© Mattia Greghi
Talk
AVALANCHE #18
Carlos Casas with Frederik Van Oudenhoven
October 23 2019, 6.00pm
AVALANCHE #18 is the second event in the Speak Listen Look Act programme. “A journey through time, a mirror that reflects the history of the village of Hichigh. An open, constantly evolving documentary, the project of my life” is how the artist and director Carlos Casas describes AVALANCHE, a project he launched in 2009, now in its eighteenth version. It tells the story of a small village on the Pamir heights in Tajikistan, the “roof of the world” on the border with Afghanistan. AVALANCHE is thus a space to be experienced and enjoyed in different ways and times, a contemplative and active space, depending on the particular event, with videos, sounds and words.
Thanks to collaboration between Casas and the architectural research firm Raumplan, the space will be adapted so as to reflect the architectural criteria typically found in houses in the Pamir mountain range. On 23 October Carlos Casas will interact with Frederik Van Oudenhoven, an ethno-anthropologist and expert in biodiversity and local agriculture. Live performance by Tambour Doux and Carlos Casas.
Carlos Casas (b. 1974, Barcelona, Spain) is a filmmaker and visual artist whose work combines documentary films, cinema, and visual and sound art. His films have been screened and awarded at festivals around the world, including at the Venice Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Buenos Aires International Film Festival, the Mexico International Film Festival, FID Marseille. His work has been shown and produced in international art institutions and galleries such as Tate Modern, London, Fondation Cartier, Palais de Tokyo, Centre Pompidou, Paris, HangarBicocca, Milan, CCCB Barcelona, GAM Turin, and BOZAR Brussels.
Together with Jamila Haider, Frederik Van Oudenhoven wrote With Our Own Hands, a book that, for the first time, tells the story of the cultural and agricultural history of the Afghan and Tajik Pamirs, one of the least-known and most isolated civilisations in the world. Through the lens of a hundred local recipes, accompanied by the work of three multi-award-winning photographers, he describes Pamiri food and its origins, people’s everyday lives, and their struggles and celebrations. In a world in which poverty, conflicts, and political upheavals have made it difficult for people to express and define their own identity, food is a powerful instrument for its survival.
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Credits
Artistic direction: Umberto Angelini
Curated by: Davide Giannella
Exhibition design: Raumplan
Speak Listen Watch Make is a program of meetings, installations, exhibitions, performances, plays, screenings, workshops and projects by Davide Giannella and Massimo Torrigiani/Fantom.
