A Modest Proposal (in a Black Box)


Vermeir & Heiremans’ A Modest Proposal (in a Black Box) will be screened at the Paris edition of the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin festival of moving image, taking place from 5-10 March 2019


Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin
Festival of moving image with Vermeir & Heiremans
At several locations in Paris: Louvre Museum Auditorium, Centre Pompidou, Carreau du Temple, Forum des images, Cité internationale des arts.

Festival from 5-10 March 2019

Screening A Modest Proposal (in a Black Box) on Tuesday 5 March 2019 at 9 PM at Forum des images.


Synopsis:

In their film, A Modest Proposal (in a Black Box), Vermeir & Heiremans, who are also the film’s protagonists, discuss a new financial model with a lawyer. Their dialogue, witnessed by the lawyer’s assistant, focuses on the question if financialisation can be re-purposed towards generating a more equitable arts ecology. Considering the financialisation of public art collections, museum real estate and symbolic capital, the financial model should benefit not only investors and art institutions, but also its stakeholders, the creators of the art assets’ value, the artists and art workers.

In the film the artists propose to financialise a specific building as their first case study: Pump House Gallery in Battersea Park. The gallery is located in the vicinity of the Battersea Power Station, a 20th century former coal-fired power station, currently under re-development. It will house Apple’s London headquarters and offers luxury apartments for sale, designed by Frank Gehry and Foster and Partners. All in all, an excellent momentum to leverage rising values that surround the gallery, to ‘pump’ up the building’s value as an asset, and generate a return on investment for the wider art community.

The conversation between the artists and the lawyer takes place in Vermeir & Heiremans’ house, which in their practice they define as an artwork. Meanwhile, the seemingly absent-minded assistant often slips away from the discussions. She appears to be able to materialise and dematerialise at will the lofty space by caressing the walls, playing with the miniature furniture inside a scale model of the artists’ house or using the latter as a framing device, manipulating the window views. When the artists and the lawyer go on to discuss and celebrate the proposal on the loft’s rooftop garden, glass of champagne in hand, she takes control…


Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin invites you to discover its new programme in Paris, from 5- 10 March 2019. Crossing new cinema and contemporary art, this unique platform in Europe provides a rare opening on contemporary audiovisual practices. Documentary approaches, experimental fictions, videos, hybrid and multimedia forms: the programme of Rencontres Internationales is the result of a thorough research and invitations to outstanding artists, personalities from cinema and the contemporary art field. In the presence of artists and filmmakers from all over the world, this edition introduces a brand new international programme, comprising 120 works from 40 countries; bringing together internationally renowned artists and filmmakers with young and emerging ones presented for the first time…


More information on the website of Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin