Book Launch, Screening

The Berlin Sessions:
Jeff Weber in conversation with Robert Beavers

Dates

Wed, 05.12.18

Time

19:00

Venue

KW Studio

„I saw one of Robert’s early films, From the Notebook of… (1971), which I admire very much, and I thought, among other things, that the way the film unfolds through its own making is really quite close to my idea of a personal epistemology. I also liked that he shows the room he is working in to make the film, which functions as a metaphor for an inner space. I furthermore liked how he relates his room to the space inside the camera—referring to an idea of cognition being located somewhere between the eye and the brain—through the use of filters. I saw parallels to the Kunsthalle here.

It was only a bit later that I had the opportunity to see Early Monthly Segments (1967–1970) and discovered that a big part of what is at play in his later films has its beginning here, articulated in a very playful way, crystalizing right in front of the spectator’s eyes.“

Excerpt from: Jeff Weber, An Attempt at a Personal Epistemology, Roma Publications, Amsterdam 2018

Jeff Weber holds a diploma (2010) from the LaCambre Art School in Brussels. In 2012, he was a resident at Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. His work has been shown internationally including the De Appel Arts Center, Amsterdam; the Casino – Forum d’Art Contemporain, Luxembourg; Roots and Culture Contemporary Art Center, Chicago; the Interfood-Vitrine, Aachen; the Fotomuseum Winterthur and the Erna Hecey Gallery, Luxembourg. He has organized and curated numerous events, lectures, and projects at Kunsthalle Leipzig between 2014–2017. The book An Attempt At A Personal Epistemology is the result of his longterm project Kunsthalle Leipzig, an institution which worked as an extension of his photographic practice and functioned as a conceptual frame to invite others to actively participate. Published by Roma Publications, Amsterdam.

Born in Massachusetts in 1949, Robert Beavers attended public schools then Deerfield Academy before meeting the filmmaker Gregory J. Markopoulos and making his first film in New York. He was encouraged by the freedom of the New American Cinema, and more precisely by the masters of montage within that movement. In 1967 Beavers relocated to Europe with Markopoulos. He has made films in Greece, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. Recent film retrospectives have been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2005), Tate Modern, London (2007), Austrian Film Museum (2010), and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) (2016). The next is planned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York for March, 2020. He lives with the filmmaker, Ute Aurand, in Berlin.

Photographs and Idea: Jeff Weber
Texts: Michael Baers, Robert Beavers, Marie-France Rafael
Design: Philip Baber with Elisabeth Rafstedt

Part of project: The Berlin Sessions

Since February 2017, KW Institute for Contemporary Art organized a series of monthly public talks in collaboration with various institutions and organizations located in Berlin. The series entitled The Berlin Sessions explored the fabric of cultural producers in the city by inviting one Berlin-based speaker to give a presentation on another cultural producer that he/she/they find inspiring. The goal of the lecture series was to highlight the work of Berlin-based creatives from the perspective of their peers; to map connections between the various producers and fields and to strengthen the existing networks between locally based artists, authors, musicians, performers, researchers and other creative producers.