ARTMargins

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

Monthly Archive: February 2009

ARTMargins Online: New Media & Film

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 by Tomislav Z. Longinović (Madison, Wisc.) ·

Archives Don’t Burn: Hito Steyerl’s Film “Journal No.1 – An Artist’s Impression” (Film Review)

Journal No. 1 – An Artist’s Impression. Directed by Hito Steyerl.  2007. Video: 21 min.

“Once upon a time there was a country…”  This sentence, borrowed from Dušan Kova?evi?’s novel of the same title and later adopted into Emir Kusturica’s film Underground, evokes a temporality that is tied to origins and to the kind of arkhè Jacques Derrida challenged as part of his undoing of the metaphysical relationship between being and its history in Western culture and thought. Steyerl’s short documentary questions the fairy tale perspective on Yugoslavia’s mythical origins and its relationship with time. The film tells of … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Ileana Pintilie (Timişoara) ·

Interview with Iosif Kiràly

Iosif Kiràly is one of Romania’s most prominent contemporary artists. He teaches at the National University of Arts in Bucharest, where he is also the co-founder of the Department of Photography and Time-Based Media Arts. Kiràly lives and works in Bucharest.

Ileana Pintilie: You are at present one of the best-known Romanian artists active on the international art scene. Please talk about your formation as an artist, about the artistic elements that influenced your development.

Iosif Kiràly: My background is a hybrid one. In the 1970s, I attended a Bauhaus-like art school in Timi?oara (the only one existing at that … Read more

ARTMargins Online: New Media & Film

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 by Natascha Drubek-Meyer (Prague) ·

A Little Mermaid in the World of Russian Advertising (“Rusalka” Roundtable, #5)

“Starting life as a tiny fish in the belly of a libidinous Russian woman, only to be released by the sperm of a drunken sailor, doesn’t sound like the beginning of a simple existence for anyone. So for the scrawny, awkwardly endearing Alisa […] it’s no great surprise to go unnoticed and unappreciated by those around her.”(Edinburgh International Film Festival, “Mermaid,” http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/films/mermaid/full-details, 2007.)


Rusalka/Mermaid (2007), the second feature film by director Anna Melikyan, has been chosen as Russia’s entry for the Foreign Oscars in 2009. It has already received ample recognition at the Russian box

… Read more