The third chapter of Living Together, entitled Narration, speculates on the concept of togetherness through the perspective of communities who are neither seen nor heard.
To us “together” means to build alliances with groups whose story remains invisible and untold. The act of narrating is an integral part of our experience as human beings; it is the field of our alliances, the space where we can sit together while storytelling, listening and learning. It is the act of retracing stories by observing networks of alliances and cooperation; of understanding connections that are not covered by the mainstream history, and thus acquiring of a more complex understanding of our present world, and of our ways of being, thinking, dreaming and remembering. Roland Barthes wrote that narrative “…is present at all times, in all places, in all societies; …indeed narrative starts with the very history of mankind; …there is not, there has never been anywhere, any people without narratives; …all classes, all human groups have their stories” (Roland Barthes, “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative”, New Literary History 6, n.2 (1975):237).
For the first part of the third chapter of Living Together – Narrating in the Sofia’s Tzarevetz underpass we selected the works of Egyptian author and film maker Jihan El-Tahri, the Colombian/Canadian duo Alexandra Gelis and Jorge Lozano, and the Italian/British researcher and film maker Alessandra Ferrini.
Their audiovisual projects are very different in terms of aesthetics, of materials engaged and of cultural framing. At the same time, all of them intend to give value and visibility while utilizing the audiovisual language, to the very existence of events, communities, lived experiences and history that are either largely unrecognized or hidden.
Jihan El-Tahri’s short video Flag Moments (2013, video, 6’47’’) is an emblematic introduction to her work as an author, researcher and witness of the history of the Global South, as well as of the spread of alliances and solidarity movements there between the 1960’s and the 1980’s. The video is a filmic and documentary montage of archival images of people celebrating independence throughout Africa, from the Congo to Algeria, from Kenya to South Africa. Flags and music introduce the spectator to the joy, the complexities and the expectations of the “third nations” who liberated themselves from their European colonizers in the second half of the 20th century. It is also an introduction to El-Tahri’s partaking in the exhibition at the ICA – Sofia Gallery, as well as to her carte blanche (in focus) event organized for the Cinema House in Sofia, part of the public program of Living Together.
The work of Gelis and Lozano Kuenta (2012, Short film, 19’15’’), (the alliteration of the Spanish word “cuenta”, which means “storytelling”) is the site-specific version of an environmental multichannel installation dedicated to the life of the Wayúu’s indigenous society in the Guajira Peninsula, in the Caribbean area of Colombia, at the border with Venezuela. Kuenta brings together indigenous land usage, the relation of the landscape to economic factors, in this case salt production, and the metaphor of weaving as a way of constructing reality through minor, everyday actions. Sand, wind, salt, and sea are the main elements of an audiovisual experience which engages the spectators with the daily life of a community which is at the same time marginalized and culturally rich, where material culture and convivence in Nature are fundamental elements of their identity. At the same time these are the very reason why the community has been oppressed within the colonial system which the Europeans established in the indigenous territories occupied since the 16th century.
Unsettling Genealogies (2024, Video, 24’) by Alessandra Ferrini is a complex film-essay which elaborates on the notion of ‘essayistic mode‘ of film making. It emerged from the field of Film Studies with scholars theorizing film as a ‘thinking form’ that spans across media and resists a clear definition.
Ferrini’s film investigates the genealogy of La Biennale di Venezia as an institution and particularly the Film Festival. As a vehicle for political propaganda since the 1930’s regime in Italy, it has been the main tool for the occupation of the cultural field and of visual culture in general. Ferrini’s film interlaces the story of the Fascist politicization of culture with its relation to the country’s industrial interests in the colonies, as well as with artists’ memories of those years. It is a dry, powerful and unapologetic picture of the recent history of Italy and its erasure since the end of World War II.
Living Together is a program of artistic research and artistic production curated by Katia Anguelova and Lucrezia Cipitelli in the context of the SUPERPOSITIONS THREE exhibition series initiated by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Sofia (ICA-Sofia). The events are realized with the financial assistance of the National Fund "Culture" under the program "Creation" and Gaudenz B. Ruf, with the support of the Municipal Security Company "Egida - Sofia" Ltd.
Alexandra Gelis (b. 1975 in Caracas, Venezuela, she lives in Ontario, Canada)
Alexandra Gelis is Colombian-Venezuelan-Canadian media artist whose research-based, process-oriented practice spans film, photography, drawing, and media installations incorporating custom-built interactive electronics and sound. Her single-screen films and modular immersive non-fiction installations delve into the ecologies of various landscapes through personal field research, examining socio-political interventions. Gelis collaborates with communities across the Americas, focusing on the interplay between plants, people, and power in the context of colonization and globalization. Her concept of "Migrant Plants" explores plants as political allies in struggles against colonialism, war, and migratory and racial regimes, documenting the autonomous behavior of these plants. Gelis's projects have been exhibited internationally across North and South America, Europe, and Africa. She holds a PhD in Environmental Studies and Urban Change.
Jorge Lozano Lorza (b. in Colombia, he lives in Ontario, Canada)
Jorge Lozano Lorza is an immigrant artist and filmmaker born in Colombia. He has been painting and filming, and making videos, sound, performance and installation works since he came to Canada in 1971. He has made over 150 movies—works that live not in-between, but within cultures. His work is a reflection of his personal commitment to epistemological disobedience and the investigation of different ways of thinking, feeling and doing. Jorge’s fiction shorts have been screened at TIFF and Sundance, and internationally at many festivals, museums and galleries. He initiated the Crossing Borders Film Festival, the aluCine Toronto Latin Media Festival and converSalon in collaboration with Alexandra Gelis. Jorge is currently working on several feature-length deliriums, architectural installations and film fetish short forms in Toronto, Ontario, where he lives.
Alessandra Ferrini (b.1984 in Florence, Italy, lives in London, UK)
London-based artist, researcher and educator, Alessandra Ferrini experiments with hybridization of the documentary film. From the position of both insider and outsider to the Italian context, she investigates the Italian archive of coloniality, its foreign and racial politics.
She is interested in the way historical narratives are produced and how their implied ideologies create subjects - be they individuals or societies. Framed by the device of the ‘essayistic’, intended as a ‘thinking mode’ retaining the structuring elements of the essay within an expanded field, her practice spans across moving image, installation and dialogic formats, as well as writing, publishing, and education.
Winner of the Maxxi Bvlgari Prize 2022 and of the 2017 Experimenta Pitch Award at the London Film Festival 2017, she has exhibited internationally, including at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Adriano Pedrosa (2024).
Jihan El-Tahri (b.1963 in Beirut, Lebanon, she lives in Marseille, France)
Jihan El-Tahri is an Egyptian/French national who is an award winning director, producer, writer and visual artist. Her practice deals with materiality and the moving image. Working primarily with installation art, she often engages with the interstices between official history and memory in an attempt to reinterpret the moments of our history of which no traces have been left behind and to propose a new reading and alternative voice from a Global South perspective.
She served as the Director of Berlin Based Documentary institution DOX BOX between 2019 and 2023. In 2017 El-Tahri was invited to join the Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Oscars) and has served on various selection committees including Locarno Film Festival, Jeune Creation Francophone, Le Fond Franco-Tunisien and others. She has served on numerous juries most recently as president of the Documentaray Jury at FESPACO 2021. As a film mentor and Script Doctor, she has worked with Focus Features (US), Berlinale Talent Campus (Germany), Documentary Campus (Germany), Ouaga Film Lab (Burkina Faso), Qumra (Doha) Sud Ecriture (Tunisia) and other film training labs. Her work as a visual artist has been exhibited in various International biennials including Berlin Biennale in 2022, Dak’Art, and Bamako. She has also exhibited at the MoMa in the US, in France (Centre Pompidou) Berlin (HKW, IFA Gallery), Norway (National Museum), India (Clark House) Mexico (San Ildefonso) and Poland (MoMa) alongside acclaimed artists John Akomfrah, the Otolith Group and Kader Attia. El-Tahri started her career as a foreign correspondent covering Middle East Politics. In 1990 she began directing and producing documentaries for the BBC, PBS, Arte and other international broadcasters. Her award winning documentaries - include Nasser which premiered in the official selection at Toronto International Festival, Behind the Rainbow, Cuba, an African Odyssey and the Emmy nominated House of Saud - have all had both Cinema and Museum releases in multiple countries. Her writings include Les Sept Vies de Yasser Arafat (Grasset) and Israel and the Arabs, The 50 Years War (Penguin). El-Tahri is also engaged in various associations and institutions working with African Cinema. She served as treasurer of the Guild of African Filmmakers in the Diaspora, an advisor on Focus Feature’s Africa First Program and as regional secretary of the Federation of Pan African Cinema (FEPACI).