Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

The theme of the film HIDDEN CITIES is personal urban perceptions, which we call »the city«. The city, as a living organism, reflecting social processes and interactions, economic relations, political conditions and private matters. In the city, human memories, desires and tragedies find expression in the form of designations and marks engraved in house walls and paving slabs. But what the city really is under this thick layer of signs, what it contains or conceals, is what we are researching in the HIDDEN CITIES project. The source material for the film are 9 sequential photo works created by Gusztáv Hámos between 1975 and 2010. Each of these »city perceptions« depicts essential situations of urban experiences containing human and inhuman acts in a compact form. The cities in which the photo sequences have been made are Berlin, Budapest and New York ? places with a traumatised past: Wars, dictatorships, terrorist catastrophes.

Gusztáv Hámos, born in Budapest, lives in Berlin. He is an artist, curator and author. His artistic work includes video, film, photography and installation and has been exhibited at Documenta, Biennale Venedig, ZKM Karlsruhe, Ludwig Muzeum Budapest. His videos and films were shown a.o. at Tate Modern London, Rencontres Internationales, 63th Mostra Interernazionale d?arte cinematografica di Venezia, Section Corto Cortissimo, SFMOMA, YBCA San Francisco. His work is included in the Collections of MOMA NY, Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, NBK Berlin, ZKM Karlsruhe, Kunstsammlung NRW, Ludwig Museum Budapest, C3 Budapest, Saint Gervai SIV, Geneve. Katja Pratschke is an artist, curator and since 2006 she has organised photofilm seasons with Thomas Tode and Gusztáv Hámos with whom she has collaborated since 1998. Her artistic projects include: Natural Born Digital (1998); Fremdkörper/Transposed Bodies (film, installation, book, 2001/2003); Rien ne vas plus (film, installation, 2005); Fiasko (split screen film 2010, book 2012), Cities (Verborgene Städte) (film, installation, book 2012). Her films were shown a.o. at Tate Modern London, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, Triennale der Photographie Hamburg, 63th Mostra Interernazionale d?arte cinematografica di Venezia, Sektion Corto Cortissimo. She is co-editor of the publication Viva Fotofilm bewegt/unbewegt, Schüren 2010, and co-founder of the Concrete Narrative Society e.V.