Hypericin Yellow Movie: A Performance-Lecture by Oliver Husain and Kerstin Schroedinger

Against a waffled and shallow hot-pink background, a left hand holds a clear glass bowl in the air at an angle. There is a small amount of liquid in the bowl. We only see part of this hand and its short nails sport metallic nail polish. The other hand holds a silver-colored spoon full of liquid. The spoon is so full that liquid can be seen under it, dripping. Is the spoon removing liquid from the bowl or adding to it? Ambiguous, this action occupies the top half of the image. A tilted light-colored wooden table top occupies the lower half of the image. Three small thumb-sized plastic containers can be seen on the left of the image, below the hand holding the spoon. The two containers closest to us are full of a pinkish liquid, topped by a white screw-on cap, and parallel to the lower edge of the image. The third container is open, half-full, and topped with a small funnel. The image is lit from the right, casting shadows to the left. This is a still from Oliver Husain and Kerstin Schroedinger’s multi-channel installation entitled “DNCB” completed in 2021.

Oliver Husain & Kerstin Schroedinger, DNCB (still), 2021. Multi-channel moving-image installation with sound. Installation dimensions variable; 16mm film: 5:30 minutes; video: 9:50 minutes. Courtesy of the artists.

Date and Time

Monday, March 6, 6 – 8 PM

Location

112 Center for the Arts

OR

Livestream

Zoom Meeting ID: 933 1482 2173
Passcode: PLASMA2023

Cost

Free

Related Exhibition

Description

Hypericin is a phytochemical produced by the flowering plant St John’s wort. The plant has been used medicinally in different cultures for centuries, primarily as an antidepressant. In this performance-lecture Kerstin Schroedinger and Oliver Husain relate the flower to health, skin, light, and film by discussing their use of St John’s wort to hand-process the 16mm film in their project DNCB (on view at UB Anderson Gallery) and the political scandal that shrouded Germany in 1996, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, when a study of Hypericin as a treatment for HIV received government support while other AIDS research and care were severely underfunded.

With a pre-launch of Husain and Schroedinger’s new artist’s book DNCB – a History of Irritation published by Archive Books, Berlin. 

Artist and filmmaker Oliver Husain is based in Toronto, Canada. Husain’s projects often begin with a fragment of history, a rumor, a personal encounter or a distant memory. He uses a wide range of cinematic languages and visual pleasures—such as dance, puppetry, costume, special effects—to animate his research and fold viewers into complex narrative set-ups. DNCB (2018–ongoing), his collaboration with Kerstin Schroedinger, was shown in different formats at Heni Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo (2022); Silent Green Kulturquartier, Berlin (2021); and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE (2021). Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Clages, Cologne (2022) and Remai Modern, Saskatoon (2018). Group exhibitions include Taking a Stand, Stamps Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI (2020) and Immaterial Architecture, Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2020). Festival screenings include Berlinale, Berlin International Film Festival; Oberhausen Short Film Festival; Flaherty Seminar, New York; and Experimenta Festival, Bangalore (award 2017).

 

Kerstin Schroedinger is an artist working in performance, film/video, and sound. Her historiographic practice questions the means of image production, historical linearities, and the ideological certainties of representation. She researches the coinciding histories of industrialization and film. Her works and curatorial practice are often collaborative. Recent works include DNCB in collaboration with Oliver Husain and The Song of the Shirt (video/installation, 2020). Her works have been screened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Forum Expanded of Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival; Wavelengths, Toronto; mumok, Vienna; and exhibited at 17th Istanbul Biennial; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Photo Cairo #6; nGbK Berlin; and the 2nd Kiev Biennial, among other places. 


Presented in collaboration with Department of Media Study’s PLASMA Lecture Series.

Event Date March 6, 2023