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  • Out of Genres, in Gender, Keren Cytter, Untitled (Cross, Flowers, Rolex) (2009)

    Out of Genres, in Gender, Keren Cytter, Untitled (Cross, Flowers, Rolex) (2009)

  • Out of Genres, in Gender, Keren Cytter, Untitled (Cross, Flowers, Rolex) (2009)

    Out of Genres, in Gender, Keren Cytter, Untitled (Cross, Flowers, Rolex) (2009)

  • Out of Genres, in Gender, Keren Cytter, Untitled (Cross, Flowers, Rolex) (2009)

    Out of Genres, in Gender, Keren Cytter, Untitled (Cross, Flowers, Rolex) (2009)


Out of Genres, in Gender


Keren Cytter (Berlin)


September 11 to October 9, 2010

Fernand-Seguin Theatre of the Cinémathèque québécoise

In her powerful, short films, Keren Cytter borrows various conventions from genre films – film noir, melodrama, soap operas, etc. – and, using a fragmented story line, reveals the fate of characters who are powerless in the face of the codes that govern them, from social and family structures to narrative conventions.

Coming from a culture where images are the foundation for our relationship to reality, the characters in Cytter’s films exist on the periphery of an excessive script which inhibits them, infiltrating technical notes, subtitling errors, repetitions or unneccesary comments into dialogues and imposing stereotyped phrases and behaviour on their agonised feelings. In such a situation the utopian hope for a return to real things seems like just another cliché. At the same time, her work is not inherently subversive: it expresses this new reality and the violent shock that is produced when, in its imperfection, it collides with the (perfect) script.

Program:

Untitled (Cross, Flowers, Rolex), 2009, triptych, 15 min.: Each of these films takes as its source a frightening, bizarre news item recounted on the Internet: a woman survives being shot in the head; a man twice throws himself from the fifth floor of a building and survives each time; and in five seconds, on the street, a man is stabbed eleven times and then dies.

Four Seasons, 2009, 12 min.: A neo-noir melodrama with a whiff of the absurd and the surreal in which Lucy gets to know her neighbour, a young man whose music bothers her and who insists on calling her Stella.

The Coat, 2010, 5 min. 30 sec.: A love triangle made up of a splendid young woman from East Germany and two men obsessed with sudokus.

Der Spiegel (The Mirror), 2007, 4 min. 30 sec.: A nude and mature woman is waiting in an empty apartment for a handsome man to rescue her from her solitude. A choir accompanies and comments on her adventures and discoveries, right up until the curtain drops.

Untitled, 2009, 9 min.: This film, a return to Cassavetes’ Opening Night, uses a theatre stage to tell the true story of a boy who, out of jealousy, kills his father’s girlfriend, the lead actress.

Peacocks, 2009, 8 min.: A short-lived love affair is recounted in a series of fragmented chapters.


Keren Cytter was born in Israel in 1977 and is a prolific artist, choreographer, novelist and sound designer living in Berlin. She has rapidly become one of the most important artists working today. In the past few years her work has been presented at venues such as Tate Modern in London, the Moderna Museet Stockholm and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, as well as at the events X Initiative in New York and Artspeak in Vancouver. In 2009, she was one of four finalists for the prestigious Nationalgalerie Prize for Young Art. Her work is being presented in Montreal for the first time.

Dazibao thanks the artists, Pilar Corrias Gallery of London and the Cinémathèque québécoise for their generous collaboration and its members for their support.




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