" BERLIN, name - polabian: "swamp", vulgar: "built on sand"; a "political
abstraction" (Maurice Blanchot), a "position from which there is no escape"
(Joseph Goebbels), a "conglomerate of calamities" (Frank Wedekind), a "curse"
(Alfred Döblin); an "attitude of defiance mingled with self-conceit" (Walter
Benjamin), the political condition of being "poor but sexy" (Klaus Wowereit)
NEGATIVITY, noun - organized negation, collective expression of antagonism,
denial or refutation, application of destructive forces within a political
struggle that is not aimed at a positive goal and usually directed against the
state and its organs; critical negativity - to employ the power of negation in a
critical situation: "I have been hit by a taxi", "my wife has left me", etc.;
dialectical negativity - the negatively dialectical reversal of the concept of
negative dialectics, negativity applied to itself, affirming - but refusing to
accept as total or self-identical - the object of negation: "no future", "punk's
not dead" etc.; historical-political negativity - any sustained political effort
that aims to make the sum of a specific historical process less than zero.
Commonly cited causes of negativity: bad weather, bad food, bad housing, the
Great Depression, the Cold War, the German Reunification (see: Berlin)
TO CAPTURE THE SPIRIT OF A CITY, expression - 1. to drink oneself to death: to
capture the spirits of a city (to never return from a city); 2. to find the
monster one's wife is having an affair with: to chase the ghosts of a city (to
be possessed by a city); 3. to build a wall around a city (see: negativity)"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
for directions:
http://camputer.org/campstudio.html
Pirate Cinema from Berlin, who we are working with on the video archive http://pad.ma, present a series of weekly (Sunday) events in the Pirate Cinema tradition, on films and footage.
by Iram Ghufran
50 mins, 2023
7:00 pm
Introduction and post-screening discussion with Iram Ghufran.
A science-fiction fable set in the "miracle city" of Yiwu in China, in one of the world's largest wholesale markets for small commodities. Time is plastic as we travel into the near future, in the company of an unusual pair of guides, a mannequin and a person.
by Wang Bing
232 mins | 2023
6:30 pm*
Note* film starts earlier than usual, at 6:30pm, on account of its runtime.
There will be a short interval with food.
by Johan Grimonprez
150 mins| 2024|
7:00 pm
A story about the encounter of American Jazz and African decolonisation, via the UN and the CIA, with a lot of world around it. Featuring among others Patrice Lumumba, Krishna Menon, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, Nikita Khrushchev, Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Abbey Lincoln, Adou Elenga...
Join us for a season of new films at CAMP which explore configurations and revelations of "world", amidst a world in pieces.
We begin the year with
GRAND TOUR
by Miguel Gomes
2024, 120 mins.
7:00 pm.
in memorium, Tejas Pande.
Five narratives developed in the class "Footage Films", that re-assemble archives of campus protest, Penn Museum collections, university weapons development projects, the Schuylkill river, a utopia called Shangri-La, and their intersections across time and place.
*Recalling Far From Vietnam, collectively-made essay film from 1967.
Screening and conversation in collaboration with University of Pennsylvania’s Cinema & Media Studies department and CARG. At old Slought/ new Public Trust.
Film screening, and conversation
6-8:00 pm