During the festivities of the ‘Gentse Feesten’ (17/7-26/7/2010), a yearly 10 day music and theater festival in the city of Ghent, the miXed2010 association (website in Dutch & French) is planning an exhibition about racial identity. The exhibition contains work of black and white artists who question the concept of race through visuals, paintings, sculptures, video, installations, … The artists featured in the exhibition are Berni Searle (SA), Jean-François Boclé (F) and Gauthier Hubert (B) among others. The curator is the art critic Stef Van Bellingen who questions through this exhibition the way black people have been depicted during the whole history of Western media (commercials, Hollywood, TV, …).
(c) Gauthier HubertThe exhibition will be opened on Friday 9th of July at 7pm, one week before the start of the Gentse Feesten and will be followed by a concert with European and African artist brought together by Tuur Florizoone. They will bring a musical show combined with visuals, telling a story of a white man who discovers his African roots (according to me a metaphor for the whole of European histroy and identity). World famous Belgian jazz artists like Laurent Blondiau (AKA Moon) en Nicolas Thys will be part of it, next to AfroBelgian singer Sabine Kabongo and polyphone vocal group Nabindibo next to African multi-instrumentalist and artist Aly Keita. You can see Sabine Kabongo performing Duke Ellingtons 'Come Sunday' with the Zawinul Syndicate via this link.
During the exhibition the documentary ‘Colour Bar’ will be screened all day long. This is a documentary of Roland Gunst, a video artist who describes his identity issues for a new generation raised in-between different cultures and racial colours. Below I post the little trailer for his documentary. It is currently only available in French though.
young European film talents in DocNext on Int.Documentary Festival Amsterdam
ReplyDeleteoc Next is a special program of IDFA, featuring short documentaries by a new generation of young film talents from Europe using accessible media technologies to zoom in on their environments. For the first time, their documentaries are being shown on the big festival screen.
At the Doc Next talk show, young documentary makers take centre stage. We seize their films and stories to discuss the challenges and possibilities of user-generated media content with festival organisers, media broadcasters and documentary experts. How can do-it-yourself documentaries inspire different media domains and contribute to inclusive public opinion sharing in Europe? How can this new generation of storytellers help mainstream media to attract new audiences?
more : http://strangerfestival.com/node/20843