Photo: Tonje Bøe Birkeland
Tonje Bøe Birkeland: The Characters & C.S. Nicholson: The Discoverer of the Discoverers - opens 29th of September
Fotografihuset is pleased to present Tonje Bøe Birkeland’s latest chapter Character # V, The Bhutan Trilogy, from the series The Characters, where Birkeland stages and photographs herself as a series of female explorers in unknown terrain. Through their alter egos, based on authentic women who have broken contemporary barriers and traveled to foreign lands, The Characters gives the woman a place in the landscape and at the same time explores the truth value of history.
Character # V follows the fictional character Bertha Bolette Boyd through 3 expeditions in Bhutan. Birkeland works analogically and authentically within his “fiction” – which makes the expedition itself as much a part of the project as the final photograph. The expeditions are documented through photographs, texts, objects and field notes, and are collected in the latest book in the series of the same name. The exhibition at Sukkerbiten presents works from all parts of the book in a new installation adapted to Fotografihuset.
At the same time in The Project Room:
Fotografihuset and MIRAGE Film Festival are pleased to invite special screenings of the first experimental documentary film by APSELUTELY FⱯKT Film by director C. S. Nicholson and photographer Peder Bratterud.
In “The Discoverer of the Discoverers”, a family in the West African Republic of Benin recounts their version of their ancestors’ very first encounter with Europeans – to a European film crew. We hear how the hunter Kpatè first spotted a Portuguese ship off the Atlantic coast in 1548 and how he got them ashore. We are invited into the family’s memorial ceremony for this meeting and are served a partly sensational view of the historical turning point. Are all the claims about the sequence of events equally likely? How reliable is the filmmaker’s white gaze? And how do the characters and the film crew adapt to each other, after 500 years of slave trade, colonialism and globalism? “The discoverer of the discoverers” shows how history is story-telling, and what role pride and conscience can play in our collective memories.
In “The Discoverer of the Discoverers”, a family in the West African Republic of Benin recounts their version of their ancestors’ very first encounter with Europeans – to a European film crew. We hear how the hunter Kpatè first spotted a Portuguese ship off the Atlantic coast in 1548 and how he got them ashore. We are invited into the family’s memorial ceremony for this meeting and are served a partly sensational view of the historical turning point. Are all the claims about the sequence of events equally likely? How reliable is the filmmaker’s white gaze? And how do the characters and the film crew adapt to each other, after 500 years of slave trade, colonialism and globalism? “The discoverer of the discoverers” shows how history is story-telling, and what role pride and conscience can play in our collective memories.
The pre-premiere will be shown at Sukkerbiten on 29th of September and special screening at Vega cinema on 14th of October at 5 p.m., followed by an artist talk with C. S. Nicholson and Tonje Bøe Birkeland.
Film showings at Sukkerbiten:
Special screenings 29.9 – 27.11 (Free entrance) :
Fridays 17-19
Sat – Sun 12-16
Cinema premiere Vega: 14.10 at 17.00
