Lines are a bit of a theme at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival. There are those you expect, greeting you in front of screening halls, pop-up food stands, restaurants and the wobbly information desks in the cramped festival center—all reminders that this quaint Czech town of 50,000 people was not built to play host to a film festival of international renown. Then there are lines of the less obvious sort, like the swirling white chalk marks on the pavement that connect the various festival locations—an act of “environmental installation,” created annually since 2005 by local artist Vit Kraus using […]
by Alan Mattli on Nov 10, 2021I’m a sucker for performance art projects dealing with things like solitude and personal healing. For example, there’s Sophie Calle’s famous Exquisite Pain, which documented her being dumped by a lover by phone at the tail end of a trip to Japan. Another piece involving Japanese hotel rooms, but with a different kind of pain, is Laurel Nakadate’s Love Hotel, currently on view at P.S. 1. In that piece, Nakadate checks into, alone, a series of Japanese sex hotels and photographs herself simulating the acts that go on there. Slotted into this sub-genre is a new film project by Mexican […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 25, 2011