Utopia Today x REX Box
29.02. – 27.03.2024, daily, 13:30 to 24:00
5.03.2024, 18:30 to 19:30 in room REX2: Andrea Domesle in discussion with Anna Linder, HEAD from SAQMI, interpretating the videos, showing additionally a short film by August Joensalo and with a footnote about the importance of SAQMI archive.
Kassenhaus des Kino REX Bern, Schwanengasse 9, 3011 Bern.
Artists: Atom Cianfarani & Maya Suess, Anna Linder, Conny Karlsson Lundgren, Martina Morger.
Curated by Andrea Domesle, Videocity director, in cooperation with The Swedish Archive for Queer Moving Images
“Utopia Today – Queer Perspectives”
This video programme brings together positions by artists living in Sweden, Finland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Canada. Whilst the presented utopian concepts often take everyday life is a starting point, they project wishes, goals or hopes for change into the future. Yet, simultaneously, they draw an arc connecting to the past.
An ancient poet is remembered through her sculptural likeness – Sappho lived in Mytilene on the island of Lesbos in the North Aegean, the cultural centre of the 7th century BC. Erotic love plays an important role in her poetry. She gathered a group of young girls around her as pupils. She taught young women skills such as poetry, music, song, and dance and performed with them at festivals in honour of the gods. Sappho’s story has now become part of queer history and culture.
Curated in collaboration with The Swedish Archive for Queer Moving Images, the selected works present queer perspectives and marginalised histories. The ephemeral imagery of the medium of video makes transience particularly clear to us and targets areas of transition: from past to present and future and back again; from individual to community; from personal destinies to human history; from the self-image of an individual to the role in society and its transformation with the times.