Artists' Film Biennial: Talk: Political Identity and the Moving Image

A panel discussion exploring how political identities are depicted and captured with the moving image, and the evolving role of the moving image as a political medium. This panel discussion is chaired by artist and writer Zach Blas, with academic Rizvana Bradley, and artists Oreet Ashery and Ahmet Öğüt.

Zach Blas is an artist and writer whose practice engages technology, queerness, and politics. Currently, he is a Lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has recently exhibited and lectured at Whitechapel Gallery, London; ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; e-flux, New York; the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; New Museum, New York; Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; and transmediale, Berlin. He has two forthcoming books: Escaping the Face, to be published by Rhizome and Sternberg Press, and Informatic Opacity: The Art of Defacement in Biometric Times. His current art project Contra-Internet is supported by a 2016 Creative Capital grant in Emerging Fields.

Oreet Ashery is an artist working with political-fiction, gender materiality and potential communities, in local and international contexts. Ashery’s practice spans live situations, workshops and performances, moving image, photography, writing and assemblages and turns to areas such as music, costume, education, distribution, research and activism. Ashery’s current work is an artist web-series titled Revisiting Genesis on digital death, memory as identity and feminist art reincarnations. Recent large-scale works have included The World is Flooding, a Tate Modern Turbine Hall performance project 2014, and Party for Freedom, an Artangel commission 2013.

Rizvana Bradley is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies and African-American Studies at Yale University. She holds a BA from Williams College and a PhD from Duke University. She was a Helena Rubinstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Her forthcoming book, a recipient of a Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, examines the performative disassembly of the black body in contemporary art. Bradley was the guest editor of a special issue of the journal Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, and has published articles in TDR: The Drama Review, Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, and Black Camera: An International Film Journal.

Ahmet Öğüt (b. 1981, Diyarbakır, Turkey) is a sociocultural initiator, artist, and lecturer who lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam. He is the initiator of The Silent University, which is an autonomous knowledge exchange platform by refugees, asylum seekers. Working across a variety of media, Öğüt's institutional solo exhibitions include Forward!, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2015); Happy Together: Collaborators Collaborating, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015); Apparatuses of Subversion, Horst-Janssen-Museum, Oldenburg (2014); Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2012); SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul (2011); The MATRIX Program at the UC Berkeley Art Museum (2010); and Kunsthalle Basel (2008). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including the British Art Show 8 (2015-2017); the 13th Biennale de Lyon (2015); Performa 13, the Fifth Biennial of Visual Art Performance, New York (2013); the 7th Liverpool Biennial (2012); the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011); the New Museum Triennial, New York (2009); and the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2008).  Öğüt was awarded the Visible Award for the Silent University (2013); the special prize of the Future Generation Art Prize, Pinchuk Art Centre, Ukraine (2012); the De Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prijs 2011, Netherlands; and the Kunstpreis Europas Zukunft, Museum of Contemporary Art, Germany (2010). He co-represented Turkey at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009).

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The ICA Artists’ Film Biennial 2016 is a four-day celebration of artists’ film and moving image. The Biennial’s comprehensive series of screenings and talks extends the ICA’s Artists’ Film Club, our regular programme of artists’ film, which profiles and debates the best international artists’ moving image.

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