Screening and artist talk:
Oreet Ashery
Selfish Road
24 November 22, 7 pm
Free admission
Registration via reservation@kw-berlin.de
The artist Oreet Ashery will discuss the development of their film in conversation with associate curator Mason Leaver-Yap in an artist talk on 24 November at 7 pm.
Oreet Ashery, Selfish Road, 2022, video, 30 mins. A KW Production Series commission courtesy the artist and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.
KW Production Series presents Selfish Road (2022), a 30-minute film by artist and filmmaker Oreet Ashery. From 23-28 November, this new commission screens daily on KW’s 4th floor.
Journeying through their homeland and recalling autobiographical memories along the way, Ashery observes how both senses of belonging have and continue to fuse with the vertiginous and winding flows of nation-building, infrastructure and land use.
Turning a camera onto the contested land in and around Jerusalem, Selfish Road draws upon the genres of science-fiction, stand-up comedy, the family photo album, and the implicit privilege of the slacker road movie. The film reveals a composite portrait of a rapidly changing landscape: roads collapse into sinkholes, diseased cacti line highways, and location-monitoring apps map circuitous routes to flag “high risk” and “prohibited” areas. This episodic reflection of space and place attempts to work through the paradox: How can you own something that is stolen?
Selfish Road depicts a contradictory environment of industrial extraction obscured by spiritual wellness practices. With anger, grief, hope, and resistance, it dreams of material ecological visions for indigenous life away from settler occupation and seeks out an ethics in and beyond the beauty of the region.