Introduksjon av billedkunstner og filmskaper Sara Eliassen

Communists Like Us (UK, 2010, 22 min, The Otolith Group)

La distancia entre Pontresina y Zermatt es la misma que la de Zermatt a Pontresina /The Distance from Pontresina to Zermatt Is the Same as from Zermatt to Pontresina (US/MEX, 2017, 26 min, Camel Collective)

Communists Like Us utforsker en 16 minutter lang scene fra Jean-Luc Godards La Chinoise (1967). I den aktuelle scenen diskuterer den virkelige filosofen og tidligere aktivisten Francis Jeanson med den fiksjonelle karakteren Veronique, en ung maoist ulike former for motstand og opprør. Dialogen fra denne scenen settes i The Otolith Groups film i sammenheng med fotografisk dokumentasjon av av møter mellom politikere og aktivister i India og i Maos Kina og andre asiatiske land på 1950 og 60-tallet. Satt sammen med bildematerialet iverksetter dialogen fra La Chinoise en samtale mellom historiske arkiver, fotografi, film og kunst.

The Distance from Pontresina to Zermatt Is the Same as from Zermatt to Pontresina følger to blinde menn som hver for seg forsøker å ta seg fram i Mexico by og utkanten av den, området El Bordo de Xochiaca land-ill. Landskapene klippes sammen med scener fra et lydstudio der de samme personene leser høyt fra en brevveksling mellom de tyske filosofene Theodor W. Adorno og Herbert Marcuse som diskuterer det revolusjonære potensialet i studentopprøret i 1968. Mens de leser jobber en gruppe lyddesignere med å lage lydeffekter som gir liv til de to landskapene. Dette mangefasetterte verket, opprinnelig laget som en installasjon, utforsker utfordringer ved radikale sosiale bevegelser og problematiserer forenklede oppfatninger av forholdet mellom teori og praksis, det digitale og det analoge, produksjon og produkt.

Camel Collective was formed in 2005–6 as a research group during a fellowship at the Whitney Independent Study Program. The group met to conduct research on labor, the politics of affect, and the history of artist collectives. Anthony Graves and Carla Herrera-Prats have worked together as Camel Collective since 2010. Graves & Herrera-Prats’ artworks are motivated by research into marginal histories and critical pedagogies. Their works in performance, video, sculpture, and photography think through the contradictions of contemporary labor and the myths of cultural production, bringing together collaborators from a variety of professions.

The Otolith Group was founded in 2002 and consists of Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun who live and work in London. Their work is research based and spans the moving image, audio, performance, installation, and curation. They incorporate film making and post-lens-based essayistic aesthetics that explore the temporal anomalies, anthropic inversions, and synthetic alienation of the posthuman, the inhuman, the non-human, and the complexity of the environmental conditions of life we all face.
Expanding on the work of The Otolith Group is our curatorial public platform The Otolith Collective. On this platform programming, exhibition-making, artists' writing, workshops, publication, and teaching are aimed at developing close readings of images and sounds in contemporary society. In 2010 The Otolith Group were nominated for the Turner Prize.

Sara Eliassen is an artist and filmmaker based in Oslo. Eliassen holds an MFA in film from San Francisco Art Institute and was a studio fellow at The Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in 2010/ 2011. Her films Still Birds and A Blank Slate have played extensively at international film festivals, amongst them Venice Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam and Sundance. Throughout 2018 Eliassen executed The Feedback Loop, a project commissioned by The Munch Museum- Munch Museum on the Move, consisiting of a public screen intervention, the programming of a screening series and a solo exhibition with guests at Munchmuseet i bevegelse- Kunsthall Oslo. Eliassen is part of the artist council for Kunstnernes Hus Kino.