Rosa Barba Program 2: In Good Urge to Join

Film

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VALIE EXPORT. Still from Space Seeing - Space Hearing. 1973-74. Video (black and white, sound), 6:19 min. Image courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

“I use cinema in order to stage an intervention in a real space, confronting the division between public and private, fantasy and reality,” explains artist Rosa Barba. In this program, Barba selects a range of works that underscore the power of film and video to fragment our perceptions of the self and space. In The Amateurist, Miranda July doubles herself via the video camera, appearing on a monitor as an “amateur” woman who is surveilled by July’s portrayal of her “professional” woman counterpart. VALIE EXPORT’s Space Seeing - Space Hearing animates EXPORT’s stationary body into motion through an edit of sporadic cuts, zooms, and split-screen views that are synchronized and triggered by the video’s sound. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Vidéoème dismantles and sutures English and French terms as a mediation on migration and loss. Marwa Arsanios questions the porous continuity between reality and rumor in I’ve Heard Stories 1, and Joan Jonas’s Songdelay incites a jarring discrepancy between image and sound while capturing performance actions shot from a distance via a telescopic lens. Barba’s concern for the contested and fissured “real space” of the built environment comes through in the ramshackle midtown Manhattan of Jack Smith’s delirious Scotch Tape, in John Smith’s Blight, which chronicles a campaign by East London residents to prevent the demolition of their houses, and in Jem Cohen’s enigmatic Black Hole Radio, which conjures an unruly archive of tortured and treacherous New York City telephone confessions and nighttime wanderings.

Vidéoème. 1976. USA. Directed by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Video (black and white, sound). 5 min.
Blight. 1994-96. United Kingdom. Directed by John Smith. 16mm film transferred to video (color, sound). 14 min.
The Amateurist. 1998. USA. Directed by Miranda July. Video (color, sound). 4 min.
Space Seeing - Space Hearing. 1973-74. Austria. Directed by VALIE EXPORT. Video (black and white, sound). 6:19 min.
I've Heard Stories 1. 2008. Lebanon. Directed by Marwa Arsanios. Video (color, sound). 5 min.
Black Hole Radio. 1992. USA. Directed by Jem Cohen. Video (black and white, sound). 8 min.
Scotch Tape. 1959. USA. Directed by Jack Smith. 16mm film transferred to video (color, sound). 3 min.
Songdelay. 1973. USA. Directed by Joan Jonas. 16mm. 19 min.

Program approx. 64 min.

This film accompanies Carte Blanche: Rosa Barba.

Past events

Sat, May 17, 2025, 2:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Wed, May 14, 2025, 4:30 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

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