Experimenta 2011 Oliver Husain Artist in Focus

OLIVER HUSAIN – ARTIST IN FOCUS
Presented by Oliver Husain

“I often begin with a portrait of a person or place. The outcome is a video or film, a text or a textile; something foldable that can be stored away easily, or something standing on thin chopstick legs. Something that might collapse under the eyes of the viewer – in a film, this could be its fragile narrative structure. So the viewers are left with holding up their side by themselves. In this way, I am constructing attractive traps.” OH

Oliver Husain is a filmmaker and artist based in Toronto. – After studying film and media art in Offenbach, Germany and Baroda, India, he started working as a music video director, producing acclaimed clips for sensorama, isolee, blaze and others in collaboration with Michael Klöfkorn from 1997 to 2002. With Claus Richter and Sergej Jensen he formed the theatre troupe Da Group, performing musical plays with numerous collaborators. In 2003, his video Q was awarded with the National German Film award for best experimental short film. In 2004/05, he produced a series of travelogues in China, Indonesia and India, titled Swivel, Shrivel and Squiggle, which screened at many international film festivals and exhibitions. In 2008, he was a featured filmmaker at the Flaherty Film Seminar, Colgate, New York. In 2009, his screening performance Purfled Promises was presented at Live Film! Jack Smith! Festival, Berlin. His exhibition Hovering Proxies was shown at the AGYU, Toronto in 2010.

2^nd December| Friday | 6.30pm| 70mins | NGMA

1. Dear Whats Your Face Canada 2010 video b/w with live reading 6 mins
Entering the auditorium, everyone will find an envelope on her or his seat. It is addressed to each individual in the audience, and imprintedPlease don’t open before the film begins. Then, the film begins:

2. Echtzeit (co directed with Michel Klöfkorn) Germany 1996 video colour sound 6 mins

3. Q Germany 2002 video colour sound 15mins
The audience is passed through an adorned event course. Queuing up is been made easy by the staff, taking care of seamless entertainment. This film has won several awards including the German Shortfilm Award 2003, Tokio Video Festival Award 2002, werkleitz Award 2002, Hessian Filmaward 2002

4. Leona Alone Canada 2009 video colour sound 6mins
Variations of stained glass screens erected around the neighborhood of Leona Drive, Willowdale, Toronto.

5. Shrivel Indonesia 2005 video colour sound 8mins
Eclectic scenery/ here in Karawaci / green trees sway in the breeze / around Taman Paris / A place for families! / Spend some eventless days / in old Taman Ingles / or hear the Muezzin call / in Taman Espanol // Oh, how I long to be / back in Karawaci !

6. Green Dolphin Canada 2008 video colour sound 15mins
If part of the Seminar’s quest was to find a new language to deal with an interconnected, globally-flattened reality, it was perhaps Oliver Husain who had the most coherent form. His fantastic short films captured the moment in an altogether natural, almost effortless way that was perhaps reflective of his own worldview and experience. Surreal, romantic, disorienting and whimsical, his videos are experiential and almost undescribeable. In Green Dolphin, time, diasporic place, fiction and reality converge as a seamless continuum is opened between Kuala Lumpur and Toronto and Lana Turner is channeled through a Filipino Canadian dancer. – Chi-hui Yang – Flaherty diary: A week in the Age of Migration

7. Hovering Proxies Canada 2010 video colour 4 mins

8. Purfled Promises Canada 2009 video colour 10mins
While you were watching the beads fall, the screen itself, drawn by imperceptible force, has started to move towards the audience, and is now pushing, unnoticeably slow, over the front rows of the auditorium.