WET Lounge #4 at TENT Rotterdam

past, event

Wednesday 15th January, 2020, TENT Rotterdam

With works by Nick Thomas & Sophie Bates, Kevin Jerome Everson, Margaret Salmon and Inas Halabi.

WET Lounge #4

Communities are often contingent, existing without a fixed set of rules, operating through aesthetics, myth and a collective imaginary. It takes work to articulate such imaginaries, whether in the case of a neighbourhood, a ferry, a family. Some are temporary heterotopias, with people occupying problematic spaces for a short period of time; others have a longer lifespan, taking place over the course of decades. The films presented for WET Lounge #4 visit and move through such communities. Artists enter into dialogue with their protagonists – not just human, but animal, machinic, urban – and through the films give voice to communities of people and provide portraits of particular places. Listening, questioning, observation and juxtaposition become poetic tools; ways of not only portraying, but participating in the lives of these communities, retelling their stories and creating new narratives through empathic intervention.

The films point towards and explore different literary and filmic forms. Margaret Salmon takes on the mantles of street photographer, wildlife documentarian and avant-garde filmmaker in her musical portrayal of Gibraltar; Inas Halabi employs a form of magical realism in her retelling of the history of a Palestinian family; Kevin Jerome Everson employs a poetic combination of reportage and lo-fi science fiction; while Nick Thomas and Sophie Bates produce a talking heads montage. Rather than producing a critique of ‘conventional’ narrative and filmic techniques, these artists ask what we can do if we reroute such methods to alternative ends.

Program 6:00pm-9pm

About WET Lounge

WET Lounge is a series of five expanded screenings. The events take place between mid 2019 and early 2020, and are hosted by TENT Welcomes. During each Lounge, we will showcase works by artists operating in the gaps between video art and cinema, taking a broad view of what can be considered cinematic in order to incorporate elements of performance, music and installation. We will be treating TENT as a potent space, somewhere between the communality of cinema and the architectural experimentation of contemporary art.