Artists’ Film Club: Tobias Madison

Join us for the UK premiere of Tobias Madison’s das blut, im fruchtfleicsch gerinnend beim birnenbiss, followed by a conversation with Tobias Madison on collaborative approaches to filmmaking.  

Madison often works with video and installation, combining sculptural attitudes with theatrical experiences; for das blut, im fruchtfleicsch gerinnend beim birnenbiss (Blood, Clotting in the Flesh of a Pear while Biting), he worked with a cast of children and pedagogues in Hannover, Germany to complete his new video. Taking the late-Japanese filmmaker Shuji Terayama’s 1971 film Emperor Tomato Ketchup as a starting point, Madison's narrative is located between the child as a projection space for politics and the child as a parody of politcs, so that overthrowing the adults becomes a doubtful endeavour in this fictional, pseudo-scifi tale.

The collaborative process employed by Madison in making the film with a group of children took comparable alternative power dynamics to unusual effect. Both visually enticing and subtly complex in its narrowing of artistic and generational hierarchies, Madison’s work serves as a catalyst for discussion and debate on creative process, production and collaboration.  

Tobias Madison was born in Basel, Switzerland in 1985, and lives and works in New York, New York. Recent projects have included Rotting Wood: the Dripping Word: Shūji Terayama’s "Kegawa no Marii”, with Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, MoMA PS1, New York City (2016), and solo exhibitions including das blut, im fruchtfleisch gerinnend beim birnenbiss, Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2016) and Crisis Tourism, The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2017).  

das blut, im fruchtfleicsch gerinnend beim birnenbiss (2016), HD video, colour, sound, 33 min