Cinepoetics Lecture #19: Erika Balsom

Since 2014, US artist-filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh has produced a cycle of works that appropriate computer-generated images of news events by a Taipei-based animation studio. By repurposing images in which drones deliver packages and boats of migrants capsize at sea, Ahwesh creates an uncanny atlas of emergency, characterized by a dissonance between the cuteness of the animations and the grave reality of their subject matter.

In her lecture, “Animating the Body: Peggy Ahwesh in Context,” Erika Balsom (King’s College London) will explore this cycle’s reflection on abstraction, referentiality, and image circulation, with special attention to its treatment of the body. The accompanying screening will put two of these works in dialogue with earlier films by Ahwesh and selections from film history to comprise a programme that touches on animation, corporeality, and readymade, and the uncertain line between the animate and inanimate. (Hannes Wesselkämper)

The Cinepoetics Lectures are organized by the research center of the same name at Freie Universität Berlin.
 

Program:
The Blackest Sea Peggy Ahwesh USA 2016 DCP 9 Min.
Gaumont Studios, Meissen Porcelain! Lebende Skulpturen der Diodattis im Berliner
Wintergarten 1912–14 35 mm 2 Min.
The Color of Love Peggy Ahwesh USA 1994 16 mm 10 Min.
Betty Boop: Bimbo’s Initiation Dave Fleisher USA 1931 Blu-ray 6 Min.
She Puppet Peggy Ahwesh USA 2001 DCP 15 Min.
Perfect Film Ken Jacobs USA 1986 16 mm 22 Min.
The Falling Sky Peggy Ahwesh USA 2017 DCP 10 Min.