Artists' Film Biennial 2014: Christian Jankowski Programme 1: Reframed

This three-part retrospective programme offers a generous glimpse at Jankowski’s films, presenting a selection of work charting a period of over years twenty years from 1992 to the present. Each programme is structured around a theme, defining a distinct strand of his practice.

The first programme, Reframed, draws on the absurdity that often arises when contexts are juxtaposed or realigned. Puppet Conference, 2003, sees a line-up of familiar puppets, synonymous with childhood pursuits, engaged in a very different dialogue. Lycan Theorized, 2009, takes a cinematic tone to explore Lacanian theory through the lens of the horror genre.

Programme 1: Reframed

Discourse News, 2012, SD video, colour, sound, 5 min 45 sec
Ebbe in Freedom, 1992, SD video, colour, sound, 8 min 58 sec
Lycan Theorized, 2006, 35mm transferred to SD video, colour, sound, 23 min
Puppet Conference, 2003, SD video, colour, sound, 25 min
Rosa, 2001, SD video, colour, sound, 18 min 54 sec

Total duration: 82 min

Curated by Steven Cairns, ICA Associate Curator of Artists’ Film and Moving Image.

Since the early 1990s, German artist Christian Jankowski has tested the boundaries between high art and mass-culture. Often co-opting the space of commercial television and cinema, he continuously subverts and pokes fun at the role of mass culture in the everyday, paralleling the structure of the art world with that of organised religion or the cult of the celebrity.

Christian Jankowski Programme

Over three evenings this programme offers different perspectives on Jankowski’s expansive practice, giving an overview of his filmic influences and interests.

Programme 1: Reframed - 4 July, 8pm
Programme 2: Learning the Absurd - 5 July, 9pm
Programme 3: Believe Me + Q&A - 6 July, 9pm

Christian Jankowski (b. 1968, Göttingen, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include “Heavy Weight History”, Lisson Gallery, London (2014); “Heavy Weight History”, CCA Tel Aviv (2014) and Wasser, Käse, Feuer. Christian Jankowski. “25 Editionen und ein anonymes Original” Helga Maria Klosterfelde Edition, Berlin (2014). He has participated in numerous group shows including “Tears and Politics: Works by Phil Collins and Christian Jankowski”, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston (2014); “Room Service”, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2014); “Real Emotions: Thinking in Film”, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2014) and “Things we discover alone (Independent Learning)”, Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig (2014).