The Emotional Power of Space. 2/4_Daniel Kötter with Bêka & Lemoine. Public lecture

Public Lectures 2023/24
The Emotional Power of Space

Daniel Kötter 
How to address rapid urbanisation in film
 
followed by a conversation with Bêka & Lemoine

Thursday 26 October 2023 19:30
Teatro dell'architettura Mendrisio
 

Geography, social strata, the built environment, political interests and ethnically constructed fault lines are all superimposed layers that contribute to the separations, segregations and ruptures created in urbanised societies. So filming the processes of urbanisation calls for an analysis of the space and time of the given locations, as well as a reflection on the positioning of the camera and the filmmaker himself. Based on his Urban Trilogy (Desert View, Hashti Tehran and Rift Finfinee), filmmaker and artist Daniel Kötter will take a critical look at his own methodology, seen as a practice that links art, ethnography and urbanism. How could film potentially contribute to an allegorical approach to the space in which we want to live?

Daniel Kötter (Germany, 1975) is a documentary filmmaker and theater director. His research based works alternate between media and institutional contexts. They have been shown worldwide at film festivals, in galleries and theaters. Since 2007 visual research on urbanization and political landscapes leads him to the African continent and the Middle East. His major works include the film and performance series “state-theatre” about urban conditions of performativity in the cities of Lagos, Tehran, Berlin, Detroit, Beirut, Mönchengladbach (2009-2014), the research, exhibition and film project “CHINAFRIKA” (2013-2019) and the film trilogy “Hashti Tehran” (2017, Special Award of the German Short Film Award), “Desert View” (2018) and “Rift Finfinnee” (2020, DEFA Award DOK Leipzig) about urban peripheries in Tehran, Cairo and Addis Abeba.

The Emotional Power of Space
Curated by artists-filmmakers Bêka & Lemoine in close line with their own practice, « The Emotional Power of Space » is a series of talks that brings to the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio filmmakers who share a common sensitivity and anthropological approach in the way they bring attention to the relationships between people and their living environment. These talks will present their respective approaches and methodologies and their way of using cinema as a critical tool of observation of the social consequences of rapid urban transformations taking place in different part of the world.

• 16 November 2023 Nitin Bathla + Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou ‘The Sensing Machine: Reframing Ethnographic Film for the Urban Otherwise’
• 30 November 2023 Giovanna Borasi + Daniel Schwartz ‘I've Been Lonely Lately: Filmmaking as a curatorial practice of coming together’
   

Lectures take place at Teatro dell'architettura Mendrisio and are streamed live.