Close Up

26 February 2017: Oliver Ressler: This Is What Democracy Looks Like

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By merging the fields of art and activism, Oliver Ressler’s films seek to address political ideas, observe progressive social processes and alternative ways of how to organize society and contribute towards a needed systemic change.

Selected by Ressler himself, this programme of films is related to the artist’s solo exhibition Bedtime for Democracy, which brings together photographic works, films and site-specific pieces addressing migration, citizenship, democracy, and capital. The works document and observe a variety of grassroots movements and witness and explore the terminology and structure of capitalist societies.

Oliver Ressler will in discussion with Gareth Evans and Bea de Souza following Programme 2.


Programme 1: Global Heat Death

The story of this ongoing film project Everything's coming together while everything's falling apart may turn out to be a story of the beginning of the climate revolution, the moment when popular resistance began to reconfigure the world. With the idyllic landscapes of Norway’s Lofoten archipelago as its background, Leave It in the Ground describes the climate crisis not as a technical and scientific problem, but as a political problem. read more

Everything's Coming Together While Everything's Falling Apart: COP21, Oliver Ressler 17 min, 2016, Colour, Digital
Everything's Coming Together While Everything's Falling Apart: ENDE GELÄNDE, Oliver Ressler, 12 min, 2016, Colour, Digital
Leave It in the Ground, Oliver Ressler, 18 min, 2013, Colour, Digital

Programme 2: Everything Under Control


In most cases an occupation is not a deliberate step towards workers' control but a means of workers' struggle against the closure of a production site or company or the relocation of production to another country. Occupy, Resist, Produce focuses on the rare, better organized cases where the purpose of the struggle is to bring production under workers’ control. read more

Occupy, Resist, Produce – Vio.Me, Oliver Ressler, Dario Azzellini, 30 min, 2015, Colour, Digital
Occupy, Resist, Produce – Officine Zero, Oliver Ressler, Dario Azzellini, 33 min, 2015, Colour, Digital
Occupy, Resist, Produce – RiMaflow, Oliver Ressler, Dario Azzellini, 34 min, 2014, Colour, Digital

Programme 3: The Movement of the Squares


Take The Square is based on discussions conducted with activists from 15M in Madrid, the Syntagma Square movement in Athens and Occupy Wall Street in New York. Re-enacting the format of the working groups of the protest movements, four to six activists discuss with each other as a group in front of a camera. In the Red is a film about the Strike Debt group, an offshoot organization of Occupy Wall Street in New York City. Strike Debt initiates several activities to expose hidden mechanisms of financial capitalism. read more

Take the Square, Oliver Ressler, 89 min, 2012, Colour, Digital
In the Red, Oliver Ressler, Ana Pečar, 20 min, 2014, Colour, Digital

Bedtime for Democracy runs 28 February - 29 April 2017 at the Agency Gallery. Both programmes are supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum London.

More info:
www.ressler.at
www.acflondon.org
www.theagencygallery.co.uk