Urban Research on Film

The next cogcollective screening (Sunday 6th August) has been programmed by Klaus W Eisenlohr and is drawn from his ongoing Urban Research on Film project.

The Urban Research project was presented as part of the Directors Lounge series of screenings in Berlin. The theme of urbanity clearly provides a great deal of material to chose from and is ripe for potential curatorial approaches. Klaus is interested in “artists who use their own original language, experimental work, documentary, animation or essay together create a discourse on the contemporary city.” While in Berlin I only had time to see a very small selection of the programmes. In my impressions of Directors Lounge I noted that Klaus’s film programming is generically broad, that its thematic nature allows for interesting and surprising connections, and wrote that “the programme weaves through a range of approaches to surveillance linking the neo-voyeuristic, the fantastical, the mundane. Notions of urbanity are imagined and constructed, not simply in orthodox terms of cities and spatiality, but also in personal and cultural terms.”

One of my other observations was that I hadn’t seen any of the work or artists involved shown in London and couldn’t think of a context in which they were likely to be shown. I recall telling Klaus about the lack of committed and regular screenings here, suggested that if I got involved in organising something I would be very interested in presenting a programme of the Urban Research project. So here it is and Klaus will be here to introduce and talk about the programme.