Screening: Metaphysics and Democracy or Popular Ontology.
by Tebatusasula
Fr. 19.09.2014 (19:30)
Screening and Präsentation by Tebatusasula
60 min, english, german, spanish and french, 2014.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” (Propaganda by Edward Bernays, 1928).
This movie is the first part of a two movies-artistic research on ideology. It shows 60 long observations of advertisements, texts, images and landscapes in the city of Berlin. In the first part the images are accompanied by a voice reading the text “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, a milestone of the philosophical speculation in literature, by Jorge Luis Borges. In a second part we listen to interviews took from the documentary movie “Encirclement. Neoliberalism Esnares Democracy” by Richard Brouillet, with guest like Ignacio Ramonet, Noam Chomsky and others. They discuss Ramonet’s concept of Pensée Unique.
And as an appetizer:
A displacement of Akira Kurosawa’s shortmovie a sunshine through the rain as a personal interpretation by Luis Ortiz.
13:30 min, japanese, english. 2013.
The film is an appropriation of a short film by Kurosawa part of the episode film Dreams (1990), from whom I took the sound and the texts and changed the images of the same, so at the same time is also a re-enactment. Based on real circumstances, my interpretation reflects my feelings to be an unwanted person in a wealthy society, a migrant without a visa, but with the desire of being part of it. The second part, though, shows evidence that want to confront the viewer, like the evidence in a legal trial. Have I committed a criminal offense? Or are these legal problems secondary results of the limited residence rights? Am I a criminal foreigner?
The aesthetic and economic methods with them this film works are precarious because it is a film about the precariousness. Migrants and foreigners experience this precariousness by being confronted with problems of dependency and lack of skills for the life in Europe, but also with a systematic racism to all of them that are not white or no interested in being part of a neoliberal work- and consume system.
The original Film from Kurosawa, is based in his own memories about some dreams that impressed him at most in different phases of his life. So the original film has some autobiographical elements, elements that I now retake to tell a story about me. On the other side is like the title says a displacement, that means I take it from his historical, geographical and linguistic context to other one, likely a metaphor for migration. Even, when the film is transported from that high-end, professional and expansive production context to the precarious production context.
Pierre Bourdieu spoke of the concept of Symbolic Violence as an instrument of the society that suppresses the individual and how this oppression is internalized and reproduced by the oppressed groups, some similar line of thoughts can be found by Antonio Gramsci and, in particular in questions of migration, by Frantz Fanon. In my opinion, one should be very aware that the imaginary, the idea of life that everyone in the world nowadays desires, has been shaped by a fantasy image of the harmonic and economical prosperous “core countries” and who doesn’t belong to it, isn’t only for the society but also for themselves less worth. Thus, these instruments of symbolic violence are accepted and reproduced in the desire of the people, and this gap between their live and an ideal of “a better live” become an unspeakable.