Kran Film Collective

Past is Not Post exhibition in Oldenburg

Past is Not Post
Curated by Lasse Lau and Benj Gerdes, Kran Film Collective
February 2–March 19, 2017

Opening: February 1, 7pm
Curator’s talk: Benj Gerdes: February 2, 7pm
Curator’s talk: Lasse Lau: February 28, 7pm

Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art
Katharinenstraße 23
D-26121 Oldenburg
Germany

www.edith-russ-haus.de

Artists:
Pia Arke & Anders Jørgensen, Petra Bauer, Matthew Buckingham, Kajsa Dahlberg, Michelle Dizon, Benj Gerdes, Andrea Geyer, Regina José Galindo, Jan Peter Hammer, Sven Johne, William E. Jones, Lasse Lau, Maha Maamoun, Robert Ochshorn, Rania Rafei & Raed Rafei, Benjamin Tiven, Sarah Vanagt & Katrien Vermeire, Raed Yassin, Akram Zaatari

Past is Not Post examines a growing number of artists working in relationship to archival research or investigations of historical memory. While the sites, methods, and circumstances of these practices remain diverse, there is a common artistic impulse to work through history as a backdoor when options in the present seem closed. Given the ambiguous role of artists in contemporary societies, particularly the difficulty of connecting to existing political and social struggles, the intersectional and incomplete stories of the past offer alternate approaches. Can this engagement of the past create spaces to rearticulate our collective possibilities and demands, spaces emblematic of both resistance and retreat?

Read more here …

Last weekend of Rewriting Histories at Fotografisk Center Copenhagen

Don’t miss the exhibition Rewriting Histories curated by Benj Gerdes and Lasse Lau from Kran Film Collective at Fotografisk Center in Copenhagen. See images here Opening images

Sound from the Hallways @ the British Museum

Sound from the Hallways is screening at the British Museum November 22nd.

Ahdaf Soueif, writer and British Museum Trustee, introduces two short films, Sound from the Hallways(2012, 25 mins) and Two Faces in the Landscape (2000, 15 mins), that probe familiar narratives of Egyptian culture and history.

The screenings will be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers of Sound from the Hallways, Lasse Lau and Mostafa Youssef, who reflect on their atmospheric tour of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and how the their artistic decisions enable new realities to overlay the narrative of the grand halls of history.

British Museum website

Sound from the Hallways @ 5. Cairo Video Festival

Sound from the Hallways by Lasse Lau is screening this weekend at Cairo Video Festival; Exhibition 3, From 5 to 7 October 2013 http://medrar.org/ 7 Gamal El Din Abou El Mahasen St. Garden City, First Floor, Cairo, Egypt, 11519

The screening was supported by the Royal Danish Embassy

Sound from the Hallways in Ibraaz

HISTORY AS CONCEPT

Lasse Lau in conversation with Amira Gad

AG: Space is approached in an interesting way in your film: it has this picturesque attributes (the windows, the light) and its architectural, focusing on the building itself rather than on the museum’s collection. Given your background on museology, how do you justify this choice? Can we speak of monumental history in this case?

LL: Museums are bricks or buildings of collections and we often tend to forget this. To understand the underlying structures, we must think in Brechtian terms and strip the theatre from its techniques of meaning. When you are not entertained, so to speak, you start noticing the lighting, the doors that are closed, the paint peeling, the repetitions of objects, even the bathroom. You wonder about the admission fee and so on.  In this process of stripping bare, the museum becomes apparent to us and the idea of the museum is easily recognised. Here, when I say ‘idea’, I mean the initiators, funders, architects and owners et cetera – those who have an agency in the museum. If you are an Egyptologist you would also notice that I filtered away some of the more unique and important objects of gods and pharaohs in the film to make room for some of the less artistic objects that are no less important: ones portraying the soldier, the housewife, the worker and the slave.

read more at …

Ibraaz Magazine Interview

Sound from the Hallways

by Lasse Lau
VI. Istanbul International Architecture and Urban Festival
1-6 October 2012
www.archfilmfest.org

With his latest film Lasse Lau revisits history of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to challenge concepts of historicism and museology, from a time of the early 20th century when history was still seen as universal, and man believed in its abundant truth, to a time where several histories and narratives challenge each other for the semblance of reality.

This cinematographic work takes us through a series of the museum’s antique collections, as objects of men, women, faros, animals, and armies slowly glide pass the gaze of the viewer something intrusive is on the verge of happening.

“The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.” (Walter Benjamin “On the concept of history”)

The film documents the atmosphere of one of the most classic and visually dense collections on display in the world before its buildings and modus operandi becomes history.

more

Lasse Lau

Sound from the Hallways premieres at the Egyptian Museum

A Night At The Museum

Premier: Sound from the Hallways by Lasse Lau

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Sound from the Hallways
Lumiar Cité in Lisbon
11 January, 2012.

With his latest film Lasse Lau revisits history at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and challenges concepts of historicism and museology from a time of the early 20th century when history was still seen as universal, and man believed in its abundant truth, to times where several histories challenge each other for the semblance of reality. The film in addition documents the atmosphere in one of the must classic and visually dense and unique museums in the world before it becomes history.

“The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.”
(From Walter Benjamin “On the concept of history”)

Lumiar Cité
Rua Tomás del Negro, 8A
1750-105 Lisboa, Portugal
Wednesday to Sunday, 3pm to 7pm

The film is co-produced with Seen Films
Seenfilms / and supported by the Danish Arts Council and DCCD.
See more at: www.maumaus.org

LASSE LAU winner of the Fokus Videokunst Festival

Winner of the 2011 competition at the

Fokus Videokunst Festival, Copenhagen

Kunsthallen Nikolaj is the organizer of the 1^st edition of the Fokus Videokunst Festival in Copenhagen. Among curated programs the competition drew 154 films. 10 Films where nominated and 3 winner was announced at an award screening and ceremony May 5^th. The festival jury consisted of the Gallery owner Jesper Elg from V1 Gallery, the international video artist Eva Koch, film director Martin Strange-Hansen, and last the Nikolaj Kunsthal director Elisabeth Delin Hansen and curator Andreas Brøgger.

Among the 3 winners was Kran Film member Lasse Lau with his 2008 film Pine Nuts. Pine nuts´ is set in a Park in Beirut that nearly 20 years after the end of the civil strife still hasn’t officially reopened its gates to the public. Some says that the new pine trees that were planted there in the nineties still have to grow themselves mature before the park eventually can reopen.

The two others winners at the competition are Danish Rose Eken;  http://roseeken.dk/ and Swissborn Olaf Breuning

Kunsthallen Nikolaj

Lasse Lau