Online Screening Event
Date: 18-26 June 2022
KLEX is thrilled to have an exchange with the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC) where we cross-promote our respective programmes in May and June 2022. Here we’re presenting you ExScreen 021: “Vignettes of Moments” featuring works and artists from the festival’s archive!
Streaming link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImQ90YXoP7k
FB Event: https://fb.me/e/2sIxkbbrs
Instagram: instagram.com/klexfestival/
Info: [email protected]
#klexfest #klexexscreen #cfmdc
Instagram:
@andystiff97 @saffwansalleh @wuttin @jason.bernagozzi @chloeyapmunee @fadlysabran
Design: Aixin Choo
Cover Image: video still from Jason Bernagozzi’s Memory and Ritual in Frame Difference
Founded in January 2015, ExScreen is a film screening series of KLEX aiming at introducing cinema works with an alternative, experimental and unconventional approach to a larger audience in Malaysia. ExScreen aims to provide the platform for appreciation, understanding, and discussion of experimental cinema.
“VIGNETTES OF MOMENTS”
Curator: Kok Siew-Wai
This programme consists of 10 experimental shorts exploring the ideas surrounding vignettes and fragmentation – construct/deconstruct, order/disorder/re-order, physical/virtual, reality/fiction, of people, places and memories. As much as we desire to comprehend things in its entirety, it is almost impossible. Most of the time we can only see a part of the big picture, a fragment of reality, and often coming from a specific perspective. How can we be sure and convinced that what we see is ‘real’? Is the understanding of a reality still the same when you start to deconstruct it into fragmented pieces? Do our memories really resemble the actual incidents? Do we actively ‘construct’ our memories instead of merely passively remembering it? Is reality an objective observation or a subjective creation of the mind? Life is made up by a series of moments that keep rising and ceasing like ocean waves. As in film editing, we then assemble and arrange these pieces of moments and create our unique stories that we want to remember.
LIST OF WORK:
Total Run Time: 59 minutes
ALOR SETAR PULSE (2015)
4:55 min/sound
Andrew Stiff, UK
This video is an exploration of hand painted sun blinds in Alor Setar, Kedah, Malaysia. We are naturally drawn to patterns and order, and even disorder that is presented through a structured or ordered space or medium. It is because of this we see the world sequentially, even though events and communication do not happen sequentially. Using the theme of pulse, the motion of the blinds swaying in the evening breeze, is fractured into a series of cut edits that balance nonlinear disorder against the linear order of colour and context.
Bio:
Andrew Stiff is a Lecturer at RMIT University Vietnam, teaching in design. He specialises in experimental design and moving image. He is currently undertaking a practice based PhD at RMIT University, in the School of Graduate Research: Architecture and Design. The research is titled: ‘Intimate Spaces: An archive of creative observation’. Andrew’s design practice investigates the process of collecting, archiving and (re) producing physical and ephemeral data from an urban realm. Using and exploring the possibilities of digital tools, his practice employs moving image media. His work has been shown internationally in USA, Hong Kong, Japan, South East Asia and Europe.
KEMUBU (2020)
4:19 min/sound
Safwan Salleh, Malaysia
The video consists of train trip footages from Safwan’s collection. This is a trip down memory lane for Safwan as he details his childhood memories, along with the changes in landscape that he observed along the way.
Bio:
Safwan Salleh graduated from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), majoring in cinematography. He has worked as a freelance film director, editor and cinematographer. Safwan thinks that film has the potential for self-expression and education. He enjoys experimenting with films on various subjects, styles and techniques. He has created several short documentaries, short films, promotional videos, music videos, and experimental films.
16 X 9 CAPSULE (2014)
6:40 min/sound
Wuttin Chansataboot, Thailand
“16×9 Capsule” shows vignettes of incidents and situations taking place at different locations around Bangkok. The artist uses the camera to capture trivial moments in an ordinary day and crucial incident in political history of Thailand. Chansataboot intends to express a Buddhist concept, saying that everything keeps rising, standing and then cessation.
Bio:
Graduated from Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London in 2011, Wuttin CHANSATABOOT is a Thai media artist and filmmaker working across disciplines from moving image to multi-media installation. His works has been exhibited at art events and film festivals internationally. Chansataboot’s new media project “The Metamorphosis of Self and Identity in Digital Era” won Celeste Prize (in Project Prize category) in Milan which made him the only Asian to be awarded the prize in 2015. As a full-time lecturer, Chansataboot is currently teaching at Faculty of Fine Arts, Chiang Mai University. In 2020, he obtained PhD in Visual Arts at Silpakorn University, doing a practice-based research revolving around the effect of virtual interaction on self and identity in social network realm. The creative processes of his artworks usually associate with the mechanism and fluidity of digital medium which could significantly alter what we perceive as reality in various aspects.
PLAZA RAKYAT (2018)
3:05 min/sound
Ong Sau Kai, Malaysia
Plaza Rakyat, or the People’s Plaza is a mixed-use skyscraper complex in Kuala Lumpur. The construction was put on hold in 1998 due to financial difficulties causing part of the building remains in an unfinished state since then. This film uses 12 photos to destruct and reconstruct the time and space of the abandoned site.
Bio:
ONG Sau Kai is a video/film editor from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
MEMORY AND RITUAL IN FRAME DIFFERENCE (2012)
8:40 min/sound
Jason Bernagozzi, USA/Malaysia
Memory and Ritual in Frame Difference is a work that was produced during an artist residency in Malaysia, which was sponsored in part by KLEX Festival and Multimedia University. This work is a meditation on the complex relationships between ritual and public space at the Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In a space shared by both devout Hindus and tourists, the frame difference processing allows the viewer to focus on action and change within the recording.
Artist’s Bio:
Jason Bernagozzi is an artist & technologist and living and working in the front range of Colorado. He is an associate professor of electronic art and is a co- founder of the experimental media art non-profit signal culture. His work and research is deeply embedded in the histories and practices of real-time performative media art, creating performances, installations and single channel video artworks that have been exhibitioned internationally. In addition, Bernagozzi sees signal culture as an extension of his practice, facilitating the opportunity to hack, program and reimagine the purpose of various technologies in a fluid, real-time studio that encourages cross disciplinary investigation and a critical relationship to mass media.
TARIAN SI SIPUT (DANCE LIKE A SNAIL) (2021)
2:30 min/sound
Chloe Yap Mun Ee, Malaysia
The pantun (poem) is about a game I (we) used to play pretending to be the characters in invented fairy tales. This time it was a snail. The images of multiplied me are out of time with each other, I give up and try dancing.
Bio:
Chloe Yap Mun Ee is an experimental filmmaker and video artist who is curious about the expressions of form, medium, identity, love, intimacy, as well as their hypocrisies and contradictions. Her shorts H10001_XTOUCH.MOV (2015), (?)’S GAZE (2016), and STRNGE PLCE (2016) have screened locally and internationally. Meanwhile she continues confronting and challenging her own shifting points of view in works like HOW MY BRAIN MAKES SENSE OF PASSING TIME (2017) and DANCE LIKE A SNAIL (2021). Her latest work is a video installation for Bakat Muda Sezaman 2021: I DON’T REALLY WANT YOU TO SEE ME, BUT I STILL WANT TO SHOW YOU (2022); where she confronts her fear and guilt towards the cinema image and the power dynamics within its space. She is also a writer, illustrator; and occasionally does film programming with Cinemata Film Collective.
FASHION (2016)
10:00 min/sound
Loong Wah, Malaysia
In the evening, a host at the Midnight Express Discotheque was about to welcome the quest to the discotheque where there will be an amazing cabaret show later on the night.
Bio:
LOONG Wah is a Independent Film Director, Actor and Artist from Malaysia
BEAUTY(FOOL) OF DESTRUCTION (2018)
3:15 min/sound
Fadly Sabran, Malaysia
The video was made responding to the General Election campaign in Malaysia in 2018. Despite being a medium for transmitting information, media can also be a propagandistic rhetoric that is manipulated by political powers. It has such strong power to either construct or destruct the mindset and structure of a society.
Bio:
Fadly Sabran (b. 1983) is a Perak-based new media artist. He graduated with a Master’s Degree in Visual Art and Design at University Sains Malaysia, Penang and currently a lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts, Faculty of Art and Design, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Perak. He founded the independent art space, Kapallorek in 2014 that is based in Seri Iskandar, Perak, actively organizes experimental and new media art activities. He exhibits his works regularly including at the National Art Gallery, Petronas Gallery (Malaysia); National For The Culture and the Arts NCCA Gallery (Philippines); 33rd Image Forum Festival, Asian Experimental Cinema (Japan); 18th Asian Art Biennale, National Art Gallery Dhaka, (Bangladesh); The Korean Society of Media & Arts (KOSMA), Asia Cultural Center (South Korea); ‘Cheritera’, presented by Galeri Chandan at Start Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery (London), and many more.
*placetheearthbeneathyou (2019)
7:05 min / sound
Sim Hoi Ling and Yew Jun Ken, Malaysia
The video is composed of streamed and uploaded footage from various online media platforms, exploring a binary alternation between the physical and digital, as they both coexist within a simulated space. The advent of virtual and augmented reality, as well as the constantly transforming nature of internet technology, paves the path for globalized, mentally interconnected experiences that blurs the boundaries between the natural and virtual. This synthesis of the two creates a new, somewhat “singular world”, to which people inch closer and closer toward.
Bio:
Sim Hoi Ling is an image-maker whose practice is often influenced by photographic images, she enjoys exploring unconventional ways of image-making. She has exhibited works in the form of printmaking, video art, installation and performance, also presented internationally in festivals across Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Yew Jun Ken is an independent artist from Malaysia, whose practice explores a variety of mediums and structures. From drawing and collage to sound and video, he takes inspiration from the psychedelic and surreal to convey narratives that relate to the nature of changing landscapes, whether it be the physical or metaphysical.
STANDING AT THE EDGE OF WATER (2021)
08:17 min/sound
Pauline Vicencio-Despi
Connection. Conflict. Peak. End. For “Standing at The Edge of Water”, the artist connects the sound and the visuals, assimilating the emotional response of a person when they remember someone through a eulogy. As the person begins to recall these memories, the moments arrive in ‘phases’, like ocean waves. A faint memory glimmers in the horizon, gathers strength, builds volume and clarity until it crashes onto the shore… then fading away and coming back again with more depth and power. Everytime a wave returns, everytime a moment is remembered, it leaves a permanent mark on the shoreline. In this video, the artist establishes this emotional phenomena that happens when you reel in an ocean of memories; forming an audio/visual synthesis.3
Bio:
Growing up in the suburb outside of Manila, designer and artist Pauline Vicencio-Despi learned to embrace the noise and texture of the environment, as both her home and her playground. The sound of machines in her grandfather’s workshop and the flow of Dampalit River close to her home influenced the style and themes of her art. Her work involves synthesizing sounds with moving imagery and installation; expanding the dimension in which her art can be experienced to create a brand of unique narrative fiction. Through research, immersion, and interdisciplinary collaborations with other artists, Pauline is able to amplify her thoughts about feminism, self, nature and emotion in varying media.Recent exhibitions include ‘Situated Sounds: Eulogies’ (Toronto), ‘All Together Now: Sound X Design’ (Design Museum Chicago), ‘Composite Noises’ (Manila), and a group exhibition under Pablo Galleries for ‘SWAB Art Fair’ (Barcelona).She is 1/2 of ‘Sublingua, Submachines’ – an experimental laboratory she shares with her husband, whose works have been screened in National Museum Singapore, Artisan Queensland, Gasworks London, KLEX Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film and Music Fest, and Festival Accés Asié in Montreal. Pauline is part of the 13 Southeast Asian Emerging Women Artists 2022 for ‘ARUS’ by Maybank Foundation, Malaysia.
More info:
[email protected]
www.klexfestival.com
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www.instagram.com/klexfestival/