Opening, October 27, 2005, 7 pm
Exhibition, October 28 – November 8, 2005
After his visit to Mexico in the 1930s, the avant-garde filmmaker Sergei M. Eisenstein planned to film Karl Marx’s groundbreaking Capital. The project was never realized but what remains today are Eisenstein’s Notes for a Film of Capital. Unprecedented as his project was, its radicalism lay not only in the decision to visualize the abstract notions and logic of Capital but in the method employed, which, according to Eisenstein, would directly provoke dialectical thinking in audiences. He termed this method “intellectual montage”. Reading Capital refers to Eisenstein’s conception of a screen adaptation of Marx’s Capital. However, this project is positioned within the perspective of the contemporary world where capitalism has triumphed by stretching beyond frontiers. For her film Milica Tomic asked prominent and respectable citizens of San Antonio, Texas, who also represent American society—globally, the most developed capitalist system—to read passages from Marx’s Capital, and then to recite these quotes into the artist’s camera. The environment in which the speakers are filmed is that of their own choosing, one which they feel best represents them.
Milica Tomić (b. 1960 in former Yugoslavia) lives and works in Belgrad.
www.milicatomic.wordpress.com
Curated by Christian Kravagna and Hedwig Saxenhuber.
