On the Anarchic Organization of Cinematic Spaces – Evoking Spaces beyond Cinema

This book documents an installation by Eric Baudelaire revisiting the political and personal saga of the Japanese Red Army as an anabasys—an allegory of a journey that is both a wandering into the unknown and a return back home.

“This book is not for reading but for wandering. Its lines do not roll out continuously but superimpose each other to infinity, creating not a compendium of knowledge but a web of prescience. It does not follow a logical framework but unfurls a grid with multiple entries. It does not assert a set subject or conclusive postulate. At most it invites us to probe the recesses of a mind in motion, and steeps us in the driving material that brings it to life. It reflects the works it exhibits, the documents it discloses and the commentary it generates: it aspires to ubiquity. Anabasis, the very real linking thread that stitches it together, serves not just as an archaeological enigma, but also as an allegorical force. The main author of this ocean crossing, Eric Baudelaire, is both a collector of vestiges and a sketcher of wandering lines who has surrounded himself with other meticulous voices (Pierre Zaoui, Homay King, Jean-Pierre Rehm), fellow-travellers in this library secret. Readers will be able to enjoy the gradual unfolding of the story of war and politics whose underlying intellectual and poetic adventure this book enables us to recall—that of its repetitions, ramifications and hybridisations: the story of Anabasis after Anabasis (or from Xenophon's Anabasis to that of Paul Celan by way of Alain Badiou's), from an ancient narrative to its modern reappropriation.” — Morad Montazami 

Edited by Eric Baudelaire and Anna Colin.

Texts by Morad Montazami, Pierre Zaoui, Homay King, Jean-Pierre Rehm.

Mystic Transport is an exhibition project initiated through a chance encounter between two artists, Koen Theys and Gülsün Karamustafa. Both are very much intertwined with the city they live in; Brussels and Istanbul and integrate visible and invisible materials and remnants from their immediate surroundings within their practice.

Intrigued by religious parades, the hamam, war propaganda, gender issues and the entertainment industry, Theys and Karamustafa use these phenomena as starting points for their video work, installations and performances. In doing so, both artists sketch a critical portrait of the society and culture in which we live and reside, reflecting on cultural canons and differing socio-economic realities. Mystic Transport thus results in unique crossovers.

REWIND PLAY presents a selection of key works from the first decade of artist's video practice in the UK. From early conceptual experiments exploring the parameters of the medium to works dealing with media culture and television this collection explores the range and diversity of the first years of video as new media.

This three DVD box set including 24 videos by: John Adams, Peter Anderson, Kevin Atherton, Ian Bourn, Ian Breakwell, David Critchley, Peter Donebauer, Catherine Elwes, Judith Goddard, David Hall, Mick Hartney, Brian Hoey/Wendy Brown, Madelon Hooykaas/ Elsa Stansfield, Tina Keane, Tamara Krikorian, Mike Leggett, Stephen Littman, Stuart Marshall, Chris Meigh-Andrews/ Gabrielle Bown, Marcelline Mori, Stephen Partridge, Clive Richardson and Tony Sinden. Plus a new essay by Sean Cubitt, Professor of Media and Communications, University of Melbourne.

Total running time: 336 minutes. 3 x DVD 9, PAL, Region 0

Published in collaboration with REWIND| Artists' Video in the 70s and 80s.

Disc 1:
Stories, John Adams (1982, 13 min) Eyebath Peter Anderson (1977, 8 min) In Two Minds (2 screen version) Kevin Atherton (1978, 25 min) Lenny's Documentary Ian Bourn (1978, 45 min) In the Home Ian Breakwell (1980, 10 min)

Disc 2:
Pieces I Never Did (3 screen version), David Critchley (1979, 31 min) Circling, Peter Donebauer (1975, 12 min) Kensington Gore, Catherine Elwes (1981, 15 min) Time Spent, Judith Goddard (1981, 12 min) TV Interruptions (7 TV Pieces), David Hall (1971, 23 min) State of Division, Mick Hartney (1978, 5 min) The Extent of Three Bells, Steve Hawley (1981, 5 min) Flow, Brian Hoey/Wendy Brown (1977, 17 min)

Disc 3:
Split Seconds, Madelon Hooykaas/ Elsa Stansfield (1979, 11 min) Clapping Songs, Tina Keane (1979, 6 min) Vanitas, Tamara Krikorian (1977, 8 min) The Heart Cycle, Mike Leggett (1973, 9 min) Mirror, Stephen Littman (1979, 5 min) Go thru the Motions, Stuart Marshall (1975, 8 min) Continuum, Chris Meigh Andrews/Gabrielle Bown (1977 5 min) 2nd and 3rd Identity, Marcelline Mori (1978, 10 min) Monitor, Stephen Partridge (1975, 6 min) Video Sketches, Clive Richardson (1972, 22 min) Drift Guitars, Tony Sinden (1975 21 min)

Semi-Nomadic Debt-Ridden Bedouins offers an in-depth look at nearly two decades of artistic output by the Palestinian artist and filmmaker Basma al-Sharif. Retracing her practice from recent works back to her earliest experiments, the book provides an original overview of how her visual language and conceptual concerns have evolved over time.

Basma al-Sharif's films and installations navigate the unstable terrains of displacement, colonialism, and representation—often shaped by the ongoing reality of the occupation of Palestine. Through a rich selection of images and curatorial essays, the monograph highlights the layered political and cinematic frameworks within which her works are embedded.

Also included are two newly commissioned literary contributions: a fictional piece by Karim Kattan that resonates with the themes of place and estrangement, and a conversation between al-Sharif and the artist Diego Marcon, in which they reflect on shared affinities, artistic processes, and their long-standing dialogue. Blurring the personal and the political, the real and the imagined, Semi-Nomadic Debt-Ridden Bedouins captures the complexity and urgency of al-Sharif's artistic journey.

Texts by Basma al-Sharif, Karim Kattan, Diego Marcon, et al.

Basma al-Sharif (born 1983 in Koweit) is a Palestinian artist working in cinema and installation. She developed her practice nomadically between the Middle East, Europe, and North America and is currently based in Berlin. Her practice looks at cyclical political conflicts and confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works.

An autobiographical documentary, a fiction that's also an essay and an extended poetic meditation on the ability of the image to represent experience. Sarah Turner's film is a ghost story that explores what we forget and how we remember. The stunning imagery comes solely from the window of the Trans-Siberian train, shot first in 1987-8 and then again in 2007-8. The re-enactment of the journey is a memory work, a re-enactment of the past in the present through the process of filming. But the return journey is haunted by the voices of two dead friends that dominate the soundscape of the 'archive' footage. The film culminates at the haunting expanse of Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world.

Perestroika: Reconstructed re-mixes and extends Perestroika, into two sequences. Sequence one constitutes the 2009 version of the film, whilst the second sequence constructs a new framing narrative that reinterprets and reconfigures both the imagery and the experience of the first. Part psycho-geography, part dream and part environmental allegory, both sequences of Perestroika : Reconstructed conclude at Lake Baikal, contrasting experiences of terror and apocalypse with those of beauty and tranquility, the one contaminating the other. In this uncanny return, form stages thee through twinning the instability of memory and re-enacting that within the projective experience of cinema. This extended work delves further into ideas of momentary truth, identity, and how an uncontaminated experience of landscape is literally and metaphorically something that only exists in memory.

Publication contains DVD of Perestroika, which was released theatrically, blu-ray of Perestroika:Reconstructed, first exhibited as a gallery installation at London's Carroll/Fletcher Gallery April-May 2013, and a booklet of three essays by Elizabeth Cowie, Sophie Mayer, and Paul Newland.