The Hatch

In 2012, Art Dubai launches The Hatch, an ordinary stairwell transformed into an intimate space for film, video and artists’ talks. A rolling programme features archival documentaries curated by Bidoun Projects, videos by Radio for Example, and artists’ films presented in collaboration with galleries participating in Art Dubai.
 
A series of artists’ talks includes presentations by artists commissioned by Art Dubai Projects and those participating in AIR Dubai, the residency programme run by Art Dubai, Delfina Foundation, Dubai Culture and Arts Authority and Tashkeel. The programme runs during the opening hours of Art Dubai (March 21-24).
 
The Hatch is supported by AVID Learning, an Essar Group Initiative. AVID fosters creative learning across the fields of culture and heritage, literature and the arts through workshops, lectures and other programs. Currently based in India, AVID launches in the UAE in 2012 (see the AVID press release here).
 
One feature of The Hatch 2012 is the screening of rare films from the modern moment in Iran, re-mastered and presented by the not-for-profit publishing, curatorial, and educational initiative Bidoun Projects.
 
 

 
TIMINGS  
 
 

THE POET AND THE PHILOSOPHER

Bettina Corke

1970, 30 minutes

Courtesy of Bidoun Projects: Presented with thanks to the Abby Weed Grey Collection at New York University

Bettina Corke's The Poet and The Philosopher is a documentary on modern sculpture in Iran and the foundation and opening of the bronze foundry at Tehran University of Fine Arts. The film was commissioned by the collector Abby Weed Grey, and features interviews with the sculptor Parviz Tanavoli, who was head of the department of sculpture at the time, as well as other members of faculty and students. The narrator follows the history of sculpting in Iran and its subsequent influences on the modern scene.


ARDESHIR MOHASSES & HIS CARICATURES

Bahman Maghsoudlou

1972, 20 min
 

Courtesy of Bidoun Projects

Ardeshir Mohasses & His Caricatures is a short documentary about the celebrated caricaturist Ardeshir Mohasses (1938-2008), featuring rare footage of the Iranian artist in his studio in Iran before his self-exile in New York, which was to last over thirty years. Mohasses’ political cartoons used settings and costumes inspired by the Qajar dynasty of 1794 to 1925 — a misdirection that fooled nobody. The film features commentary from Iranian intellectuals of the time, including Houshang Taheri, Javad Mojabi, and Fereidoun Gilani. Mohasses, a man of few words, is noticeably mute throughout.
 


Group show: A selection of new works by Ammar Al Beik, Simone Fattah, Cao Fei, Almagul Menlibayeva, Ranu Mukherjee and Moataz Nasr
Programmed in association with Art Dubai galleries

BUTTERFLIES OF AISHA BIBI

Almagul Menlibayeva
2010, 9 minutes
Courtesy of Priska C. Juschka Fine Art

Butterflies of Aisha Bibi recounts an ancient love story of the Sufi poet’s daughter Aisha Bibi and Karakhan, the Central Asian version of Romeo and Juliet, visually transforming it into a modern day drama of unfulfilled longing, unconditional love and its underlying gender discourse, addressing a never ceasing problematic synergy/symbiosis, deeply rooted in the Central Asian civilizations born between the elements of earth and sky.

AT DEATH’S DOOR

Moataz Nasr
2009, 03:17 minutes
Courtesy Galleria Continua

"It is a pita. One of those flat and hollow loaves of bread that can be stuffed with all kinds of filling. The light conjures up a setting sun. The end of a cycle, with an orange red sky in which the sun fights its last battle before the night. This pita, whose significance we do not grasp at first, is set directly on the earth: this earth that has seen our birth and which we will join again, turned into dust. In this twilight the pita breathes. Like in an ultrasound scan of which we can only guess at the forms, it rises and falls like a symbolic heart that doesn’t want to stop beating. The pita represents life twice over: first in a direct expression in the sense of food, an element essential to our survival, and secondly in its resemblance to a vital organ. The dusk is there like a threat, a suspended time that wavers between one moment and another, in darkness and oblivion, nothingness. But, at the same time, it is a moment of great peace from which all fears, all anxieties, seem to have banished. The banal side of the pita, signifying what for us human beings is most precious, the laughable and almost anecdotal aspect of this popular foodstuff, eaten by rich and poor, certainly reminds us of our human condition. We are nothing but this flat loaf of bread, whatever the illusions we may nurse about ourselves. Life is a fragile and trivial thing, that comes and goes. A gift whose mysteries we have not finished exploring. The title of the work is At Death’s Door, that famous moment in which, it seems, we are all equal. That moment at which flash by, with the rhythm of our tired heart, all the events that have illuminated our passage on the earth. The door is going to open at any moment. All we have to do is wait. We have the time, from now on."

S. Njami in 'The Other Side of the Mirror', GALLERIA CONTINUA-Gli Ori, Prato, Italy, 2011

SHADOW LIFE
Cao Fei
2011, 10 minutes 

Courtesy of the artist and Lombard Fried Projects, NY


Shadow Life is composed of three distinct narrative sequences where Cao Fei invokes the days of childhood. The narrative draws upon the remembrance of a Chinese Spring Festival Gala celebration that ran on China’s official Central Television. The composition creates images, at once real and imaginary, that emerge as light is cast across various forms and gestures of the human hand. Each chapter, A Rock, Dictator, and Transmigration, have different stories to tell. They flash with the colour of fairy tales, oriental life philosophy, as well as particular social and political references. A mysterious quality is knotted within the intricacy of the hand gestures and this mystery unsettles the viewer who cannot help but yearn for the connotations that lurk behind these childlike movements.

ECSTATIC PICTURE, SPILLED MILK
Ranu Mukherjee
05:05 minutes
Courtesy of Frey Norris Contemporary & Modern

The final film, Ecstatic Picture, Spilled Milk (2011), shows the infiltration and spread of a pitcher of spilled milk amongst a constant rain of flowers, Indian clothing and jewelry, and other objects. The empty silhouette of what could be a deity, or perhaps a mother and child, occupies the center of the screen. Eventually, a mass of cell phones appear and pour forth the rainbow equivalent of spilled milk, which mingles with rest of the animations and references the boon that cell phone technology has brought to India.

SUN'S INCUBATOR
Ammar Al Beik
11:30 minutes
Courtesy of Ayyam Gallery
 

February 4, 2011: the family is getting ready to demonstrate, knitting in red its new freedom. The crowds go wild and scream: ’’We want to bring down the dictatorship of Mubarak who humiliated the Egyptians during the past 3 decades“. Are the sounds of demonstrations heard by this family coming from the satellite television channels or directly from the surrounding streets? May 27, 2011: a new martyr, little Syrian Hamza al-Khateeb was shot and tortured to death. The Syrian streets are revolting. Revolution always comes out from the womb of misery.

ON THE WORK OF M F HUSAIN

Programmed with Grosvenor Vadehra Gallery

Husain at work and play, 2004, 14 mins; Six days of making, 2005, 16 mins; Jugalbandi, 1988  28 mins; Energy, enigma, exile; 95 by Vinod Bhardwaj, 2010 15 mins

Husain was born in 1915 in Pandharpur, Maharashtra. A self-taught artist, he came to Mumbai in 1937, determined to become a painter. In 1948, he was invited by F.N. Souza to join the Progressive Artist's Group, a group formed to explore a new idiom for Indian art. Besides painting, he has also made feature films, such as "Through the Eyes of a Painter", in 1967, which was a Golden Bear Award winner at the Berlin Film Festival, and "Gajagamini" in 2000. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan awards, both prestigious civilian awards. Husain passed away in London in 2011.

THE CURATORIAL DELEGATION (RADIO FOR EXAMPLE) PRESENTS...

The Curatorial Delegation, a collective consisting of writer and curator Juan A. Gaitán and Rabat’s L’Appartement 22 founder Abdellah Karroum – presents Radio for Example (R22-Dubai), a live transmission of mobile conversations, at Art Dubai 2012. Accompanying their radio transmissions is this series of films, including Khamsa (Five) by Younès Rahmoun, 2011, amongst others.