8pm
Berlin-based artist Keren Cytter screens her new film The Great Tale of The Devil's Hill and The Endless Search For Freedom (75min, Digital Video, 2008-2009). Cytter’s films are characterised by a non-linear and cyclical logic, her poetic montages of images recalling amateur home movies and video diaries. This distinctly analytical approach to film-making challenges the way in which the strategies and clichés of the media permeate our reality.
The Great Tale of The Devil's Hill and The Endless Search For Freedom
Director: Keren Cytter, 75 min, Digital Video, 2008-2009
Keren Cytter creates films; video installations; and drawings that represent social realities through experimental modes of storytelling. Characterised by a non-linear, cyclical logic Cytter’s films consist of multiple layers of images; conversation; monologue, and narration systematically composed to undermine linguistic conventions and traditional interpretation schemata. Recalling amateur home movies and video diaries, these montages of impressions, memories, and imaginings are poetic and self-referential in composition. The artist creates intensified scenes drawn from everyday life in which the overwhelmingly artificial nature of the situations portrayed is echoed by the very means of their production.
In 2006 Cytter was awarded the prestigious Bâloise Art Prize at Art Basel for The Victim, a film composed as an infinite loop in which five unnamed protagonists meet over a dinner that culminates in a suicide that repeatedly takes us back to the beginning of the scene. The effect of Cytter’s distinctly analytical approach to filmmaking is the creation of narratives choreographed to expand our understanding of the way in which the strategies and clichés of the media permeate our social reality.
Keren Cytter was born in 1977 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Recent solo exhibitions of Cytter’s work include X Initiative, New York (2009); CCA Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu (2009); Centro Huarte de Arte Contemporáneo, Huarte (2008); Lüttgenmeijer, Berlin (2008); Stuk Kunstcentrum, Leuven (2007); MUMOK, Vienna (2007). Recent group exhibitions include Fare Mondi: 53rd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2009); The Generational: Younger than Jesus, New Museum, New York (2009); Television Delivers People, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008); Manifesta 7, Trentino (2008); and Yokohama Triennial, Yokahama (2008).
Cytter is also the author of three novels: The Man Who Climbed Up the Stairs of Life and Found Out They Were Cinema Seats (Lukas and Sternberg, New York – Berlin, 2005); The seven most exciting hours of Mr. Trier's life in twenty-four chapters (Witte de With and Sternberg, Rotterdam-Berlin, 2008), and The Amazing True Story of Moshe Klinberg - A Media Star (onestar, Paris, 2009).
Keren Cytter lives and works in Berlin.
Park Nights 2009
Park Nights is an annual series of events staged every Friday night in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. This year’s programme includes music, theatre, performances, talks and film screenings. The website gives details of the events that run over the summer until September. The season culminates in October with Poetry Marathon, the latest in the Gallery’s acclaimed series of Marathons, conceived by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Gallery Co-Director.
All events are held in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2009
Designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA
All Park Nights tickets £5/£4
Available from the Gallery Lobby Desk or Ticketweb: 08700 600 100
www.ticketweb.co.uk
