Commonplaces of Transition
Screening and talk by Joanne Richardson, D Media, Romania

Films
In Transit (30 min, 2008)
Precarious Lives (excerpt, 43 min, 2008)
Two or Three Things about Activism (excerpt, 73 min, 2008)
(On the following night 'Two or Three Things about Activism' will be screened at RampArt, see http://therampart.wordpress.com/

Commonplaces of Transition is a collaborative project between D Media (Romania), Ak-Kraak (Germany), Interspace (Bulgaria) and K:SAK (Moldova) that has produced 8 videos about the remapping of borders, the transformation of labour and the evolution of activism. Joanne Richardson will screen In Transit (30 min, 2008), Precarious Lives (excerpt, 43 min, 2008) and Two or Three Things about Activism (excerpt, 73 min, 2008), and discuss the connection of the project to video activism and counter-documentary.

'In Transit' is a diary of a journey through space and time, composed of subjective impressions of the present, childhood memories and recycled fragments of the past. While traveling across Romania in the year of its EU accession, the monologue reflects on the meaning of transition, the re-writing of history and the relation between images and memory. Multiple layers of signification emerge in references to other films by Guy Debord, Chris Marker and Peter Forgacs.

Joanne Richardson is living and working in Cluj as a theorist, artist and program director of D Media ( http://www.dmedia.ro ). She is the editor of a webzine ( http://subsol.c3.hu ) and two books on digital culture, has written essays on the radical left, video activism, tactical media, copyleft and has made videos on issues ranging from globalization, to nationalism and postcommunism.

This screening has been facilitated by More is More – independent media distribution and film screening network http://moreismore.net