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Welshmen, NASA and snooker champions collide with advanced intelligence from outer space. Produced for `The Golden Record`, a contemporary exhibition in response to the phonograph record included by Carl Sagan and NASA scientists in two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. Containing sounds, greetings and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, the disc was "intended for any intelligent extra-terrestrial life form, or far-future humans, that may find it."

Dave Griffiths is a Mancheter-based artist. MA Media Art (Manchester Metropolitan University 2004). He is represented by Bureau, Salford, UK. www.davegriffiths.info

?Nothing beside remains?. An accelerated shuffle through cinematic ends. The film?s title refers to Shelley?s compressed sonnet on the shattered colossus of tyrant Ramesses II. Ozymandias deploys a database of movie cue-dots collected from free digital-TV broadcasts. This ongoing archive of near-redundant time signals provides an archaeological resource to remember cinema?s outgoing physicality, and a method of enquiry into narrative and perceptual processes.

Born 1967 in Liverpool, Dave Griffiths lives and works in Manchester, UK. He gained his MA from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2004. His filmworks, video installations and prints dwell on the physical and fictive borders of media spaces and forms. He combines a rigorous attention to barely perceptible materials in moving images with an aesthetic study of their dramatic potential. Along with political and historical asides, the work is filtered through the languages and strategies of cinema and media art to attempt an ironic critique of our social bond with visual technologies. Griffiths? ?close-up epics? playfully touch on illusions of security and perfection that surround media, and attempt to commemorate their temporary structures. He uses film, video, animation and sound - often arising from laborious search or unstable technical methods - to devise encounters between various apparatus and accidental, faltering or abandoned codes. In his ongoing project 'The Griffiths Cue-Dot Observatory' he is developing a body of interactive filmworks combining obscure media devices and processes with changeover signals gleaned from the ends of film reels. Griffiths presented his first solo exhibiton with OUTPOST during Contemporary Art Norwich in July 2007. He has recently screened in exhibitions at Kulturzentrum K4, Nuremberg; Stuttgart Filmwinter; European Media Art Festival, Osnabrueck; Impakt , Utrecht; Antimattter, Canada; 700IS, Iceland; London Short Film Festival; SparkVideo, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse; and L'Alterativa, Barcelona. He is represented by Bureau Gallery, Salford. www.bureaugallery.co.uk www.davegriffiths.info

Entirely made from celluloid scratches and handling marks painstakingly gleaned from DW Griffiths epic Birth of a Nation. As we watch the silent smelting of white debris against the darkness, the tension of this agitated nothingness suggests an alternative American narrative through the physical history of film reels.

Born 1967 in Liverpool, UK, Dave lives and works in Manchester as artist and lecturer. In addition to his participation in group shows in festivals, galleries and artist-run screenings in the UK and internationally, Dave has run occasional curatorial projects in video and sonic practice ? in 2003 publishing the CODEC/X DVD of new collaborative work from Manchester.

?Gordon? film, 16 mm, colour, 7?07?, 2007 The aim of this work is to consider heritage, secret identification and distance in the human relationships. I ask my grand-father, Giordano Bruno, a man of eightyseven years, to play (bocce)bowls with me, an activity that he plays every day. we play with new rules, keeping the winner and the colour of the play unknown , using many bowls and possibilities.

Your work, much like you, is a mix of contemporary art practices and the ritualistic/magical. You yearn to heal open wounds and re-expose those long covered through a ritualized psycho-magical performance space. The most important medium of this work is the heart. It is from there that your work is born and there that it plants its seed in us, growing slowly as we wait for the tension to be resolved. It is not, however, leaving us the task of tending to the seeds you planted and feeling the depths of its roots. Bradley Pitts Open 2007, pubblication, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten

In 1980 an extraordinary demonstration hit the streets of the Brazilian city of Sorocaba. Under the military dictatorship, a court had outlawed kisses that undermined public morals. The ruling by Judge Manuel Moralles, which punished such kisses with jail terms, described them this way: Some kisses are libidinous and therefore obscene, like a kiss on the neck, on the private parts, etc., and like the cinematographic kiss in which the labial mucosa come together in an unsophismable expansion of sensuality. The city responded by becoming one huge kissodrome. Never had people kissed so much. Prohibition sparked desire and many were those who out of simple curiosity wanted a taste of the unsophismable kiss. "February 8. GENERAL SMOOCH" by Eduardo Galeano. From: "Children of the Days," first edition published in Mexico by Siglo XXI Editores Mexico, 2012.Translation copyright Mark Fried, Pinguin Books, London 2013.

Johan Grimonprez’s critically acclaimed work dances on the borders of practice and theory, art and cinema, documentary and fiction, demanding a double take on the part of the viewer. Informed by an archaeology of present-day media, his work seeks out the tension between the intimate and the bigger picture of globalization. It questions our contemporary sublime, one framed by a fear industry that has infected political and social dialogue. By suggesting new narratives through which to tell a story, his work emphasizes a multiplicity of histories and realties.

In Three Thoughts on Terror, investigative journalists Robert Fisk, Jeremy Scahill and Vijay Prashad approach the concept of terror from their respective angles. Fisk dismantles terror as a term that is rendered meaningless to alienate political movement from its origins: justice and injustice. Scahill points out that terror is a relative term, as its interpretation depends on which side of the bombing you’re on. Using the absurd example of the ‘The Hague Invasion Act’, he shows how the US sticks its thumb in the eye of international law: “Some republicans in the US Congress were discussing putting forward legislation that they referred to as “The Hague Invasion Act”, the idea that if US personnel were ever to be brought to The Hague on war crimes charges, the US could deploy military forces to The Hague to snatch those personnel and liberate them from the evil clutches of international law.” Vijay Prashad takes rather a philosophical approach, reciting Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz: “what you see around you, leaves you with no obligation but to feel something. And if that feeling cannot be controlled, you have to do something about it. You can’t refuse this world.”

Johan Grimonprez’s critically acclaimed work dances on the borders of practice and theory, art and cinema, documentary and fiction, demanding a double take on the part of the viewer. Informed by an archeology of present-day media, his work seeks out the tension between the intimate and the bigger picture of globalization. It questions our contemporary sublime, one framed by a fear industry that has infected political and social dialogue. By suggesting new narratives through which to tell a story, his work emphasizes a multiplicity of realities. Grimonprez’s curatorial projects have been exhibited at museums worldwide, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and MoMA. His works are in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; and Tate Modern, London. His feature films include dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997, in collaboration with novelist Don DeLillo) and Double Take (2009, in collaboration with writer Tom McCarthy) and Shadow World (2016, in combination with journalist Andrew Feinstein). Traveling the main festival circuit from the Berlinale, Tribeca to Sundance, they garnered several Best Director awards, the 2005 ZKM International Media Award, a Spirit Award and the 2009 Black Pearl Award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and were also acquired by NBC Universal, ARTE, and BBC/FILM 4. He published several books, including Inflight (2000), Looking for Alfred (2007) and a reader titled It’s a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards (2011) with contributions by Jodi Dean, Thomas Elsaesser, Tom McCarthy, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Slavoj Žižek. He lectured widely, among others at the University de Saint-Denis (Paris 8), Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics; Tate Modern; MoMA (New York); Columbia University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); the Parliament of Bodies of Documenta 14, and he participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, and is now on a research grant at HOGENT/KASK , Ghent. His recent film project (with investigative journalist Andrew Feinstein), Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, was awarded a production grant from the Sundance Institute, premiered at the 2016 Tribeca IFF (New York). It went on to win the Best Documentary Feature Award at the 2016 Edinburgh International Film Festival, and premiered its US broadcast on Independent Lens on PBS in 2017. Currently Grimonprez is developing a feature film based on David van Reybrouck’s play The Soul of the White Ant. With Belgian actor Josse de Pauw in the lead, and also featuring Prime-Minister Patrice Lumumba, shuttle diplomat Dag Hammarskjold and Jazz Ambassadors Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie & Duke Ellington, in a harrowing tale of cold war intrigue and termite poop, that is about to run off-script. His artwork is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery (New York), and gallerie kamel mennour (Paris). See johangrimonprez.be for more info.

When asked a question on politics, late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once answered: “I write about love to expose the conditions that don’t allow me to write about love.” In Two Travellers to a River Palestinian actress Manal Khader recites such a poem by Mahmoud Darwish: a concise reflection on how things could have been.

Johan Grimonprez’s critically acclaimed work dances on the borders of practice and theory, art and cinema, documentary and fiction, demanding a double take on the part of the viewer. Informed by an archeology of present-day media, his work seeks out the tension between the intimate and the bigger picture of globalization. It questions our contemporary sublime, one framed by a fear industry that has infected political and social dialogue. By suggesting new narratives through which to tell a story, his work emphasizes a multiplicity of realities. Grimonprez’s curatorial projects have been exhibited at museums worldwide, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and MoMA. His works are in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; and Tate Modern, London. His feature films include dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997, in collaboration with novelist Don DeLillo) and Double Take (2009, in collaboration with writer Tom McCarthy) and Shadow World (2016, in combination with journalist Andrew Feinstein). Traveling the main festival circuit from the Berlinale, Tribeca to Sundance, they garnered several Best Director awards, the 2005 ZKM International Media Award, a Spirit Award and the 2009 Black Pearl Award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and were also acquired by NBC Universal, ARTE, and BBC/FILM 4. He published several books, including Inflight (2000), Looking for Alfred (2007) and a reader titled It’s a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards (2011) with contributions by Jodi Dean, Thomas Elsaesser, Tom McCarthy, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Slavoj Žižek. He lectured widely, among others at the University de Saint-Denis (Paris 8), Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics; Tate Modern; MoMA (New York); Columbia University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); the Parliament of Bodies of Documenta 14, and he participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, and is now on a research grant at HOGENT/KASK , Ghent. His recent film project (with investigative journalist Andrew Feinstein), Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, was awarded a production grant from the Sundance Institute, premiered at the 2016 Tribeca IFF (New York). It went on to win the Best Documentary Feature Award at the 2016 Edinburgh International Film Festival, and premiered its US broadcast on Independent Lens on PBS in 2017. Currently Grimonprez is developing a feature film based on David van Reybrouck’s play The Soul of the White Ant. With Belgian actor Josse de Pauw in the lead, and also featuring Prime-Minister Patrice Lumumba, shuttle diplomat Dag Hammarskjold and Jazz Ambassadors Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie & Duke Ellington, in a harrowing tale of cold war intrigue and termite poop, that is about to run off-script. His artwork is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery (New York), and gallerie kamel mennour (Paris). See johangrimonprez.be for more info.

In the spring of 2011, during the Photomonth in Krakow, the artist collective Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin invited me to be part of ALIAS, an exhibition with artists who inhabit alternative versions of themselves. An artist and a writer were teamed up with the aim to create a non-existent third persona. The outcome was that none of the artists in the exhibition existed, as those fictional characters took over the creative process. I was assigned to inhabit the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa. ?Him and his 240 heteronyms,? Broomberg and Chanarin laughed, ?an idea not unfamiliar to you!? And indeed, Fernando Pessoa wrote much of his oeuvre under multiple, alternative identities. Not so much pseudonyms or aliases but what he termed ?heteronyms,? invented personalities with detailed biographies and interweaving histories. More specifically Pessoa?s ?The Book of Disquiet? became then the point of departure for this film project. All the footage was shot on iPhone recapturing selected details from YouTube endless growing archive, a world where ?heteronyms? abound. Images of the earthquake and the tsunami that recently hit Japan in March that year dominating the net, resonated quietly with the world of disquiet I was envisioning. In addition, I imagined an added female voice to Pessoa?s many male heteronyms while also staying true to the original language of ?The Book of Disquiet?. So, I invited Portuguese writer Isabel Sobral Campos to narrate the selected passages.

Johan Grimonprez is an internationally acclaimed artist and filmmaker. His films include Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997), and Double Take (2009). Acquisitioned by NBC UNIVERSAL, ARTE TV (Germany/France), and CHANNEL 4 (UK), his productions traveled the main festival circuit from SUNDANCE to BERLIN. They garnered several Best Director Awards, a ZKM International Media Award, a Spirit Award and the recent 2009 Black Pearl Award (Abu Dhabi). His curatorial projects were host at museums worldwide, such as the HAMMER MUSEUM (LA) and the PINAKOTHEK DER MODERNE (Munchen). His work resides at major museum collections, including CENTRE GEORGES POMPIDOU (Paris) and TATE MODERN (London). He is published with Hatje/Cantz (Germany), and in distribution with Soda Pictures and Kino International. He spends his time between Brussels and New York, where he lectures at the SCHOOL OF THE VISUAL ARTS.

Johan Grimonprez transposes an extract from Meg Stuart`s compelling choreography ?No Longer Ready-Made? to the anonymous waiting room of a railway station. This colourless space along with nameless travellers provides the excellent setting for Stuart`s hectic and intense convulsions. A train ride along the nightly Brussels northern area supports the vitriolic New York City prose of David Wojnarowicz on the soundtrack.

Johan Grimonprez (°1962) studied photography and Mixed Media at the Academie in Ghent, after which he spent several years in New York at the School of Visual Arts through the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and he obtained his postgraduate degree from the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. He lives and works both in Ghent and New York, where he is a lecturer at the School of Visual Arts. Grimonprez is best-known for his video work DIAL H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, which became an international success after screenings at the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) and during Documenta X in Kassel (1997), transcending the established delineations between visual arts, cinema and television, between fiction, documentary and ?art video?. In this and other work Grimonprez mainly investigates the use of mass media as a political instrument and the construction of realities in an era of infotainment and media saturation. `Zaptitude` is the central idea ? the surreal poetry of `channel hopping`, which enables the spectator to write his/her own story. His work has been shown and awarded, among other places, at the San Francisco Film Festival and Images Toronto, on ARTE TV (Germany/France) and Channel 4 (VK), in the Whitney Museum (New York) and Tate Modern (London).

A haunting collage of disaster and beauty, set to a shimmering track by Lights Out Asia, Johan Grimonprez in collaboration with acclaimed avant-garde novelist Tom McCarthy, based on an abstract from his latest book SATIN ISLAND.

Johan Grimonprez`s curatorial projects have been exhibited at museums worldwide, such as at the Hammer Museum (LA), the Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich) and, the MOMA (NY). His works are part of the permanent collections of major museums, including the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the Kanazawa Art Museum (Japan) and Tate Modern (London). His award winning films include dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) and Double Take (2009). Traveling the main festival circuit from the Berlinale to Sundance, they have garnered several Best Director awards, the 2005 ZKM International Media Award, a Spirit Award and the 2009 Black Pearl Award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. They have also been acquired by NBC Universal, ARTE, and FILM 4. In 2011 Hatje Cantz Verlag published a reader on his work entitled "It`s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards" with contributions by Jodi Dean, Thomas Elsaesser, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Slavoj Žižek. His distributors are Soda Pictures and Kino Lorber International. His artwork is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery (New York) and the gallerie kamel mennour (Paris). His current film project The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade by author Andrew Feinstein, was awarded a development grant from the SUNDANCE INSTITUTE. His next film project How to Rewind your Dog is in development with the Flanders Audiovisual Fund and the European MEDIA Programme. Grimonprez divides his time between Brussels and New York, where he studied at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, and where he now lectures at the School of Visual Arts.

Reciting her own poetry, Jordanian-American poet Suheir Hammad’s voice carries the powerful force of dissent to find hope between the military parades and anti-aircraft guns. With what i will Johan Grimonprez provides glimpse of his upcoming feature documentary Shadow World based on Andrew Feinstein’s book The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade.

Johan Grimonprez`s curatorial projects have been exhibited at museums worldwide, such as at the Hammer Museum (LA), the Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich) and, the MOMA (NY). His works are part of the permanent collections of major museums, including the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the Kanazawa Art Museum (Japan) and Tate Modern (London). His award winning films include dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) and Double Take (2009). Traveling the main festival circuit from the Berlinale to Sundance, they have garnered several Best Director awards, the 2005 ZKM International Media Award, a Spirit Award and the 2009 Black Pearl Award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. They have also been acquired by NBC Universal, ARTE, and FILM 4. In 2011 Hatje Cantz Verlag published a reader on his work entitled "It`s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards" with contributions by Jodi Dean, Thomas Elsaesser, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Slavoj Žižek. His distributors are Soda Pictures and Kino Lorber International. His artwork is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery (New York) and the gallerie kamel mennour (Paris). His current film project The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade by author Andrew Feinstein, was awarded a development grant from the SUNDANCE INSTITUTE. His next film project How to Rewind your Dog is in development with the Flanders Audiovisual Fund and the European MEDIA Programme. Grimonprez divides his time between Brussels and New York, where he studied at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, and where he now lectures at the School of Visual Arts.

In this short film by Johan Grimonprez, philosopher/neurologist Raymond Tallis argues that consciousness is not an internal construct, but rather relational. Through the intriguing notion that humans are physically unable to tickle themselves, Tallis explores the philosophical notion that we become ourselves only through dialogue with others.

Multimedia artist, filmmaker, curator and writer, Grimonprez was born in Roeselare, Belgium in 1962. He studied Antropology, Photography & Mixed Media at the School of Arts, KASK, Ghent. He also attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in NYC. The artist now lives and works in Brussels, Belgium and New York. Grimonprez critically acclaimed work dances on the borders of practice and theory, art and cinema, documentary and fiction, demanding a double take on the part of the viewer. Informed by an archeology of present-day media, his work seeks out the tension between the intimate and the bigger picture of globalization. It questions our contemporary reality, one framed by a fear industry that has infected political and social dialogue. By suggesting new narratives through which to tell a story, his work emphasizes a multiplicity of realities. His feature films include “dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y”(1997), “Double Take” (2009) and “Shadow World : Inside the Global Arms Trade” (2016). Traveling the main festival circuit from the Berlinale, Tribeca to Sundance, they garnered several Best Director awards, the 2005 ZKM International Media Award, a Spirit Award and the 2009 Black Pearl Award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and were also acquired by NBC Universal, ARTE, and BBC/FILM 4. “Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade ” went on to win the Best Documentary Feature Award at the 2016 Edinburgh International Film Festival, and the ‘Time of History Award’ for Best Documentary at the Semana Internacional de Cine de Valladolid. The documentary has also première its US broadcast on Independent Lens on PBS in autumn 2017. The multimedia artist’s installations and work in the plastic arts have been presented in numerous exhibitions held in prestigious institutions throughout the world, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and MoMA. His works are in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; and Tate Modern, London.

In 1515 Machiavelli stated that it would be better for the Prince to be feared, than loved. Some 500 years later, Michael Hardt, political philosopher and co-author of Empire, Multitude and Commonwealth, asks what it would mean to base a political system on love, rather than on fear. How can we transform a society that is increasingly defined by a permanent state of war and cultivated by an industry of fear? How can we realize the paradigm shift necessary to move away from a reality that depends on the exploitation of people and the cult of privatising public resources? Hardt looks for an answer in what he calls `the commons’, by which he refers not only to natural resources, but also to the languages we create- and the relationships we conceive together. In the dystopian city-state Alphaville, of Godard`s eponymous film, all words and concepts relating to the idea of love and affection have been banned. When actress Anna Karina tries to express her feelings, she has to reinvent the words, for the concept of love is foreign to her. Like the protagonist in Alphaville, Hardt suggests that we need to redefine the tools to act politically together. Hardt embarks on a journey to identify the transformative powers of the ongoing struggle to re-invent democracy. Within this struggle he understands `the commons` as an antidote against a society run by fear; an inspiration for a paradigm that is based on dialogue and cooperation.

Johan Grimonprez’s critically acclaimed work dances on the borders of practice and theory, art and cinema, documentary and fiction, demanding a double take on the part of theviewer. Informed by an archeology of present-day media, his work seeks out the tension between the intimate and the bigger picture of globalization. It questions our contemporary sublime, one framed by a fear industry that has infected political and social dialogue. By suggesting new narratives through which to tell a story, his work emphasizes a multiplicity of histories and realties.

What?s your favorite Hitchcock film? Obsessed with de/reconstructing our corrupted visions of media, celebrity and appearance, Johan Grimonprez assembled a bewildering gaggle of Hitchcock lookalikes, staggering in girth and exacting in attitude, in a quest to find the most accurate specimen. The extent of such an endeavour is matched only by its fiendish yet stylish plot ? recording them both in and out of character ? whilst the would-be dopplegangers replay a selection of the trademark cameo appearances that Hitch made in his own flicks. The result could be seen as a dethroning of the Master of Suspense or as a celebration of iconography. Just don?t take a shower before you see it!

Praised by the London and the New York Times as ?an eccentric rollercoaster ride through history,? JOHAN GRIMONPREZ? film Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997), ?an exploration into the annals of airplane hijacking, garnered ?best director? awards at the SAN FRANSISCO Film Festival and IMAGES TORONTO. Since its acclaimed premiere at CENTRE GEORGES POMPIDOU (Paris) and DOCUMENTA X (Kassel), the film has toured worldwide. The DVD, accompanied by contributions from DON DELILLO and SLAVOJ ZIZEK, is released by OTHER CINEMA (San Francisco), and in distribution with FACETS/MULTIMEDIA (Chicago) and IMAGEFORUM (Tokyo). Johan Grimonprez is currently a faculty member at the SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS (New York). Acquisitioned by Trio NBC Universal (New York), ARTE TV (Germany/France), and Channel 4 (UK), his productions traveled the main festival circuit from TELLURIDE, TOKYO to BERLIN. Curatorial projects were host at major exhibitions and museums worldwide such as the WHITNEY MUSEUM (New York) and TATE MODERN (London); and amongst numerous collections they reside at the CENTRE GEORGES POMPIDOU (Paris), the KANAZAWA ART MUSEUM (Japan), and the NATIONALGALLERIE (Berlin). He is published with Hatje/Cantz (Germany) and spends his time between New York and Brussels. In collaboration with ANNA SANDERS FILMS, (Paris), his production company ZAP-O-MATIK, is currently launching ?LOOKING FOR ALFRED? (2006), a journey into the world of doppelgangers, starring Ron Burrage, professional Hitchcock look-alike. A first chapter premiered at the PHOTOGRAPHER?S GALLERY (London) and the PALAIS DES BEAUX-ARTS (Brussels). Acclaimed by the London Times, a.o., it won first price for the INTERNATIONAL MEDIA AWARD 2005 (SWR / ZKM). A forthcoming project ?ZUNK®? retraces the history of HAPPY ENDINGS. Selected for the Rotterdam Cinemart 2003, ?ZUNK®? is now being developed at the MAURITS BINGER FILM INSTITUTE (Amsterdam) with support of the FLEMISH FILMFUND (VAF, Brussels).

Work version of How to rewind your dog, in development with zap-o-matik.

Johan Grimonprez was born in Roeselare, Belgium in 1962. He studied at the School of Visual Arts and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. Grimonprez achieved international acclaim with his film essay, Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y. With its premiere at Centre Pompidou and Documenta X in Kassel in 1997, it eerily foreshadowed the events of September 11th. The film tells the story of airplane hijackings since the 1970s and how these changed the course of news reporting. The movie consists of recycled images taken from news broadcasts, Hollywood movies, animated films and commercials. As a child of the first TV generation, the artist mixes reality and fiction in a new way and presents history as a multi-perspective dimension open to manipulation.Grimonprez's productions have traveled the main festival circuit from Telluride, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, to Tokyo and Berlin. Curatorial projects were hosted at major exhibitions and museums worldwide such as the Whitney Museum in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich and the Tate Modern in London. Grimonprez's work is included in numerous collections such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Kanazawa Art Museum, Japan, the National Gallery, Berlin and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark. Grimonprez is currently a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts (New York). Johan Grimonprez lives and works in Brussels and New York.

Director Johan Grimonprez casts Alfred Hitchcock as a paranoid history professor, unwittingly caught up in a double take on the cold war period. The master says all the wrong things at all the wrong times while politicians on both sides desperately clammer to say the right things, live on TV. DOUBLE TAKE targets the global political rise of ?fear as a commodity?, in a tale of odd couples and double deals. As television hijacks cinema, and the Krushchev and Nixon debate rattles on, sexual politics quietly take off and Alfred himself emerges in a dandy new role on the TV, blackmailing housewives with brands they can`t refuse. The novelist Tom McCarthy writes a plot of personal paranoia to mirror the political intrigue, in which Hitchcock and his elusive double increasingly obsess over the perfect murder ? of each other! Subverting a meticulous array of tv footage and using `The Birds` as an essential metaphor, Grimonprez traces catastrophe culture`s relentless assault on the home, from moving images? inception to the present day.

ZAP-O-MATIK?s productions, acquisitioned by NBC UNIVERSAL, ARTE and CHANNEL 4, travel the main festival circuit from SUNDANCE, TOKYO to BERLIN. Johan Grimonprez?s DOUBLE TAKE, premiered at the BERLINALE FORUM 2009 and is awarded with the Black Pearl Award for Best Director at MEIFF (Abu Dhabi) and a SPECIAL MENTION at the Era New Horizons and Yokohama FF. This docu fiction featuring Alfred Hitchcock during a double take on the Cold War, is a co-production with NIKOVANTASTIC FILMS (DE), VOLYA FILMS (NL), ZDF/ARTE and is supported by FLANDERS AUDIOVISUAL FUND, NORDMEDIA, THE DUTCH AND ROTTERDAM FILM FUNDS, YLE and RAISAT. His award-winning film dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (68?), an exploration into the annals of airplane hijacking was praised by the London and the New York Times as ?an eccentric rollercoaster ride through history?, the film garnered ?best director? awards at SAN FRANCISCO IFF and TORONTO. Since its highly acclaimed premiere at the CENTRE GEORGES POMPIDOU (Paris), it has toured worldwide (with a cinema audience of over 1 million) and has been acquisitioned by all major broadcast channels in Europe (Channel 4, ARTE) and North America (NBC UNIVERSAL). The DVD release, accompanied by contributions from DON DELILLO and SLAVOJ ZIZEK, is released by OTHER CINEMA (San Francisco), and in distribution with FACETS/MULTIMEDIA (Chicago) and IMAGEFORUM (Tokyo). A first chapter of this film, LOOKING FOR ALFRED, shot in 2005 and co-produced with FILM AND VIDEO UMBRELLA (UK) & ANNA SANDERS FILMS (FR) premiered at the PHOTOGRAPHER?S GALLERY (London) and at the ROTTERDAM IFF 2005. The film won the SPIRIT AWARD in NY and the EUROPEAN MEDIA AWARD 2006. The film was selected for, amongst others, the CLERMONT-FERRAND, SEOUL and the LOS ANGELES IFF. JOHAN GRIMONPREZ?s fiction feature HOW TO REWIND YOUR DOG, explores the theme of HAPPY ENDINGS set in a world of relentless consumerism. Selected for the BERLINALE TALENT PROJECTMARKET 2007, HOW TO REWIND YOUR DOG was developed at the BINGER FILMLAB (Amsterdam), the NORTH BY NORTHWEST writers workshop, the EAVE Producers workshop and is supported by the FLANDERS AUDIOVISUAL FUND and the MEDIA Programme of the European Union. JOHAN GRIMONPREZ is visiting professor at the SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS (New York), spending his time between New York and Brussels. His publications « dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y » (2003), « Inflight Magazine » (2000) and « Looking for Alfred : the Hitchcock castings » (2007) are published with Hatje/Cantz (Germany). www.zapomatik.com www.doubletakefilm.com

What?s your favorite Hitchcock film? Obsessed with de/reconstructing our corrupted visions of media, celebrity and appearance, Johan Grimonprez assembled a bewildering gaggle of Hitchcock lookalikes, staggering in girth and exacting in attitude, in a quest to find the most accurate specimen. The extent of such an endeavour is matched only by its fiendish yet stylish plot ? recording them both in and out of character ? whilst the would-be dopplegangers replay a selection of the trademark cameo appearances that Hitch made in his own flicks. The result could be seen as a dethroning of the Master of Suspense or as a celebration of iconography. Just don?t take a shower before you see it!

Praised by the London and the New York Times as ?an eccentric rollercoaster ride through history,? JOHAN GRIMONPREZ? film Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997), ?an exploration into the annals of airplane hijacking, garnered ?best director? awards at the SAN FRANSISCO Film Festival and IMAGES TORONTO. Since its acclaimed premiere at CENTRE GEORGES POMPIDOU (Paris) and DOCUMENTA X (Kassel), the film has toured worldwide. The DVD, accompanied by contributions from DON DELILLO and SLAVOJ ZIZEK, is released by OTHER CINEMA (San Francisco), and in distribution with FACETS/MULTIMEDIA (Chicago) and IMAGEFORUM (Tokyo). Johan Grimonprez is currently a faculty member at the SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS (New York). Acquisitioned by Trio NBC Universal (New York), ARTE TV (Germany/France), and Channel 4 (UK), his productions traveled the main festival circuit from TELLURIDE, TOKYO to BERLIN. Curatorial projects were host at major exhibitions and museums worldwide such as the WHITNEY MUSEUM (New York) and TATE MODERN (London); and amongst numerous collections they reside at the CENTRE GEORGES POMPIDOU (Paris), the KANAZAWA ART MUSEUM (Japan), and the NATIONALGALLERIE (Berlin). He is published with Hatje/Cantz (Germany) and spends his time between New York and Brussels. In collaboration with ANNA SANDERS FILMS, (Paris), his production company ZAP-O-MATIK, is currently launching ?LOOKING FOR ALFRED? (2006), a journey into the world of doppelgangers, starring Ron Burrage, professional Hitchcock look-alike. A first chapter premiered at the PHOTOGRAPHER?S GALLERY (London) and the PALAIS DES BEAUX-ARTS (Brussels). Acclaimed by the London Times, a.o., it won first price for the INTERNATIONAL MEDIA AWARD 2005 (SWR / ZKM). A forthcoming project ?ZUNK®? retraces the history of HAPPY ENDINGS. Selected for the Rotterdam Cinemart 2003, ?ZUNK®? is now being developed at the MAURITS BINGER FILM INSTITUTE (Amsterdam) with support of the FLEMISH FILMFUND (VAF, Brussels).

A car with a big sound system broadcasts a text of Eduardo Affonso Reidy on his modern architecture precepts. It drives around the Conjunto Habitacional Pedregulho, a social housing complex build from 1946 by the same architect and also called Minhocão (the big worm) by his inhabitants. The ballet of the driving car, combined with interviews, sound extracts from the fiction film « Lucio Flávio, the passenger of agony » (shot partly in the site) and other scenes, produce a portrait of a major modernist Brazilian building and of the popular northern zone´s context of Rio de Janeiro. The film raises issues about patrimony and memory of social housings in a place which is about to be renovated after 50 years of state´s abandonment and autonomous management.

Raphael Grisey (1979, lives in Paris and Berlin) Raphaël Grisey, artist in the time-based arts, realized experimental films, video installations, video-essays, and documentaries. His work gathers or produces narratives around collective memories, migrations or architecture. www.raphaelgrisey.net

The film is constructed around the evolution of a trial in Belgrade, the first of its kind in Serbia to accuse Serbs of war crimes for their part in the Ovcara massacre near Vukovar in 1991 - the first major massacre in the Yugoslavian wars in the 1990s. In a hotel in Belgrade, the families of the Croatian victims speak their minds about the trial, and talk about their situation. In Vukovar, in a car driving through the town at night, a voice talks about invisible traces. At the tribunal, the families and lawyers talk of the trial?s exhibits and issues. Two scenes in the room of the disappeared in Zagreb and at the scene of the crime give the event concrete expression.

A car with a big sound system broadcasts a text of Eduardo Affonso Reidy on his modern architecture precepts. It drives around the Conjunto Habitacional Pedregulho, a social housing complex build from 1946 by the same architect and also called Minhocão (the big worm) by his inhabitants. The ballet of the driving car, combined with interviews, sound extracts from the fiction film « Lucio Flávio, the passenger of agony » (shot partly in the site) and other scenes, produce a portrait of a major modernist Brazilian building and of the popular northern zone´s context of Rio de Janeiro. The film raises issues about patrimony and memory of social housings in a place which is about to be renovated after 50 years of state´s abandonment and autonomous management.

Raphael Grisey (1979, lives in Paris and Berlin) Raphaël Grisey, artist in the time-based arts, realized experimental films, video installations, video-essays, and documentaries. His work gathers or produces narratives around collective memories, migrations or architecture. www.raphaelgrisey.net

The film is constructed around the evolution of a trial in Belgrade, the first of its kind in Serbia to accuse Serbs of war crimes for their part in the Ovcara massacre near Vukovar in 1991 - the first major massacre in the Yugoslavian wars in the 1990s. In a hotel in Belgrade, the families of the Croatian victims speak their minds about the trial, and talk about their situation. In Vukovar, in a car driving through the town at night, a voice talks about invisible traces. At the tribunal, the families and lawyers talk of the trial?s exhibits and issues. Two scenes in the room of the disappeared in Zagreb and at the scene of the crime give the event concrete expression.

A personal deconstruction of a war document. A war experienced in exile through images from the news, a correspondence with home, and interviews with fellow ex-patriots. An intuitively collected stock of images, compiled together a few years later, to reflect on mediated-memory.

Sagi Groner was born in Israel in 1971. Since 1996, he has been living and working in Amsterdam.

Based on the artist’s poetic reconfiguration of Susan Sontag’s 1969 text The Aesthetics of Silence and drawing on his studio practice, this work is comprised of a series of artistic gestures, observations and small performances that explore the erotics of philosophy, the uselessness of poetry, and dumb yearning.

Troy Gronsdahl is an artist and cultural worker from Saskatoon. Gronsdahl studied at the University of Saskatchewan and holds a master’s degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design where he was the recipient of the Governor General’s Academic Medal. Gronsdahl has received a number of awards including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and Saskatchewan Arts Board. In addition to his visual art practice, he also creates distinctive, genre-bending hip hop music under the moniker soso, touring extensively both nationally and internationally. His artwork has been presented at screenings and exhibitions across Canada.

Jouant sur la limite entre documentaire et œuvre vidéo, Strike a pose suit Ariane V., body-buildeuse et Docteur en science de la Vie d’origine belge vivant en Suisse. Durant 9 mois, Maëlle Gross a côtoyé Ariane. Cet investissement dans la durée avait pour but de créer une intimité entre l’artiste et son sujet, afin que ce dernier puisse entrer dans un processus de lâcher prise, gage de confiance. Au moyen d’interviews, de la danse et d’immersion dans le monde du bodybuilding, peu à peu nous nous rendons compte d’un état d’ambïguité du corps. Pousser les limites physiques, se détacher de sa propre enveloppe pour la traiter comme une sculpture. Arrivé au paroxysme de sa métamorphose, la protagoniste devient alors, hors-norme. Hors-norme des critères de beauté stéréotypée du corps genré auxquelles elle est associée. Une invitation à l’introspection subjective dans l’imagerie contrôlée du corps où la limite entre le raisonnable et l’excessif se fait de plus en plus petite au fur et à mesure de la transformation radical qu’Ariane a entrepris sur son corps.

Née le 20 novembre 1988 à Lausanne en Suisse, Maëlle Gross montre très jeune un intérêt particulier pour la photographie et la vidéo. Diplômée en 2013 de la Haute Ecole d’Art et Design de Genève, elle déménage ensuite à Londres et intègre la Goldsmiths University où elle obtient en 2015 son Master of Fine Art avec mention. Son travail a notamment été présenté lors du festival vidéo R4 à Paris, a participé à une performance collective à l’Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) de Londres ainsi qu`à la galerie Large Glass à Londres sous le collectif Almosthere. Aujourd’hui, Maëlle Gross vit et travaille entre Londres et Genève.

"The woodland threshold" takes us on an introspective journey into the heart of the Laotian forest. The film follows Dao's journey, letting her thoughts wander to the rhythm of her footsteps, venturing into the depths of her memory. Between the parks of Rennes, where she lives, and the jungles of northern Laos, we wander with her on an inner journey, where the boundary between past and present becomes porous.

Giulia Grossmann was born in Paris in 1984, she studied visual arts and anthropology. In her work she explores the interactions between humans and their environment. Her films play with the permeable border between fiction and documentary. Since her first short film Native American, rewarded with the Inrocks lab video creation prize in 2012, her work has been exhibited in art centers, galleries and museums as well as in festivals in France and abroad.

What happens when a family revisit a house they abandoned sixteen years ago? It wasn’t a decision where Saira & Salim had a choice. Would you be able to relive those delightful memories & conversations without the traumatic ones overpowering your emotions?

Eshwarya is a post graduate film student at National Institute of Design, India. She has studied architecture and believes that film is all about capturing the emotion of a space or creating a subconscious space and how people interact with it.

Inspired by the children’s book About Two Squares created by El Lisstzky exactly 100 years ago, Transient Witness simultaneously merges and obscures the intimate from the public, in a story where the actions of collecting and stealing function as synonyms and inheritance and loss immerse. It is a fictional story of the transfer of the objects from the private house of avant-garde collector Egidio Marzona in Berlin to their new domicile – the Japanisches Palais, a Rococo building that belongs to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD). The plot is told through the eyes of three main characters: Christina, the manager of the collection; Maurizio, the art mover; and Präsens the collector’s dog. Fiction meets reality: the film takes place on 25 November 2019. On that day, priceless jewelry of immense cultural value was stolen from the Green Vault in Dresden in one of the biggest art heists in history, causing a national shock in Germany. The film unfolds a complex story, navigating between historical facts about the Baroque and the Avant-garde; art and its politics.

Assaf Gruber (b. Jerusalem, 1980) is a sculptor and filmmaker who lives and works in Berlin. The dialectical relationship between the individual and the establishment is at the centre of his work, which explores how political orientations of institutions impact the lives of individuals and how institutions choose to represent and communicate facts and artefacts. Gruber studied at the Cooper Union in New York and is a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and of the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. His solo exhibitions include the Muzeum Sztuki, ?ód? (2015), the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2018), Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2018), among others. His films have been featured in festivals including the Berlinale Film Festival, FID Marseille (2019), and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2016).

Museum depots are places where things are kept out of sight, but also protected from all-too-schematic historical judgments. In his new film, Assaf Gruber continues his ongoing investigation of the backstage areas of art institutions to engage with Neue Galerie Graz’s holdings. In the cage-like space of the repository, we see a naked musician working intensely on a composition. He is inspired by artists who belong to a gray area between modernist aspirations and enthusiasm for Nazism, and whose works combine a taste for the exotic with local patriotism, religious fervor, and eroticism. Our mysterious protagonist tentatively plays a familiar melody. It's a song known to many of us, recognisable from dance floors across Europe - but how many of us have ever bothered to listen to its remarkably rascist and imperialistic lyrics?

Assaf Gruber (b. Jerusalem, 1980) is a sculptor and filmmaker living and working in Berlin. The dynamic relationship between individuals and institutions is at the center of his practice, which aims to explore both how the political orientation of legacy establishments impact the lives of individuals and how these organizations choose to represent and communicate facts and their attendant artifacts. Gruber’s solo exhibitions include the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2018) and the Muzeum Sztuki, ?ód? (2015). His films have been featured in festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2023) and FID Marseille (2022). He studied at Cooper Union in New York and is a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and of the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. Gruber is currently one of the fellows of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme 2022/23 (gkfd).

About 100 years ago, El Lissitzky (1890-1941) crafted the first avant-garde children's book, "About Two Squares." Two years prior, he vividly illustrated the Jewish Passover tale, "Chad Gadya" or "One Little Goat." This cumulative song was designed in such a way that each subsequent verse incorporated a fresh element that abolishes the one from the previous verse. This unique creation also marked Lissitzky’s final foray into Jewish illustrations before his evolution into a pivotal figure in the Soviet avant-garde movement. Fast forward to the present, the six-screen installation, Living Spaces and Imaginary Museums, blends Lissitzky’s folklore and avant-garde ideas, staged within domestic and institutional settings. A museum attendant irons red and black towels inside a Baroque museum while uttering the punk song "Red Over White" (1984) by Siouxsie and the Banshees, as a tongue-in-cheek reference to Lissitzky’s most known political poster- “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” (1919). Meanwhile, another character sings the Italian version of "Chad Gadya" in a moving van. On another screen he engages in a conversation with a third character, a potential lover who answers his questions about Lissitzky’s “About Two Squares”. These illusive and allusive scenes morph into a sonorous and visual canon interval that transfigures everything — folklore and the avant-garde, private and public spheres, the past and present — transforming them all into a fairytale.

Assaf Gruber (b. Jerusalem, 1980) is a sculptor and filmmaker living and working in Berlin. The dynamic relationship between individuals and institutions is at the center of his practice, which aims to explore both how the political orientation of legacy establishments impact the lives of individuals and how these organizations choose to represent and communicate facts and their attendant artifacts. The absurd biographies of the protagonists in his projects simultaneously reveal and obscure the reasons and motives that lead people to obey or rebel against their inner world or the society in which they live. His photography, sculpture, and installations place the materiality of objects in relation to narrative dimensions, which in turn create fictional spaces where movement and non-movement function as a medium. Gruber’s solo exhibitions include the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2018) and the Muzeum Sztuki, ?ód? (2015). His films have been featured in festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2023) and FID Marseille (2022). He studied at Cooper Union in New York and is a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and of the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. Gruber was one of the fellows of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme 2022/23 (gkfd).

Animals from Eastern Europe for the Italian food/meat industry used to be transported to the towns along the state border in Northeast Italy. From those conveyor-belt spaces of death, only one animal managed to come in and out alive.

Igor Grubic (1969) has been active as a multimedia artist since the early 1990s. His work includes site-specific interventions in public spaces, photography, and film. He represented Croatia at the 58th Venice Biennale. His critical, socio-politically committed practice is characterized by long-term engagement, his work focusing on past and present political situations, from an in-depth exploration of the fate of historical monuments and the demise of industry, to the examination of the predicament of minority communities. Though grounded in documentarist tradition, his work in photography and film is characterized by an affective and empathetic approach that is deeply humane and often poetic. His work has been exhibited internationally, receiving several awards.