Works and Words: Revisiting film and/as art from 1970s East Central Europe and concert-performance by Wojciech Bąkowski

09.10.2018
20:30–22:30
Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam

Works and Words publication 1979

26 September 1979 Film Programme

Peter Rubin founder of Holland Experimental Film produced the film Programme icw De Appel

Locations of Works and Words on the invitation

Film programme and concert-performance by Wojciech Bąkowski

In 1979, an ‘International Art Manifestation’ entitled Works and Words was held in Amsterdam, organised by De Appel and Holland Experimental Film, the partial precursor to the EYE Film Museum. Works and Words focused on contemporary art from socialist Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia through a series of art events that included lectures, performances, installations, video, photography and film across the city. This current event compiled by De Appel in collaboration with EYE museum is a celebration of this interdisciplinary ‘Art Manifestation’. It includes a selection of experimental films from the original programme by seminal artists such as Dóra Maurer (HU), Józef Robakowski (PL) and Mladen Stilinović (HR). The screening is additionally framed by a conversation on the fascinating context of Works and Words as a cultural event organised during the Cold War era, and a concert-performance by contemporary Polish media artist Wojciech Bąkowski. His work notably revisits some of the themes experimental filmmakers engaged in the late 1970s by, for example, zooming in on details of everyday life. The programme is organised on the occasion of the reprint of the original Works and Words exhibition catalogue by De Appel and Roma Publications. On this evening the reprint is for sale for 15 euro (normal price 19,95). Tickets are available on the website of ( EYE museum ). On De Appel website you will also find ( Footnotes#3 ), revealing the history of Works and Words while opening up the archive.

Preview: WOJCIECH BĄKOWSKI MAKIETA KONCERTU

Wojciech Bąkowski (b. 1979)

animated film, video, drawings, sound installation, performance

Graduated at Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. His work has been shown (among others) in New Museum, New York, Schmela Haus, Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, CAC, Vilnus. Apart of being visual artist, he is also a poet and a musician. In 2015 he was awarded the Grand Prize the 61st International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany. His films were presented at film festivals in Toronto, Vienna, Wrocław, Ann Arbour and on individual screening at Anthology Film Archives, NYC. Bąkowski collaborates with Stereo Gallery, Warsaw and Bureau, New York. Recently, in his music activities Bąkowski binds stock sound effects with simple melodies that he composes. Those music collages are enriched by formally uncomplicated poetry, which is comprised of singular chanted words. Performance in Eye Museum will contain the compositions from Bąkowski’s new album “JAZZ DUO” that will be released in winter by Dunno Recordings.

From a letter from the artist:

“In high school I had a lazy photography teacher. He would arrive for the class with a coffee and a bun to read a newspaper. To keep us from getting bored he turned on the VCR. He only had the avant-garde on his cassettes, mainly the Workshop of the Film Form. We were lying with our heads on the desks, it was in the morning and we couldn't be bothered about anything. I reviewed Robakowski's entire work with one eye while thinking about something else. Sometimes I even slept Later, while making my own films, I unconsciously recreated the atmosphere of those works. It was difficult for me to escape that aesthetics and philosophy, to create something of my own. The traces of the whole thing are visible in what I do until the present day. That's the way it is with texts by charismatics.” WB