In three solo presentations, Joined Narratives shows work by young filmmakers Katarina Jazbec, Lavinia Xausa and Heidi Vogels, which was created in close collaboration with the protagonists. The narrative film works have been brought together by curator Mariska van den Berg around the question of how experiences of exclusion, uprooting and loss – which are hidden from view – can be expressed and depicted, and made tangible and discussable. The emotional world, memory, desire and imagination are central.
Joined Narratives #2, Lavinia Xausa–Further than Hip Hop
(on view until 04.07.2021)
When Lavinia Xausa settles in Rotterdam in 2015, she is struck by the city's super diverse character. 'Further than Hip Hop' (2020) is the result of her quest for the connection with Dutch colonial history and how it continues to this day in Rotterdam communities.
In the film, Xausa draws a parallel between the words of colonial missionaries in history and that of rappers and spoken-word artists in contemporary Rotterdam. The texts that Neusa Gomes, Kevin Josias, Adeiye Tjon and Rik Zutphen present in the film, they wrote in response to conversations initiated by Xausa. Self-aware and in balanced words, they describe the lack of a sense of belonging, or the experience of racism. We see anger, thinly disguised contempt, but also reflection. It is mainly pain that is made tangible. Their critical voices show that multiculturalism stands for a multitude of cultures, but not necessarily for togetherness. There is still no shared frame of reference.
In 'Further than Hip Hop' the stories become interwoven and the perspective changes. The performances were filmed in Arminius, a Rotterdam debate center, housed in a former church full of symbols of a glorious past. This footage is interspersed with 19th-century archive footage of colonized Indonesia. Xausa thus shows how colonialism - once legitimized by the Bible and a narrative of progress, irrevocably linked in practice to domination and exploitation - has had a profound impact to date. Who we are, our identity –individually and collectively– is expressed through our history and ancestors; but above all we actively and continuously shape it in the present. In the film, the word artists express their stories from their personal experience. In doing so, they demand space for marginalized histories, take a position in the present, and invite the viewer to do the same.
Joined Narratives #1, Reading with Twelve Eyes (on display until 06.12.2020)
This first edition of Joined Narratives shows two films by Katarina Jazbec (1991). For 'Our Bearings' (2016), she brought the women of her family together to read the story 'The Woman with the Wolf' after the loss of both grandmothers. In 'Permeating Hearts' (2018), young prisoners in a Belgian prison regularly meet to discuss short stories. In that process, they encounter everything: fear, anger and hatred, but also hope, friendship and courage.
The films are part of a series of works in which Jazbec tests the shared reading of literary stories as a way to initiate a conversation in which there is room for different interpretations, confrontation and mutual understanding. Literary fiction offers the possibility to experience the world from a different perspective. In the reading sessions, reality and fiction become intertwined, and an intimate space is created in which the stories release emotions and raise questions about what is true and what we believe.
The stories from 'Permeating Hearts' are available in the exhibition, an invitation to read and think along.