PROBLEMATISING REALITY
Encounters between art, cinema and philosophy
Programme 2
Alberto Toscano, Simon Thompson
Goethe-Institut, Auditorium
10.07.2018
Alan Clarke, Baal. Film still. © BFI.
Baal (1982, 64 Min.) by Alan Clarke
Elephant (1989, 39 Min.) by Alan Clarke
Talk: Alberto Toscano, Simon Thompson
Artworks, especially those that comprise documentary material, can offer a particularly challenging appeal to our thoughts about reality. While their indexical link to the reality they address grants images and sounds a specific credibility, the position of the artist, her aesthetic, thematic and political choices and self-reflexive stance, may generate a critical assessment of the very constitution of reality. At such a point, art meets philosophy. In order to reflect on the relationship between the factual world and its subjective appropriation, questioning hegemonic claims to objectivity and problematising the inherent contradictions of society are inherently philosophical issues. ‘Problematising reality – Encounters between art, cinema and philosophy’ is a series of projections and discussions that takes place in various cultural spaces in the city of Lisbon, in a partnership between IFILNOVA (CineLab) / FCSH / UNL, Goethe-Institut and Maumaus / Lumiar Cité and in collaboration with Apordoc / Doc’s Kingdom. These encounters between artists and researchers of international renown focus on the very moments where art, cinema and philosophy enter into a productive dialogue.
The second programme takes place at the Goethe-Institut Auditorium and brings together the philosopher Alberto Toscano and the artist Simon Thompson, along with the screening of Baal (1982) and Elephant (1989), both by the British filmmaker Alan Clarke (1935-1990). Although most of his work has been produced within the television context, Alan Clarke uses cinema’s grammar to focus on neglected communities, confined between class distinction and the power of patriarchal institutions, creating a unique body of work that made him one of the most prestigious British filmmakers, whose influence has been claimed by the new generation of actors, screenwriters and filmmakers, including Harmony Korine and Gus Van Sant. Starring David Bowie in the role of an alcoholic and worldly poet who despises the norms of bourgeois society, Baal is the adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s homonymous theater play, conceived as a response to the expressionism of Der Einsame (The Lonely Man) by Hans Johst, a dramatist later compliant with Nazi ideology. Conversely, in Elephant, loosely inspired by police reports drawn up during the Northern Ireland conflict, Alan Clarke uses a set of his famous ‘walking shots’, the absence of dialogues and narrative concerns, displaying a minimalist device that offers an exemplary rhythmic quality of sound and image.
Alberto Toscano lives and works in London as Reader in Critical Theory and Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of Cartographies of the Absolute (with Jeff Kinkle, 2015) and Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea (2010). He edited The Italian Difference: Between Nihilism and Biopolitics (with Lorenzo Chiesa, 2009) and has translated several works by Alain Badiou, as well as Antonio Negri, Furio Jesi and Franco Fortini. He is currently working on two book projects, the first on tragedy as a political form, the second on philosophy, capitalism and ‘real abstraction’. He is also preparing a multi-volume edited collection, Handbook of Marxism (with Bev Skeggs and Sara Farris). He has sat on the editorial board of the journal Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory since 2004, and is series editor of The Italian List for Seagull Books.
Simon Thompson is a British artist living and working in Brussels.
Maumaus
Avenida António Augusto de Aguiar, 148 - 3º C
1050-021 Lisboa, Portugal
Monday to Friday, 10h00 to 13h00,
14h30 to 19h00
Tel: + 351 21 352 11 55
maumaus@maumaus.org
Current:
Independent Study Programme
Call 2024
Until 03.09.2023
Upcoming:
Manthia Diawara
Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom
Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon
30.09.2023, 19h00
Commissioned by Serpentine, MUBI and PCAI Polygreen Culture & Art Initiative, as part of Serpentine's Back to Earth project.
Upcoming:
Lecture
Mason Leaver-Yap
Critical Intimacies: Changing Relations in the Production
of Contemporary Art
04.03.2024, 19h00
Maumaus
Avenida António Augusto de Aguiar, 148 - 3º C
1050-021 Lisboa, Portugal
The discussion will be in English.
Entry is free and limited to the number
of seats available.
PROBLEMATISING REALITY
Encounters between art and philosophy
Programme 4
Shot, counter-shot
Here and Elsewhere
(Ici et ailleurs, 1976)
by Jean-Luc Godard
and Anne-Marie Miéville
with Marwa Arsanios
and Ghalya Saadawi,
moderated by Stefanie Baumann
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Auditorium 2
16.02.2024, 18h30
Seminar 2
The Psychic and the
Social Founding Violence of Law
with Ghalya Saadawi
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Sala 2, Zona de Congressos
14.–15.02.2024, 11h–13h,14h–17h
Upcoming:
Programme 4
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
16.02.2024
Programme 2:
(de)framing the frame
Meeting the Man:
James Baldwin in Paris (1970)
by Terence Dixon
with Sarah Lewis-Cappellari
and Kerstin Stakemeier
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Auditorium 2
23.11.2023, 18h30
Programme 1:
space, place and memory
with Billy Woodberry
and Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Auditorium 3
13.10.2023, 18h30
Manthia Diawara
Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom
Sharjah Biennial 15
07.02. – 11.06.2023
Manthia Diawara
A Letter from Yene
Batalha Centro de Cinema, Porto
14.03.2023
Current:
Seminar
Amanda Boetzkes
Realism Without Authority
01.04, 04.04.2022
10h–13h, 14h–17h
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
Registration is free but limited to the number of seats available. Please send an email with a short CV to admin@maumaus.org by 24.03.2022. Confirmation of registration will be sent by email. The seminar will be in English.
Lumiar Cité
Rua Tomás del Negro, 8A
1750-105 Lisboa, Portugal
Wednesday to Sunday, 15h00 to 19h00
or by appointment.
Tel: + 351 21 755 15 70
lumiar.cite@maumaus.org
Loretta Fahrenholz
Circle Navel Nil
24.04. – 27.06.2021
24.06 | 18h00 Online conversation with Sabeth
Buchmann, Loretta Fahrenholz and Jürgen Bock
Current:
Anna Schachinger
Allover
08.10. – 11.12.2022
07.10 | 18h00 Circulating Salt, Ayami Awazuhara
08.10 | 16h00 Opening of the exhibition
Current:
Cosima von Bonin
Boy at Work
15.04. – 23.07.2023
15.04 | 17h00 Opening of the exhibition
20.07 | 19h00 Talk by Diedrich Diederichsen
Dozie Kanu
PREENCHENDO VAZIOS
20.01. – 14.04.2024
20.01 | 16h00 Opening of the exhibition
16.03 | 17h00 Talk between Dozie Kanu
and Simon Thompson
Upcoming:
D(O)UBLE ACT
a conversation between
Dozie Kanu and Simon Thompson
16.03.2024, 17h00
Upcoming:
Sid Iandovka & Anya Tsyrlina with Leslie Thornton & Thomas Zummer
once in a hundred years
27.04. – 28.07.2024 | Lumiar Cité
18.05. – 28.07.2024 | Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
A combined exhibition between
Lumiar Cité and Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg.
A co-production by Lumiar Cité
and Artium Museum
14.10 | 17h00 Book launch with talk between
Alejandro Cesarco and
Miguel Wandschneider
| 18h00 Opening of the exhibition
Current:
Artium Museum, Vitoria-Gasteiz
24.03. – 24.09.2023
Upcoming:
Lumiar Cité
14.10.2023 – 14.01.2024
Collaboration:
The Educational Web
Kunstverein in Hamburg
01.04. – 06.08.2023
Closed 24, 25, 31 December and 1 January
Arne Kaiser and Jürgen Bock
In cooperation with Lumiar Cité:
Tiffany Chung
Thu Thiêm: an archaeological
project for future remembrance
08.06. - 08.09.2019
Johann Jacobs Museum
In co-production with Lumiar Cité:
Alejandro Cesarco
Other Recent Examples
24.03. - 24.09.2023
Artium Museum
The Educational Web
31.03. - 06.08.2023
Kunstverein in Hamburg
Maumaus/Lumiar Cité is funded by República Portuguesa – Cultura/Direção-Geral das Artes. With the support of Câmara Municipal de Lisboa and Junta de Freguesia do Lumiar.