Prague, Jan 18 (CTK) – An exhibition of American and European videoart, politically and socially engaged documentary films and music video clips opened in Prague’s Galerie Rudolfinum under the title of Domestic Arenas on Thursday.
The authors of six art works, in spite of their seemingly entertaining musical form, respond to particular social and demographic problems mainly of the American society.
According to the exhibition’s curator Petr Nedoma, it also opens a new way for the gallery by shifting the limits of the possibilities for working with its space.
“An intellectual exhibition addresses the functioning of the global society,” Nedoma characterised the exhibition made of thematic videos, which counterpoise pop video production.
The works use a range of forms from a six-hour long stream of music (Stan Douglas) to escalated and dynamic social analyses of socially excluded groups in themes of street dance contests (Jeremy Deller and Cecilia Bengolea) and very emotionally charged scenes of encounters between ethnically different worlds in the streets of Los Angeles (Kahlil Joseph).
In his film installation, Joseph poses the question of what it means to be part of the complex and complicated black community. Joseph took inspiration for it from U.S. rapper Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 album good kid, m.A.A.d city making use of home videos filmed by the singer’s uncle in 1992.
Berlin-based Omer Fast’s film stories are told in a completely different way. His video entitled Continuity shows a middle class married couple experiencing their son’s return from Afghanistan.
In an installation named Stateless, Shimon Attie deals with the themes of migrants’ anxieties, their issues of identity and the problems caused by political conflicts.
British filmmaker of Ghanian descent John Akomfrah, on the other hand, returns to the 16th century, setting his formal series referring to the beginnings of slavery in it.
