Das Land denen
George Clark, Jörg Gfrörer & Wolfgang Jung & Walter Krieg, Elke Marhöfer, Marta Rodríguez & Jorge Silva, Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca
5 October 2023 to 3 December 2023
Badischer Kunstverein, Germany
My film Sea of Clouds / 雲海 (2016) was featuring in the exhibition Das Land denen curated by Florian Wüst at Badischer Kunstverein
The exhibition Das Land denen presents five documentary and artistic films in the atrium of the Badischer Kunstverein as well as at the intercultural project space COLA TAXI OKAY, all of which deal with the social, economic and ecological conditions of farming in a variety of ways. The selection of international films also addresses struggles around land rights and decolonization, and reflects upon image politics and narratives that are inscribed in landscapes and farming traditions, as well as in the film medium.
Die Enteignung by Jörg Gfrörer, Wolfgang Jung and Walter Krieg, produced in 1975 at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb), explores the impact of the industrialization of agriculture on part-time farmers in northern Germany who become dependent upon large-scale farms and food corporations. The extreme health hazards to which the workers of the Colombian flower industry are exposed are thematized in the second historical film, Marta Rodríguez’ and Jorge Silva’s Amor, mujeres y flores (1989). The new film by Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, Fala da Terra (2022), screened on 11. November at COLA TAXI OKAY, features the theatre ensemble Coletivo Banzeiros founded by members of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST). They highlight the power of collective resistance to the exploitation of nature and human beings.
Also focusing on practices of self-organization is George Clark’s film Sea of Clouds / 雲海 (2016), which investigates the relationship between Taiwan’s landscape and its history, using the reference to the clandestine use of rural cinema screenings. In her artistic work, Elke Marhöfer pursues an affective approach to the topic of species extinction. In Becoming Extinct (Wild Grass) of 2017, Marhöfer’s camera explores the vegetation found in the steppes of southern Russia in order to conceive a future characterized by an inclusive relationship between humanity and the natural world.
– Florian Wüst