Filtered through the compound lens of feminist, queer, postcolonial and anti-racist practices and potentialities, the ten videos and films on video in this program reflect vital aspects of self-organization und precariousness – as well as my own personal interests. The program also hinges on my qualms and questions regarding self-organization as counter­-culture and –identification: What happens if people outside the mainstream do not engage the state and hold it responsible? I wanted to show women, most of them belonging to sexual and racial minorities, negotiating and navigating dominant culture and ideology in unconventional and inconvenient ways. And to show women who organize and make art to carve out space for women’s diverse lives and alternative visions, without leaving the state and its apparatuses (here apparatuses include such phenomena as Björk and Ronald MacDonald) to their own devices. On the contrary, dominant tropes are being contested, manipulated and disidentified.

A selection of films by Frederikke Hansen:
Judith F. Baca mit/with The Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), Lizzie Borden, Nao Bustamante (mit/with Miguel Calderon), Nicoline van Harskamp, Paola Melchiori, Karin Michalski & Sabina Baumann, Alanis Obomsawin, Jennifer Parker & Tina Takemoto, Dolly Parton, Eman Abu Rajab (mit/with Balata Film Collective)

Is the Crown at war with us?
Alanis Obomsawin, CA 2002, 96 min., English

In this passionate documentary, Indigenous filmmaker Obomsawin explains the complex historical roots of a conflict over fishing rights between the Mi’gmaq community of Esgenoopititj (aka Burnt Church) and the Canadian federal authorities. Why would non-Native Canadians and the federal authorities physically assault Indigenous fishermen who only catch what their community needs for survival?


9 to 5
Dolly Parton, USA 1986, 4 min., English

(von/from youtube.com)

A Bonus: Parton performs her award winning title song from the motion picture “Nine to Five” – accompanied by Minnie Mouse, Daisy Duck and all the Working Girls at the Disney World’s 15th anniversary party. Starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton as office workers, the 1980 comedy is a hilarious and liberating tale of female working-class bonding and struggle against a patriarchal and nonsensical system.


The Palestinian Tradition of Embroidery under the Zionist Occupation
Eman Abu Rajab (mit dem/with Balata Film Collective), PS 2005, 9:25 min., Arabisch mit englischen Untertiteln/Arabic with English subtitles,

von/from indymedia.org

Video activism from the Balata refugee camp: Palestinian embroidery is a hidden form of resistance to Israeli attempts at economic, social and political subjugation. Women's embroidery is one of few means of economic independence, neither dependent on Israeli contractors or its market. Embroidery is also a powerful means of expressing identity and making a connection with the Palestinian past prior to expulsion.


Drawing Complaint: Memoirs of Bjork-Geisha
Jennifer Parker und/and Tina Takemoto, USA 2006, 6:43 min, English

Guerilla Performance: Tina Takemoto (aka Bjork-Geisha) and Jennifer Parker (aka Matthew-Whaler) presented unsolicited performances of fan dancing, lip synching, samurai whaling, and chopstick hara-kiri during the opening of Matthew Barney’s “Drawing Restraint“ exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in response to “Drawing Restraint 9”, a recent film featuring Barney and Björk as “occidental visitors” to Japan who undergo a gruesome transformation on a whaling ship.


The Great Wall of Los Angeles
Judith F. Baca (mit/with The Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC)), USA, Auswahl von 8 Filmen mit unterschiedlichen Längen/ compilation of 8 films with different lengths, Englisch

SPARC’s project over the past thirty years has been to create monumental public works of art, which have transformed the LA cityscape. These murals depict the histories of disenfranchised and aggrieved communities in the LA area and elsewhere. Their ultimate purpose is to examine what we choose to memorialize through public art, and to innovate means which not only produce excellent art works but also provide a vehicle for the betterment of community through a citizens participatory process. Baca explains: “Redirecting gang members’ inclinations toward public expression via my own artistic training as a painter, we began painting murals as a way to create constructive cultural markers.”


queering work (bis/till 5. Mai/May)
Karin Michalski und/and Sabina Baumann, D/CH 2007, 13 min, Deutsch/German

The video “queering work” is part of the wider film project “Working on it”. Fifteen different interview partners talk about sexual and gender practices in the field of labor. The video unpacks how some have to do a great deal of extra work to conform to the interweaving demands and attributes pertaining to gender, sexuality and "whiteness" – and/or to reform, refuse and negotiate them. Creating a multilayered and – centered narrative, this project discusses how working skills are directly connected with the successful embodiment of masculinity/femininity and heterosexuality.


Working on it (ab/from 6. Mai/May)
Karin Michalski und/and Sabina Baumann, D/CH 2008, 50 min., Deutsch mit englischen Untertiteln/German with English subtitles

Based on interviews with 15 protagonists on their observations in everyday life and their sometimes laborious reworkings: What does it mean to interfere with public images of sexuality and whiteness, to invent a new language for more than two genders and to reverse devaluations referring to sexual identity at work? One year later, they all meet in a defunct Berlin supermarket, where they construct thematic settings and create a meeting place. The interviews are projected in this setting and provoke new discussions and performances.


The Chain South
Nao Bustamante (mit/with Miguel Calderon), USA 1997, 10 Min., English

Bustamante is Ronaldo McDonaldo. Miguel and Ronaldo traveled from San Francisco to Mexico City, stopping along the way at McDonald's presenting them with a contract granting the “Ronaldo free Big Mac Meals”. How could the unprepared employees turn away Ronaldo, or have him arrested on his own turf?


To Live Outside the Law You Must be Honest
Nicoline van Harskamp, NL 2005/06, 24 Min., English

This video is recorded in Christiania, a free town at the centre of Copenhagen that was created in the early 70s, which continues to reject the ownership of houses and infrastructure and practice consensus democracy. Informed by interviews with its residents, but scripted for a singular “universal” narrator – a white, straight, middle-aged man – the video addresses issues of self-government and self-policing as it teases out the alternative system’s inconsistencies and contradictions.


Kárahnjúkar: Paradigms of Development
Paola Melchiori (mit/with WWIFUN: Wise Women International Feminist University Network), IT 2006, 52 Min., English

This film documents the reasons and the difficulties of the struggle of Icelandic people against the Karanjukar Project, a 690 Mwatt power station for an aluminum smelter operated by US multinational Alcoa, in which struggle women played a key role. The project is part of a development policy that transforms Iceland in a reserve of cheap hydroelectric energy for foreign companies. It will destroy a unique environment in the name of a development paradigm which indeed will include Iceland within a global economy. But at what price?