“Wave After Wave”: An Afternoon with Helena Wittmann

Part One begins at 3pm, and Part Two begins at 5:30pm.
A single ticket grants access to both parts.

Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Saturday, April 12 for a two-part event with Helena Wittmann featuring a 3pm screening of Human Flowers of Flesh (2022) followed at 5:30pm by a sonic lecture performance by the artist.
The event is co-presented with the German Film Office and Goethe-Institute New York, in collaboration with Cinema Guild.

3pm: Part One
Screening
Helena Wittmann, Human Flowers of Flesh (2022, 106 minutes)
Ida lives on a ship with her crew of five men. In Marseille her attention is caught by the secretive male world of the French Foreign Legion and she decides to follow its traces across the Mediterranean. As Ida and her crew sail via Corsica to the historical headquarters of the Legion in Algeria, boundaries and certainties blur while life at sea produces a special kind of mutual understanding.

“Fluidity is the theme of Helena Wittmann’s latest film. The flow of thoughts, mobility, and migration, the free, meandering current of the film, the interconnected network of vessels that our environment forms, and above all, the illusion of borders and the necessity of their defense. A Mediterranean cruise, guided by a woman, takes us from Marseille to Sidi Bel Abbes in Algeria, the early headquarters of the French Foreign Legion. Against this symbol of colonial violence and subjugation of lands, seas, and nations, the director juxtaposes her own ‘army’ of poets, nomads, and connoisseurs led by a woman. Her crew does not confine itself within fortresses, nor does it desire conquest, but moves fluidly between water and land, silence and conversation, history and the present, navigating through various territorial waters—paying homage to the ever-changing world, a world without borders.” —Małgorzata Sadowska

5:30pm: Part Two
Tender Noise (Echoes)
A sonic lecture performance, adrift.

“We were once surrounded by the vastness of an ocean for 15 days, without seeing land. Somewhere there, the short note ‘intimate expanse’ was written. It was Theresa who made the note and we talked about it later. A contradiction?
So many starting points over so many years. Lines, rays, layers, material and experience. And always a similar movement: Close listening and a precise observation as the first steps towards an approach. As if scanning the surfaces enables the confidences necessary to enter the hidden layers of the visible, the audible and the situations. Then there is the certainty that something needs to be captured in order to enter into a binding relationship. That is what interests us. Because only then, in engaging relationships, do we find a position, only then can new starting points arise, only then do the entanglements continue. We follow traces, leave new ones and blur them. We have learnt from the sea, we follow the desire to look at things anew again and again. Certainties are met with mistrust. The ground beneath our feet is no longer firm.
Guided by the subtle structure of Nika Son’s compositions for the record Drift, we enter into a tender noise; we allow lines, rays, layers, material and experience to emerge, briefly, for we want to keep moving. The sounds, noises, voice and music open up a space into which we can dive together for 50 minutes. The present can only be experienced in the presence of our bodies. An intimate expanse.”
—Theresa George and Helena Wittmann

Featuring the LP Drift by Nika Son, released by Futura Resistenza in 2024.
With excerpts of the original soundtrack of the film Drift by Helena Wittmann and excerpts of the video-sound installation Wildness of Waves by Helena Wittmann and Nika Son.

Tender Noise (Echoes) is presented as part of Goethe Institute’s series “Art und Weise: Artists in Conversation,” an experimental performance platform for the hybridized genres of lecture-performance and artist-talk. These events are conceptualized as unique, one-off performance commissions with mid-career artists who do not typically work within this format.

For more information, contact program [​at​] e-flux.com.

Bio

Helena Wittmann is an artist and filmmaker based in Hamburg, Germany. Her films, among them her latest feature film Human Flowers of Flesh (2022) and her debut feature film Drift (2017) have been shown internationally at film festivals as well as in exhibitions (including Locarno Film Festival, Venice Int. Film Festival, Tate Modern, MoMA, Toronto Int. Film Festival, Int. Film Festival New York, Int. Film Festival Rotterdam, Int. Film Festival Mar del Plata, Int. Shortfilm Festival Oberhausen, Int. Film Festival Ann Arbor, Viennale, FID Marseille, FICUNAM) and have received several awards. She has been teaching at Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts from 2015–2018 and worked as mentor at Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola in San Sebastian, Spain. Besides her films she does installation works and collaborates as cinematographer with various directors and artists.

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