TEN SLOTTE is an annual audio-visual festival in Antwerp, founded by production platform Escautville. It focusses on artist’s moving images. The fifth edition is realized in collaboration with Out of Sight, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and De Cinema, curated by Dušica Dražić and Vincent Stroep. This year’s program unfolds within two exhibitions in De Temple (Academy) and Out of Sight, enriched by a film program and artist talks at De Cinema.

TEN SLOTTE 5 looks at artefacts and stories from the Ancient World that have been preserved. It explores potentially new meanings and knowledge derived from these residues of bygone times. They additionally consider the political implications of their use and display today, offering a different perspective on their reading, challenging patriarchal and Eurocentric positions. 

A look at the construction of narratives and neo-myths, and their uncontrollable and unbridled distribution seems awfully relevant in an era of fake news and post truth.

ACADEMY — DE TEMPEL (expo)
Opening: Thursday, 2 December from 18:00-22:00
^{Mutsaardstraat 31, 2000 Antwerp / Opening hours: Mon-Fri, 14:00-19:00}

Loukia Alavanou  | NEW HORIZON PILOT, 2018
Αn imaginary documentary, an absurd, futuristic journey into a late-capitalist Athenian dumpsite where animals occupy the wrong spaces, institutionalized men wear their work uniforms after the institutions have failed, and wild birds in cages perform Stalinist trials. Alavanou takes as a starting point the futuristic film “To New Horizons” presented in the Futurama exhibition, at the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. Her pilot project includes dystopic Modern Greek industrial landscapes in the periphery of Athens, such as a derelict oil factory in the outskirts of Attica or the abandoned Hellinikon airport. The allegorical use of animals, inspired by Goya’s depictions of birds in “Disasters of War”, serves as a metaphor for the refugee camps/prisons such as the one that recently occupied Hellinikon, restricting movement as opposed to the open spaces that the 1940 Futurama film envisioned the future to look like.

^{VR180 Film, 8’57” | Commissioned and Produced by Onassis Culture | Courtesy of the artist | loukiaalavanou.com}

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Sina Seifee | WONDERS OF THE MOON — A THOUSAND YEARS OF SLEEPWALKING, 2020
We close our eyes in order to simulate (and make ourselves available to) the time of darkness: a phenomenological atmospheric attuning to an entirely anonymous, indifferent, and inhuman nature of the cosmos. Dark has been both the medium of worship and of deviation. It is where the forgetter (the conspirator), the sleepwalker (the associator), the eraser (the sorcerer), and the smuggler (the polluter) are active. It is the time when they are at work. After-dark is the underground of time, as Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, the philosopher of deception and masks, proposes. It is where something other and something horror can happen. In crossing the dark, certain figures (shadow, moon, jinn, nature, God) of the premodern Indo-Persian world dissolve into familiar shapes and have a dynamic of disruptive presence within the human world.
Grounded on artistic research in medieval cosmologies, this work renders a series of interconnected objects and stories: a cabinet of curiosities that is dealing with the dark. It consists of figures, associations, atmospheres, and imageries that are inspired by bestiaries, a premodern world of horror-wonder literature. Bestiaries are medieval practices of description that were preoccupied with the monsters, marvels, and irregularities of nature from West Asia stretching to the Indian subcontinent. They are the precursers of the sciences of natural history, and encompass a wider poetics of Muslim imaginal ecological consciousness in those regions. This work is not based on metaphysics or phenomenology of darkness, but rather on the speculative science of bestiaries.

^{Video installation (projection on cone-shaped structure), Asynchronous audio-video playback (video 21’, audio 47’, loop) | Music track by Waterhouse | Narration performed by Davis Freeman | In collaboration with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh and Goda Palekaitė | Commissioned and produced by WIELS | Courtesy of the artist | sinaseifee.com}

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Diego Marcon | MONELLE, 2017
A number of little girls lie asleep between the intersections and the architectural elements of the Casa del Fascio in Como, designed by Giuseppe Terragni — one of the most important modernist architecture. Flashlights shine in the space, making the images appear for an instant–just the time necessary for the exposed frames to register with the viewer’s gaze before being plunged back into darkness. Around the sleeping bodies, some presences developed in CGI animation occupy the architecture and move around the space in obscure activities: nothing of their actions is visible to us, except in the fragments in which the image shows itself under the flashlight. Monelle is a circular film without any narrative or hierarchy, without a beginning or an end, and it circumscribes a place of promiscuity and ambiguity between the different formats and the approaches of two opposite film attitudes — the structural cinema and the horror genre.

^{35mm film, CGI animation, color, sound, loop of 13’56” | Cast: Giulia Ambrosoli, Emma Bertolini, Carlotta Cardinale, Alberta Casali, Alessia Fontana, Vidushi Samarasinghe | Cinematography: Pierluigi Laffi | Visual Effects: Diego Zuelli | Editor: Cristina Sardo | Sound: Federico Chiari | Produced by: In Between Art Film | Co-produced by Ermes-Ermes |With the support of: Guardia di Finanza, Comando Provinciale Como, Archivio Terragni, Como, Archivio Nazionale Cinema d’Impresa, Ivrea | In collaboration with
Beyond Entropy, London, Musil – Museo dell’Industria e del Lavoro, Brescia | Courtesy of the artist | diegomarcon.net}

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Lala Raščić | THE EUMENIDES, 2014
The Eumenides is a video based on J.P. Sartre’s drama The Flies, delivering Act IV as a dénouement to Sartre’s initial three acts. Raščić working with Andreja Dugandžić used text from Sartre and references to ancient Greek mythology, theatre, tragedy, philosophies of existentialism and individualist anarchism in the creation of a new narrative. Electra’s traditional tragic role is subverted in this video, showing her as an empowered female figure, a queen, a leader full of ideals, coaxing her subjects toward a better life. Electra’s speech is dripping with ideological and utopian possibilities for a better society. The video asks: has humanity lost its potential to revolt, are we so alienated in this interconnected world to imagine a healthy society, have we been oppressed so masterfully that we do not fathom real freedom?

^{Installation / Single channel video installation, HD, color, stereo, 27’ & Electra’s dress | Written by Andreja Dugandžić & Lala Raščić | Camera & light: Ivan Slipčević | Costume: Marijana Kramarić – Citoyenne K | Music: Black Water& Her Daughter (Ilvana Dizdarević, Andreja Dugandžić) vs. Midi Brigade (Nedim Čišić) | Voices: Carl Hugmeyer, Andrew Freeman, Sophie Lvoff, Rajko Radovanović | Sound recording: Haris Sahačić | Sound post-production: Tomislav Domes | Filmed at: Kriterion, Sarajevo | Acknowledgements: Sabina Šabić, Vanja Lazić, Nina Schwanse, Dan Rule, UNO – New Orleans | Courtesy of the artist | lalarascic.com}

OUT OF SIGHT (expo)
Opening: Saturday, 4 December from 18:00-22:00 / The exhibition runs until 6 February, 2022
Dokter van de Perrelei 51, 2140 Antwerp | Opening hours: Fri-Sun, 12:00-18:00

Lala Raščić | GORGO, 2019
The installation Gorgo is dedicated to the mythic figure of Medusa, the Gorgon – Gorgo. Medusa’s decapitation was a violent act of colonial patriarchy, as is the appropriation of her head as decoration for shields, armor, gables, plates, cups, and buttons. Using formulas from folktale and myth such as resurrection after initiation and the arming of the hero, the video rests on the premise the Medusa’s dismembered body is made whole again, she is born again. In the video Raščić, embodies the character of the Gorgo, and dons a copper armor that is at the same time an audio instrument.

^{Video installation and series of objects / Gorgo — HD video, color, stereo, 5’58’’, Directed, produced and edited by Lala Raščić, Director of photography and light design by Ivan Slipčević, Sound recording, live processing, and mastering by: Hrvoje Nikšić, Copper armor manufactured by Nermina Beba Alić, Costume by: Marijana Kramarić / Gorgo’s Armor — shield, mask, greaves, vambrace, breastplate copper, leather, dimensions variable / The Dig — series of 21 reflective plate glass objects, 4mm glass, 22k gold leaf, japan paint, wood, light | Courtesy of the artist | lalarascic.com}

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Andrew Scott Ross | CURATORIAL DRIFT, 2021
In an attempt to create a non-hierarchal display, Curatorial Drift documents drawings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York’s collection moved at random with the aid of a computer algorithm. Ross’s drawings depict sculptures, paintings, and other cultural objects rendered in wireframe in uniform line weight. The results show a video of a museum’s collection drifting, with objects from history intersecting in a perpetually reimagined composition. The accompanying sound consists of multiple clips culled from audio tours found on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website and APP. These audio clips feature the official introduction to the museum’s exhibits made accessible to the public during the pandemic when visiting the physical institution was impossible. The tracks are slowed down and layered, rendering the language of the museum’s curators and conservators forceless. The now indecipherable audio tours follow the randomized curation of historical objects shaped by software. 

_{Video, HD, B&W, loop | Video Effects Software: Tyler Gooden | Courtesy of the artist | andrewscottross.com}

DE CINEMA
^{Maarschalk Gerardstraat 4, 2000 Antwerpen}

Sunday, Dec 5, 14:45
LECTURE PERFORMANCE: E-00 by Lala Raščić | 45’ | English spoken

Lala Raščić in her lecture performance E-00 narrates storylines from classic mythology, skewed and combined with anecdotal episodes found through field research in and around Prizren, Kosovo. Written by: Lala Raščić and Andreja Dugandžić

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SCREENING: Pierre Bismuth | WHERE IS ROCKY II , 2016
93’ | FR/DE

In 1979, American artist Ed Ruscha placed a rock-like sculpture among the real rocks in the Californian desert. This fake rock became completely absorbed by its environment, indistinguishable from the real ones. Ruscha has never included this mysterious artwork, which he named Rocky II, in his official catalogue, as if he didn’t want this piece of sculpture to be found.
But Pierre Bismuth (winner of a joint Oscar for the screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) can’t let it go, and calls in a private detective to find Rocky II. He also asks Hollywood screenwriters D. V. De Vincentis (High Fidelity) and Anthony Peckham (Sherlock Holmes) to brainstorm about the screenplay for an action film based on this hidden work of art. Bismuth’s docu-fiction raises questions about the nature of an artwork no one can see – an artwork, in fact, that virtually no one even knows about. Finally, it is the creation of myth and the general Hollywoodization of life that Bismuth uncovers.

Sunday, Dec 12, 14:45
SCREENING: Ulrike Ottinger | TICKET OF NO RETURN, 1979
109’ | BDE | EN, OT 

An unnamed, flamboyant woman travels to Berlin with the sole purpose of drinking herself to unconsciousness. A Greek choir (the trio Soziale Frage, Exakte Statistik and Gesunder Menschenverstand) accompanies her on the Dionysian trip and provides moralizing commentary on her behaviour. From bar to hotel lobby to disco, devouring liters of cognac, she ends up in the most bizarre situations.
TICKET OF NO RETURN is populated with notorious figures from the Berlin scene of the 1970’s such as Wolf Vostell, Martin Kippenberger, Volker Spengler, Günter Meisner, Eddie Constantine and Nina Hagen. The soundtrack was composed by R.W. Fassbinder faithful Kurt Raab.