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27.7.2018 | ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin

I’m Not Who You Think I’m Not meets Speisekino: Intermittent dystopias

Dinner and film screening

I’m Not Who You Think I’m Not #17: I’m Not Who You Think I’m Not meets Speisekino
Intermittent dystopias
Host: Felipe Teram

In 1956, Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek commissioned architect Oscar Niemeyer and urban planner Lúcio Costa to design an entire new capital for the country. By building a seat of government of unprecedented size and complexity in its hinterland, the country would display its ability to perform collective feats while embodying its vision of modernity. Brasília was more of a vision for the future, rather than a need imposed by the present.

Forma Livre (2013) by Clara Ianni explores disregarded stories in order to investigate establishment of dominant discourses, the emergence of counter-narratives and historicity itself. The work overlays pictures of Brasília’s construction site with excerpts from a recorded interview with Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa. In this tense interview they are called upon to comment and acknowledge the slaughter of 100 local workers, killed by police as response to a strike.

In Era uma vez Brasília (2017), the Brazilian capital becomes the scenery of a dystopian present. The sci-fi feature film directed by Adirley Queirós tells the story of an intergalactic agent named WA4 who is ordered to kill President Juscelino Kubitschek on the day of Brasília’s inauguration in 1960. Due to a technical issue with his spaceship, the hitman lands on the outskirts of the city in the year 2016 – on the eve of President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment process. Requested to terrorize a country celebrating the inauguration of its capital, WA4 encounters a city in the middle of a political battle in the realm of Realpolitik. Such circumstances will lead him to repurpose and rethink his failed mission.

As a symbol of the contradictions of modernity, the intermittent dystopias latent in the movies can serve as starting point for a conversation on narratives deliberately silenced or belittled in favour of a brighter future.

Films:
Clara Ianni: Forma Livre (Free Form), 2013
Adirley Queirós: Era uma vez Brasília (Once there was Brasília), 2017

ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics’ regular Speisekino format combines films and food around a particular topic. Sometimes the relation is obvious, and food from the region where the film is set is served. Sometimes the link between the two is more subtle, when for example the film is accompanied by a dish that also appears in the plot. Throughout its running time, the 10th Berlin Biennale collaborates with ZK/U for I’m Not Who You Think I’m Not meets Speisekino and invites various hosts to select and present food and footage around aspects of the 10th Berlin Biennale.