Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński / Film projection and conversation

International Symposium Curating Exchange | Film projection and conversation with Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski | Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje | 15th Novemberr, 2018, 8pm

On Thursday, 15th November, at 8pm at the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje will take place a screening of two short films and a conversation with Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, a Viennese artist, art-based researcher and writer. She is interested in memory, trauma and Black radical imagination, and currently is PhD-in-Practice candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

Within her first appearance to the Macedonian audience, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński will present her research and artistic practice by showing her two short films “Unearthing. In Conversation" (2017) and “The Letter" (2018) after which a conversation with the audience will follow.

Working with photographs that Paul Schebesta, Austrian-Czech missionary, writer and ethnographer, took in the former Belgian Congo (nowadays Democratic Republic of the Congo), Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński’s “Unearthing. In Conversation” (13 min) deals with violent histories of archival material and the trauma of colonization. Bringing to the forefront the haunting qualities of colonialism the artist engages in an uncanny dialogue that negotiates strategies of representation, the reproduction of specific ways of looking and the trauma of being made other in the here and now. Her first short film was screened at international festivals like f.e. the Dokfest Kassel, Diagonale, International Filmfestival Rotterdam, International Filmfestival Vancouver, and European Media Art Festival Osnabrück.

Performer and Director: Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński. Camera: Sunanda Mesquita. Sound & Light: Nick Prokesch. Director’s Assistant: Liesa Kovacs.

Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński’s second short film “The Letter” from 2018 (16 min) moves between video, performance, sound, and text. It takes as a starting point the haunting reminiscence of a group of West Africans in 19th century Vienna. By following the traces left, a speculative analysis of archival structures and the objects housed within them is opened up, pointing to an understanding of the past as not past but as a gateway for an interrogation of Diasporic temporalities.

Director: Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński. Performers: Amoako Boafo, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Verena Melgarejo-Weinandt. Camera: Sunanda Mesquita. Sound Composition: Bassano Bonelli. Editing: Sunanda Mesquita, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński. Director’s Assistant/Production: Liesa Kovacs. Camera Assistant/Postproduction: Nick Prokesch.

Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński visit is part of the annual program of Press to Exit Project Space titled "Undisciplined Forms of Knowledge" within the series "Lectures, Presentations and Exhibitions" and the International Symposium "Curating Exchanges 7: Building Urban Communities".

Press to Exit Project Space program is organized in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje and Kontrapunkt, Skopje, and supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Macedonia.