CONGLOMERATE • Block Three Premiere Screening

About

Admission to the screening is FREE, but please arrive early to ensure a seat.

CONGLOMERATE - BLOCK THREE brings together a selection of video works into a 30 minute channel-surfing experience unfolding through the following contributions:

BENEATH THE SALT is a television program created by Joe Clark, Claudia Comte, and Lauryn Youden within their eponymous installation at Kinderhook & Caracas in April 2017. Professor Richard James-Anthony notionally addresses the fascinating and interwoven history of salt and civilization from antiquity to the present day. Moving beyond a straightforward historical analysis, he weaves the esoteric with cutting edge ‘mind-science’ underpinned with the unique and authoritative narratives he is known for, to create what he describes as a “toolbox for a changing world”. Beneath The Salt is produced as the first of a three-part series of new CONGLOMERATE-curated exhibitions to be organized throughout 2017. 
www.joeclark.eu www.claudiacomte.ch www.laurynyouden.net

Melanie Bonajo has contributed a series of segments culled from her archive of in-between and impromptu moments from past video shoots entitled "Single Mother Songs from the End of Nature. A manual. DIY intimacy in the digital body." Bonajo’s work often explores the repercussions of late-capitalism and possible escapes from it in the form of agrarian lifestyles, psychedelic self-medication, and new models of intimacy, corporeality and gender. @melanie_bonajo

Marco Montiel-Soto’s practice revolves around the artist-as-explorer and the precarious heritage of “the expedition”. Here we present "Valle sagrado" (Sacred Valley), a selection from "Tratado de maracas" (Marcas Treaty), a series of impromptu videos in which his protagonist, a hand-crafted maraca, looks around and shakes his head while visiting ancient historic sites in the Sacred Valley in Peru. www.marcomontielsoto.com

Ming Wong’s "Blue Elephant" is a surreal, frantic amalgamation of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man, centered around Wong’s own detailed restaging of iconic scenes in which he plays all of the roles, upending their original lens and replacing it with one that is at once uncanny, yet no less terrifying. Wong’s work often employs reenactment as a tool to piercingly dig into the complex layers of identity, gender and culture. www.mingwong.org

Avi Krispin has created a series of CONGLOMERATE station IDs featuring a flirtatious mascot in its feathered world. This is the first sneak peek into this character, who will feature in her upcoming project. www.avikrispin.com

CAMP SOLONG is an ongoing nomadic summer camp for adults created by Dafna Maimon and Ethan Hayes-Chute. Campers take part in a goodbye-themed camp for a three-day introspective adventure situated within an immersive micro-universe built by the artists, who also lead the program examining emotional landscapes, communal living, and the need for play in daily life. Here Camp Solong presents a commercial to entice potential campers for an upcoming session. www.campsolong.org

THE NEW DOMESTIC WOODSHOP functions as a how-to show hosted by Ethan Hayes-Chute. Drawing from classic broadcast home improvement-style shows as well as recent trends in online DIY tutorial culture, the reluctant host-slash-woodworker opens his woodshop and showcases his working methods along with the self-made tools he uses to bring domestic fantasies to life.

TELETHON is a perpetually running program which acts as the mortar to the bricks of the first five Blocks. Serving as the subconscious of CONGLOMERATE, it’s devoid of geographic location, currency, or seemingly any connection to linear time or reason. An unnamed Host implores viewers (or ‘folks’) to pledge, donate and call into a shape-shifting call-bank of volunteers, as subplots unfold, only to disappear again. Telethon also features “Talents” which range widely in both their impressiveness and earnestness.

DESDE EL JARDÍN is an episodic “micro” telenovela written and directed by Sol Calero and Dafna Maimon. The series is shot on location in Calero’s eponymous installation at David Dale Gallery in Glasgow and stars Caique Tizzi in a gender-bending double role within a “rags to riches—and back” experimental narrative, among a cast of local Glaswegian Latinos. Desde el Jardín is made by CONGLOMERATE, combining set design, props, music and cinematography from all of its respective members.

AROUND THE WORLD is a three part mini-series created by Derek Howard that traces the origins of life on Earth. Journeying from the polar ice caps, to the Amazon jungle, and finally into urban spaces, stoic narration draws connections between nature’s cycles and psychological growth. 

Soda Plains, the musical moniker of producer Alexis Chan, spins together baroque sonic architectures from a wide array of samples, tones and beats, sometimes lush and others brutal. His track DOUBLE BURST closes out Block Three. www.soundcloud.com/sodaplains

CONGLOMERATE is supported by the Berlin Senatskanzlei.

For more information visit:
www.conglomerate.tv