paradocs
Exhibition — Nov 18, 2004 until Apr 9, 2005
In connection with the special programme ParaDocs, at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Stedelijk Museum CS is presenting video and photo work from its collection.
Among the works presented will be the recently acquired video film Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y by the Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez, in which history is
regarded in the light of aeroplane hijackings, accidents and Don DeLillo.
Together with the installation of this 1997 film, the exhibition at the Stedelijk investigates the tensive relation between documentary and fiction as it has existed for a much longer time in the visual arts and photography.
It can be seen in the highly poetic Ellis Island (1981) by the American choreographer and composer Meredith Monk, with dramatised scenes involving the former Immigration Station, and the video installation The Hero (2001) by Marina Abramovic, which hints at the war in Yugoslavia.
The tension is further ratcheted up with an approach to the phenomenon of ‘violence’ by Bruce Nauman, as harrowing as it is analytic, and dramatic images from Vietnam by Don Reeves. The section on photography contains reports from the ‘Incident on Dam Square’, May 7, 1945 shot by several phographers.
Furthermore works by Günther Förg, Koen Wessing and Boris Mikhailov are shown. In addition to the original documentary value, their photographs also have a strong symbolic weight. Two contemporary photographic series, by Kadir van Lohuizen on Sierra Leone and Ad van Denderen on Israel/Palestine, accentuate this possibility of combining documentary and metaphor.
