The past two decades has seen a growing concern with the ecology and climate change beyond the Anthropocene in contemporary art, as well as the mainstream media, which some have labelled as the “ecological turn” where art has even taken on a role of ecological activism. Relatedly, such issues have long taken front and center in science fiction in relationship to speculative and/or dystopian futures. Problematizing the dominant emphasis on issues of activism and speculative futures in such discourses, and informed by broader theories on what The Otholith Group (Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun) has coined as “science fiction of the present,” this event centers on two recent films by artist and filmmaker Panos Aprahamian (Beirut/Berlin): Odorless Blue Flowers Awake Prematurely (2021) and This Haunting Memory That Is Not My Own (2021). Both of these films have been screened at a number of regional festivals, and will be screened together in Berlin for the first time. The film screening will be followed by a conversation between Panos Aprahamian and Rasha Chatta.
Mi 11 Mai 2022 | 19:00–21:00
Always, Already: Dystopian Temporalities
Film screening, followed by a conversation between Panos Aprahamian (artist and filmmaker) and Rasha Chatta (FU Berlin / EUME Fellow 2017-21)
Kino Arsenal, Potsdamer Straße 2, 10785 Berlin
Odorless Blue Flowers Awake Prematurely
Lebanon, 2021, 6 min., OV with English subtitles
Panos Aprahamian’s science-fiction documentary Odorless Blue Flowers Awake Prematurely explores Beirut’s peripheral rustbelt on the banks of the city’s river which was affected by the blast on August 4, 2020.
This Haunting Memory That Is Not My Own
Lebanon, 2021, 30 min., OV with English subtitles
This Haunting Memory That Is Not My Own is an investigation of how economic growth and environmental decay are interlinked and entrenched in social and ecological injustice.
Panos Aprahamian writes, teaches, and works with film and video. His practice explores traumatic pasts and lost futures in human and nonhuman bodies, sacrificial landscapes, and social relations. Aprahamian has exhibited at festivals and institutions globally, including International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Festival International Signes de Nuit, Akademie der Künste, Mediterranea Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art of Gallarate, European Media Arts Festival, Open City Doc Fest, Beirut Art Center, and UC Irvine’s Room Gallery. He holds a BFA in Film and Animation from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts and an MA in Documentary Studies from the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, and was a Home Workspace Fellow at Ashkal Alwan. He is a founding member of Time Extraction Unit. His work can be viewed here.
Rasha Chatta is Research Associate of the Einstein Foundation based at the Freie Universität Berlin where she is completing a monograph on Arab comics and migration. She has published essays on migrant literary theory, Arab diasporic literatures and cultures, and Arab comics. Her research interests include visual aesthetics and memory, approaches to world literature, Arab migrant and diasporic literatures, ‘alternative’ archives, and war literature with a focus on Lebanon and Syria. Rasha serves as Chair of the MLA’s Global Arab and Arab American Forum. Previously, she was a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien (2017-21).
The event takes place in cooperation with and at Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V. (Potsdamer Str. 2, 10785 Berlin). Tickets are sold through presale via Arsenal’s website or can be purchased at the ticket booth.