Works by Vivian Ostrovsky and Peter Weibel Showing at the IFFR, Distributed by GME in North America
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OFFICIAL LOGO OF THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM. SOURCE: IFFR.COM/EN.
On Friday, January 26th, at 6:45pm, both Vivian Ostrovsky’s U.S.S.A. and Peter Weibel’s TV & VT-WORKS, are screening in the DINAMO: Information program at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), which showcases “works which deal with the presentation of information, facts and knowledge; works which address issues of journalism, reporting or the writing of history; works that function at the level of intellect, language and communication; works that uphold or critique systems of knowledge production.”
Both of these filmmakers are distributed by GME to universities in North America. A collection of found footage films by Ostrovsky, entitled PLUNGE (which contains U.S.S.A.), is available from GME as a DVD or DSL. Additionally, a group of experimental short form film and video works by Weibel are available in the collections DEPICTION IS A CRIME: VIDEO WORKS (1969-1975) and KOPERAKTIONEN BODYWORKS (1967-2003), which GME distributes as both DVD and DVD/DSL bundles. Also available as a DVD and DVD/DSL bundle is the Weibel/Valie Export collaboration INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES, which was characterized by Electronic Arts Intermix as a “feminist version of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.”
Found footage films comprise a significant sub-genre of experimental filmmaking. An itinerant filmmaker, Ostrovsky is a maestro of the found footage practice: she culls archival excerpts from personal home movies, newsreels, documentaries, and narrative films and assembles them together in order to make both humorous and incisive commentary on global human activity. In U.S.S.A., diaristic images are inventively juxtaposed to stress similarities, not differences, between the two superpowers.
In the words of art historian Hans Belting, “Peter Weibel’s (earlier works) ... belong to the heroic years of a period of upheaval in which everything seemed possible in art. However, the artist not only made his appearance as a critic of public media but took the opportunity of presenting his own themes.” Programmer Srikanth Srinivasan describes Weibel’s TV & VT-WORKS in IFFR’s program notes as follows: “Broadcast on the Austrian Television (ORF) in June 1972, TV & VT-WORKS comprises a series of ‘tele-actions’ in which a cigar-smoking newsreader is periodically interrupted by public interventions raising the question ‘Is this Art?’. Disrupting the smooth flow of information and thus the illusion of comprehending the world from one’s living room, these actions interrogate TV temporality to examine the mechanisms of production and spectatorship. A work of culture jamming avant la lettre.”
For more information about Ostrovsky’s and Weibel’s works as they appear in this year’s IFFR, visit the festival’s official website by clicking here.