Since 2014, US artist-filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh has produced a cycle of works that appropriate computer-generated images of news events by a Taipei-based animation studio. By repurposing images in which drones deliver packages and boats of migrants capsize at sea, Ahwesh creates an uncanny atlas of emergency, characterized by a dissonance between the cuteness of the animations and the grave reality of their subject matter.

In her lecture, "Animating the Body: Peggy Ahwesh in Context," Erika Balsom (Kings College London) will explore this cycle’s reflection on abstraction, referentiality, and image circulation, with special attention to its treatment of the body. The accompanying screening will put two of these works in dialogue with earlier films by Ahwesh and selections from film history to comprise a programme that touches on animation, corporeality, and readymade, and the uncertain line between the animate and inanimate.

Erika Balsom's lecture is free of charge. For the screening, the usual prices of the Kino Arsenal apply.

July 18, 2023, 6pm, Kino Arsenal am Potsdamer Platz

6 pm – Cinema 1

Lecture by Erika Balsom

7:30 pm – Lobby

Reception

8 pm – Cinema 1

Screening of short films by Peggy Ahwesh, Dave Fleischer, and Ken Jacobs (76 minutes).