By Any Means, Screening Programme: Emergence by Institute of Queer Ecology

About

By Any Means: Screening Programme

Curated by Gray Wielebinski and Cairo Clarke

III. Metamorphosis, Part 3: Emergence by The Institute of Queer Ecology

Running time, 53 min

07.08.2021

The film will run on loop throughout the day. No need to book in. 

Emergence is the final part of Metamorphosis, a 3-part proposal by the Institute of Queer Ecology to restructure how the world is imagined and how it operates today. These three stages are modeled after the life cycles of holometabolous insects: bugs who undergo a “complete metamorphosis” where the organism fully restructures itself to adapt to its changing needs and ensure its survival.

Relying on this metaphorical transformation, IQECO aims to help catalyze a planet-wide transformation from the prevailing extractive relationship with the earth to one characterized by regeneration and care: a shift from making “nature” subservient, to working with the natural world and, in that process, remaking ourselves and our relationships—to each other, and the world.

Emergence is being presented as part of a screening programme co-curated by V.O artist in residence, Gray Wielebinski, and curator/writer, Cairo Clarke. The programme runs in tandem with By Any Means, a group exhibition that runs from 23 July through 26 August in the gallery. 

Screenings will take place in the 5th floor project space at V.O Curations, 56 Conduit Street, W1S 2YZ. The room is accessible by stairs and lift, and to ensure the safety of our visitors, we are limiting screenings to a maximum of 10 people, and masks must be worn for the duration of the event. 

The Institute of Queer Ecology (IQECO), is a collaborative, decentralized organism that works to imagine and realize an equitable multispecies future. With programming that ranges from exhibitions, artwork, and publications to direct community actions, IQECO lays the groundwork for a (bio)diverse utopia.

DIS.ART is a streaming platform for entertainment and education—edutainment. DIS enlists leading artists and thinkers to expand the reach of key conversations bubbling up through contemporary art, culture, activism, philosophy, and technology. Every video proposes something—a solution, a question—a way to think about our shifting reality.

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Former V.O artist in residence, Gray Wielebinski, and curator/writer, Cairo Clarke, have programmed a series of film screenings in dialogue with By Any Means, an exhibition curated by Wielebinski that runs from 23 July until 26 August in the V.O gallery. 

The conception of a screening programme nods to the legacy of the underground and adult film cultures in the neighbouring London area of Soho, allowing for the thinking through of opacity as a tool to maintain the existence of spaces and communities that are constantly being pushed out and destroyed by institutional, commercial and capital-orientated power structures, whilst also recognising the danger of opacity when used by those structures themselves. 

The films speak to this further, each embodying their own visual, oral and written language, whilst also situating themselves in conversation with familiar types of cinema. In doing so, as a viewer, certain familiar codes carry us through: collage, translation, revenge fantasy and nature documentary, whilst the filmmakers and artists subvert and redirect us to engage critically with narrative and moving-image. Propaganda continues to be inherently interwoven into mainstream Hollywood cinema, obfuscating large power structures with white, cis, revenge-based narratives. 

When revenge is individualised what happens to collective justice? Where does it sit in this dichotomy? How is it articulated and by whom? The films in this programme speak to all of these questions, arriving at no one answer, but rather, inviting us to take heed to the questions and articulations that arise in us and our relations to the world.

Screenings must be pre-booked, please visit www.vocurations.com for more information.

By Any Means, Screening Programme Schedule 

I. Saturday 24 July - Welcome II the Terrordome by Ngozi Onwurah

Running time, 98 min 

1pm | 4pm

II. Saturday 31 July - Terror Nullius by Soda Jerk

Running time, 54 min

1pm | 4pm

III. Saturday 7 August - Metamorphosis, Part 3: Emergence

Produced by The Institute of Queer Ecology

Commissioned by DIS

Running time, 15 min

Film will run on loop throughout the day

IV. Saturday 14 August - Duilian by Wu Tsang

Running time, 26 min

1pm | 4pm

Gray Wielebinski (b. 1991 Dallas, TX, USA) received a BA from Pomona College, Claremont CA, USA in 2014 before completing an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK in 2018. He lives and works in London and LA. In Wielebinski’s expansive practice, which incorporates video, performance, collage, installation and sculpture. he explores the intersections of mythology, identity, gender, nationhood and memory. Reconfiguring and transforming iconography and visual codes, their work seeks to navigate society’s frameworks and belief systems. Engaging directly with the contexts in which we live, Wielebinski reveals how narratives reflect and shape our identities. His work opens up the possibilities for a more inclusive storytelling, by reimagining dominant societal mythology. Recent exhibitions include Two Snakes, a solo show at 12.26 Gallery in Dallas, Texas (2020), Our Ashes Make Great Fertilizer at Public Gallery, London, (2020) Repurposed Textiles at Krefelder Kunstverein in Krefeld, DE (2020) and at Frieze London with Hales Gallery, London, where he currently has a solo show.

Cairo Clarke is a curator and writer whose work is informed by slowness. Her work centres on forms of knowledge production and dissemination that slip between the cracks, are formed on unstable ground and take on multiple temporalities. Cairo has worked closely with artists to develop and share instances of work across film, performance, printed matter and events as well as sharing self-led curatorial projects. In 2019 she launched SITE, a publication and curatorial project exploring alternative encounters with artist practice and the dissemination of research. Cairo is the 2020/21 Curatorial Fellow at LUX.