A screening series developed in partnership between seven international arts organizations, A River Waits Reply presents moving-image works from around the world as a poetic reply to this unprecedented year. It is a year that has invited new modes of exchange at a distance, and a long overdue reckoning with deep social and political inequity that calls for new forms of solidarity.

All seven institutions will simultaneously host each video on their websites for the duration of one week, with the series as a whole extending over seven weeks. Each work has been selected by a partner organisation as a response to the videos that preceded it, producing a cascading sequence and a winding river of thought, interpreted through the aesthetic and social values of their respective cultural context.

Collaborators:
Argos, Brussels
Gasworks, London
Kadist, San Francisco & Paris
MOCA Toronto
Museo Tamayo, Mexico City
Para Site, Hong Kong
Pivô, São Paulo

The title of the series is borrowed from a poem by Emily Dickinson.

Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Silent (2017)

"During this year of isolation our productive energy has been stifled, our motivation repressed by the pandemic, and simultaneously we’ve heard the call to protest, to voice our discontent, to demand justice. This tension drew us to Silent (2017) by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz as it reflects silence as a form of protest, a denial-of-service as resistance, but also a suppression of the freedom to speak, the hand covering the mouth of the oppressed.

Musician Aérea Negrot’s rendition of John Cage’s iconic score 4’33” as she stands in front of a forest of microphones, as if for a press conference, amplifies the sense of anticipation and evokes silence as a form of civil disobedience in political arenas. The stage is set on Oranienplatz in Berlin, where a refugee protest camp took place between 2012 and 2014.

This performance is followed by a song composed for the film. In both we recognize an urge to challenge the normalization apparent in unspoken (but deeply felt) forms of bias and bigotry. The artists are seeking the point of contact between the defiant act of silence, and the act of breaking the silence, as representative of emergent forms of political dissent, but also the power of vulnerability and unapologetic desire."

Selected by KADIST

Pauline Boudry (b. Switzerland) and Renate Lorenz (b. Germany) have worked together since 2007. They live and work in Berlin. https://www.boudry-lorenz.de