering a space for contemplation on transgression, eroticism, liberation, humour, healing, regeneration and resilience.
Lucie Loy
Lucie Loy is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator and writer (currently) based in Northern NSW and Naarm (Melbourne). Alongside her independent practice which spans visual art, publishing, writing and curating she has committed much of her professional capacity to platforming independent, artist-led and experimental practice. Through her work with artist-run projects locally and internationally, Lucie has explored notions of the ‘artist-led’, platforming the importance of art and artists critically and creatively addressing global and social struggles. Working with the aesthetics of hope, resistance and imagination, as well as through policy advocacy, activism and frustrating bureaucratic frameworks, Lucie’s practice and work seeks to explore the intersection of art, political ecology, social and environmental justice and postcolonial globalisation. Lucie is interested in collaboration, ideas of the commons and critical, transdisciplinary projects. Her recent research explores biopolitics, notions of power and the philosophies and contexts of post-truth.