Masterclass by Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner
Thursday 24 April 2025
10:00–17:00
Pianofabriek (Brussels)
Program
An interactive workshop about performance and moving image. Performance is staged and found. It appears on screen and in all aspects of everyday life. Looking through a wide array of films, we trace the uncertain moments where performances begin and end, are constructed and broken down. Our workshop aims to establish a way of looking that overrides the usual distinctions we make between fiction and documentary, mainstream entertainment and experimental cultures.
As a point of departure we refer back to Tom Gunning’s influential essay Cinema of Attractions, a concept he developed to discuss the emergence of cinematic form. The early cinema commanded its viewers to ‘See!’, that is, to actively participate in the relations of making visible. In recent years a number of films, artworks and tv shows seem to indicate a new approach to performance, self consciously pulling their viewers into the dynamics of the social and political command ‘Perform!’. Through this lens, we explore some examples that pose questions about this new kind of self-reflexivity towards the performance of selfhood both on and off screen.
In dialog with cinema’s emergence and history, we trace shifts in the aesthetics and politics of performance across moving image media. Here we are interested in the particularities of how moving images shape and transmit performances. While we focus mostly on the staged or found performances of humans, we also explore how nonhuman performances are framed or reenacted for the moving image.
The workshop aims to provide a new lens through which to read the history and present of moving image cultures, as well as a set of tools to develop in collaboration, as operations for working with performance, staged or found, across moving image practices.
Images, in clockwise order from upper left:
Abbas Kiarostami, Close-Up (1990)
Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, The Curse (2023)
Harun Farocki, Leben BRD (How to Live in the German Federal Republic), (1990)
Wallace McCutcheon, Photographing A Female Crook (1904)
Sasha Litivintseva
Sasha Litivintseva is an artist, filmmaker and writer, based in London. Since 2018, much of her work is produced in the context of the ongoing collaboration with Beny Wagner.
Her films been screened at film festivals worldwide including at the Berlinale, Rotterdam International Film Festival, CPH:DOX, Cinema Du Reel, RIDM Montreal, Punto De Vista, Festival Du Nouveau Cinema, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival, Open City Docs, Camden International Film Festival, Olhar de Cinema, Vilnius Film Festival and Aesthetica Short Film Festival, among many others.
Her work has been presented at major art institutions including the Tate Modern, the Baltic Triennial, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Museum of the Moving Image New York, TIVA Taipei, ICA London, CCA Glasgow, FRAC Ile-de-France, Wexner Center for the Arts, Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, Mumok Vienna, Videobrasil and Transmediale, among many others. It has been subject of focus and retrospective screenings at more than fifteen venues worldwide including Courtisane Festival, Union Docs NY, LA Filmforum and e-flux screening room.
Her films have won numerous awards internationally, including the Sylvestre Award for Best Short Film at IndieLisboa, Best Short Documentary at Guanajuato Film Festival, a Special Mention at CPH:DOX, a Special Mention at EXiS Seoul, Second place at Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis (BAFTA equivalent) and was Longlisted for an Academy Award. Her work has been featured in publications including Cahiers du Cinema, Sight & Sound, Frieze, Senses of Cinema, Filmmaker Magazine, among others. Her films are distributed by Square Eyes and Criterion Channel.
Sasha holds a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Art and a PhD in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths. She is a senior lecturer in film at Queen Mary University of London and the 2024 winner of he Philip Leverhulme Prize. She is the author of Geological Filmmaking (Open Humanities Press, 2022), and the co-author, with Beny Wagner, of All Thoughts Fly: Monster, Taxonomy, Film (Sonic Acts Press, 2021). Her writing has also appeared in books and journals including e-flux and Environmental Humanities.
Beny Wagner
Beny Wagner is an artist, filmmaker, writer and lecturer. Working in moving image, text, installation and lectures, he constructs non-linear narratives that probe the ever shifting threshold of the human body in time. He has explored themes ranging from histories of metabolism, to the social and political histories of measurement standardization, the politics of waste, to histories of monsters in European science. Since 2017, much of his work is produced in the context of his ongoing collaboration with Sasha Litvintseva.
Wagner has presented work in festivals, exhibitions and conferences globally including: Berlinale, International Film Festival Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, Open City Documentary Festival, EXiS Seoul, Courtisane, Tate Modern, Museum of Moving Image New York, Eye Film Museum Amsterdam, Criterion Channel, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Los Angeles Film Forum, Seoul Media City Biennale, Berlin Atonal, Venice Biennale, White Columns among many others. His work has been featured in Artforum, BOMB Magazine, Filmmaker Magazine, Spike Magazine Quarterly, Frieze Magazine, Kaleidoscope Press and Flash Art. His writing has been published in e-flux, Diaphanes, Valiz, among others. His films have won numerous awards including Best Short Film at IndieLisboa and Best Short Documentary at Guanajuato International Film Festival.
Wagner is a lecturer on Fine Art Critical Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. He holds a PhD from the Archaeologies of Media and Technology Research Group at Winchester School of Art, Southampton University. He has also lectured at University College London, Queen Mary University London, Gerrit Rietveld Academy Amsterdam, and has been a guest lecturer in film and fine art academies and universities across Europe, UK, USA. Wagner was a researcher at Jan van Eyck Academy. He received his BA from Bard College, New York.
Practical Information
Date: Thursday 24 April 2025
Time: 10:00–17:00
Venue: Pianofabriek (rue du Fort 35, 1060 Saint-Gilles)
[ FULLY BOOKED, JOIN THE WAITING LIST ]
Tickets are free, on registration only (limited space)
If you want to join the waiting list, please email us at soundimageculture@gmail.com