In 2021, Heidi Ballet is the curator of Beaufort, the art trienniale at the Flemish coast. A recurring topic in the artworks of this edition is how man is subject to the will of nature. If the high-rise buildings on the Coast occasionally raise the question, “How did man change the coast,” the question is now turned around: “How did this coast change man?”.

In Ostend, Monokino and Rosa Barba are invited as participating artists. Monokino organizes Cracks & Crumbles; various screenings, performances and video installations that reflect on the sea as a transatlantic “highway” for migration and colonization.

On the tide line of Ostend Rosa Barba put the monumental sculpture Pillage of the Sea. A stack of concrete “pillows”, with which Barba refers to the “stone men”, the stack of stones that recurs in different cultures and was often placed along roads or at road junctions. On the various cushions are names of cities that are in danger of disappearing due to rising sea levels.

In 2021, we didn’t manage to meet Rosa Barba and get to know her work better. Now, two years later, we are catching up and searching together with Barba for what we share; cinema and the sea.

The film Outwardly from Earth’s Center is based on the story of a fictional society on an unstable piece of land that risks to disappear. This situation requires the collective effort of the population to ensure both the survival of each individual and the survival of the society. The story finds its basis partly in reality, as Gotska Sandön moves about one meter per year.

The fictional account of experts enhances the surreal atmosphere, slowly shifting the experience from what is initially considered a beautiful documentary to a more abstract and somewhat absurd picture of people’s struggles and vulnerabilities.

Let Me See It It is a radio play rather than a film. The grainy images of the 16mm film show a seascape, a shoreline of an undefined location at night. We hear the hum of a sleepy narrator telling a story about a man losing his eyesight. The man’s friend helps him memorize objects in his house that have been lost. The images of the night flight over an archipelago become a metaphor for the search for his memories and the fading of his once consistent world.

The narrator urges an invisible protagonist to reassess all the other objects around him. It is an experiment that leads to the beauty of disintegration, to the unsettling sensations of his dramatized and intensified patterns of experience.

Inside the Outset: Evoking a Space of Passage is a project in two parts: a film and a long-term installation of an Open-Air Cinema. The project began seven years ago, when Barba was invited by the Point Centre for Contemporary Art in Nicosia and curator Mirjam Varadinis to Cyprus.

After this visit, the artist proposed to build a cinema sculpture in the Buffer Zone, continuing an ongoing exploration in her artistic practice of landscape and human intervention in nature. The inauguration ceremony of Rosa Barba’s Open-Air Cinema took place on Sept. 10, 2021 with the premiere of this film.

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With the support of Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds and the city of Ostend.

tickets

Tickets are €10 of €7 with discount and for sale via Uit in Oostende. You can contact info@monokino.org for more info.