Artists' Film Biennial 2014: Christian Jankowski Programme 2: Learning the Absurd

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.

This second programme, Learning the Absurd, draws together a diverse selection of works that connect childhood with adult pursuits and vice versa. The humorous The Matrix Effect, 2000, features a cast of children, each playing the role of an artist from the late 20th Century. In contrast, Rooftop, 2007 features an adult cast who give advice on the most effective approaches to hula hooping.

Programme 2: Learning the Absurd

Cleaning Up the Studio, 2010, HD video, colour, sound, 9 min 33 sec
When I Was Cuisillo, 2009, SD video, colour, sound, 2 min 57 sec
Rooftop Routine, 2007, SD video, colour, sound, 4 min 30 sec
Let’s Get Physical/ Digital, 1997, SD video, colour, sound, 37 min 32 sec
The Finest Art on Water, 2011, HD video, colour, sound, 10 min
The Matrix Effect, 2000, SD video, colour, sound, 24 min 54 sec

Total duration: 90 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).