December
16, Thursday, 7:30PM, 2004
Director's
Eye with Paul Chan
(BOSTON
PREMIERE!!)
BAGHDAD
IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
Pt.1 51min, video, 2003
Director: Paul Chan
B.I.N.P.O.
is an ambient video essay of life in Baghdad
before the invasion and occupation. Men dance,
women draw and sufis sing as they await the
coming of another war. In seven languages (Arabic,
Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, and
Spanish). Subtitled in English. World Premiere
at the 2003 MOMA Documentary Fortnight. Part
II, website, online at www.nationalphilistine.com/baghdad
Notes, gifts, promises, paintings, trash, and
other ephemera from the city which is now hardly
a city. What if Walter Benjamin didn't kill
himself, learned html, bought a camera, and
thought himself useful enough to work in an
impending war zone?
Paul
Chan is an artist and director of National
Philistine, an online aesthetic think tank.
Chan is a 2003 Rockefeller Foundation new media
arts fellow. He is represented by the Greene
Naftali Gallery in New York. His video work
is distributed by Video Data Bank and his new
media work can be seen at www.nationalphilistine.com
Chan spent one month (Dec 2002-Jan 2003) in
Baghdad as a member of the Iraq peace team,
a project of Voices in the Wilderness, the Nobel
Peace prize nominated group working to end the
sanctions against Iraq. The goals of IPT are
to rally support for resisting the war (and
now occupation) on Iraq and publicize the effects
of the ongoing US assault on Iraqi civilians.
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