Johan Grimonprez, LOOKING FOR ALFRED still (2005).

Johan Grimonprez, DOUBLE TAKE still, (2009), (Leonid Brezhnev and Nikita Khrushohav Moscow, April 1964).

Johan Grimonprez, DOUBLE TAKE still, (2009).

Johan Grimonprez, DOUBLE TAKE still (2009), Former US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld,
WMD Press Briefing, NATO headquarters, Brussels, 6 June, 2002.

Johan Grimonprez, DOUBLE TAKE still (2009).

Johan Grimonprez, dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y still.

Johan Grimonprez, dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y still.

Johan Grimonprez, dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y still (1997), Kozo Okamoto, Japanese Red Army Commando, tel Aviv, June 1972).

Johan Grimonprez, IT’s A POOR SORT OF MEMORY THAT ONLY WORKS BACKWARDS, Courtesy zapomatik, Brussels 2011.

Johan Grimonprez, dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y still (1997), (Three hijacked planes on desert sierstrip near
Amman, Jordan, 12 September 1970).

S.M.A.K.
Citadelpark
+ 32 9 240 76 01
Ghent
Johan Grimonprez. It's a Poor Sort of Memory
that Only Works Backwards:
On Zapping, Close encounters,
and the Commercial Break
October 15, 2011-January 29, 2012

S.M.A.K. presents the first Belgian retrospective by the filmmaker and artist Johan Grimonprez (1962, Roeselare). In the course of several sections, Grimonprez brings his works face to face with contemporary and historical counterparts, some taken from the Internet. He enters into dialogue with the artists Roy Villevoye and Jan Dietvorst and also with other makers of film and television including Adam Curtis, Brian Springer, the Yes Men, Dr. John Mack and Adbusters. His constantly expanding ‘vlogging installation’ runs through the exhibition like a referential thread and, as a sort of artistic sketchbook, it offers an insight into the way Grimonprez broaches new topics and develops visual associations.

Grimonprez’s video work manoeuvres graciously between art and cinema, documentary and fiction, practice and theory. In a world awash with images produced and reproduced on a massive scale, Grimonprez suggests new narrative structures that make it possible to continue telling personal stories. His work is based on an archaeology of contemporary media and reveals — and disrupts — the part the moving image plays in the construction of our personal and political histories, our fears and desires and the way we see ourselves and the world. Using documentary material, found footage, historical items from archives, his own home videos, news pictures, advertising, video clips and excerpts from Hollywood films, Grimonprez tries in his own way to give some meaning to the havoc wreaked by History. Duplication, mirroring, imitation and associative shifts require a double-take from the viewer, a screening that is able to open up several layers and an intelligent and visually complex double meaning. Perhaps it is true that a memory does not only work backwards, as the title of this exhibition suggests.

Works in the Exhibition
dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997), the astonishing film with which Grimonprez made his international breakthrough and which premiered at Documenta X, is a dazzling study of terrorist strategies that merges television images and home videos. Under the guise of a chronicle of aircraft hijacks, the film exposes the "hijack" of reality by the media. dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y reveals the hidden dimensions of our mediatised culture in terms of the media spectacular, the fear industry and increasing forgetfulness. In response to this film, Grimonprez includes several BBC series by the British documentary-maker Adam Curtis (1955) in the exhibition. Among other works, Curtis’ prize-winning documentary The Power of Nightmares (2004) and the series The Century of Self (2002) point out the same power strategies based on the construction of a manipulated image of an enemy with the aim of provoking our collective fears.

Grimonprez’s recent film Double Take (2009) also unravels the mechanisms of paranoia and the introduction of fear into the fabric of our society. Against the background of the space race, as a metaphor for the Cold War, and through a series of cloned Alfred Hitchcocks, Double Take symbolises the double effect of cinema and television and the recent history of capitalism, communism, advertising and warfare in a world transformed into an info-dystopia and a Photoshop reality. For this exhibition, Grimonprez opens up this context even further by zooming in on the way the latest technological developments have reshaped every aspect of our daily lives. The convergence of various media forms — from Youtube to Facebook — sparked off a cultural process in which we, as individuals, being at the centre of an endless network and addicted to entertainment and distraction, are able to satisfy our desire for boundless channel surfing by tapping, flicking and pinching on a single mobile device. Whereas these media seem like a window on the world, Grimonprez takes the reverse direction by bringing them into the intimate and critical space of the museum. In addition, by conceiving the exhibition as a gigantic iPad, he turns our insatiable media consumption upside down.

Grimonprez’s earlier film Kobarweng or Where is Your Helicopter? (1992) deconstructs the legacy of an anthropological discourse by studying the confrontation ensuing from the first encounter between Westerners (anthropologists who descended by helicopter) and the villagers of the highlands of New Guinea. At the heart of this is the notion of "the Other" — and with it the question of what typifies us ourselves — as a construction in the social, cultural and historical context at the moment when the two different cultures clash. The sudden arrival of helicopters announced a crucial juncture in the history of the village which Kobarweng critically restages through an examination and juxtaposition of archival anthropological footage and the villager's testimonies. In this section of the exhibition, on the basis of his knowledge of the present situation in the former Dutch New Guinea, the artist Roy Villevoye (1960, Maastricht) presents a sculptural work and a series of visual pieces (created in association with Jan Dietvorst) which can be seen as a contemporary variant of Kobarweng.

The multi-channel installation It Will Be All Right If You Come Again, Only Next Time Don’t Bring Any Gear, Except A Tea Kettle (1994-2004) also explores the creation of new mythologies and cultural stories in the wake of Western imperialism. It is based on an actual event, the screening of the film The Sound of Music (1965) organised by a missionary for the inhabitants of Irian Jaya. The overlapping of archive material and shots of the natural landscapes of New Guinea with film images of the Austrian hills evokes a shift of meaning from a typical Hollywood imagination to a reinterpretation of our own surroundings and an attempt to depict the other’s environment, a stereotyping mechanism which here too works in both directions.

Book –It's a Poor Sort of Memory
that only Works Backwards
Other versions of this exhibition have previously been shown at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, in 2007, and at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh and the Blaffer Museum in Houston in 2010. The book It’s a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards is being published to accompany this exhibition. It ensues from the talks and debates linked to the retrospective in Edinburgh and the Shot by both sides symposium at the Vooruit in Ghent in 2009. The essays, interviews and film scripts in this book, present a fascinating insight into Grimonprez’s work, with their wide-ranging references to and foundations in a penetrating literary, psychoanalytical and theoretical discourse. This book is a significant contribution to the existing literature on this oeuvre and, together with the exhibitions in Ghent, Edinburgh and Houston, may lead to this powerful and intelligent work becoming known to a wider audience.

Johan Grimonprez

Johan Grimonprez, Bed still (2005-2010), loop.

Johan Grimonprez, dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y still (1997), (Raffaele Minichiello, first transatlantic hijacker, Rome, November 1969).

Johan Grimonprez, Still from Double Take, 2009, Video projection, 80 minutes, Still image: Alfred Hitchcock in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Number Twenty-Two, Courtesy of Universal & Zapomatik.

Johan Grimonprez, Still from Double Take, 2009, Video projection, 80 minutes, Still image: Unknown Unknowns, Donald Rumsfeld, Department of Defense News Briefing, February 12, 2002, Courtesy of Universal & Zapomatik.

Johan Grimonprez, Installation View of Double Take, 2009, 80 minutes, digital beta, edition of 15, (Installation views of exhibition by Ben Polsky).

Johan Grimonprez, Still from Double Take, 2009, 80 minutes, digital beta, edition of 15, Courtesy of Universal & Zapomatik.

Johan Grimonprez, Installation view, Maybe the Sky is Really Green, and We're Just Color Blind, YouTube-o-theque, (Installation views of exhibition by Ben Polsky).

Johan Grimonprez, Still from Double Take, 2009, Video projection, 80 minutes, Still image: Leonid Brezhnev – Nikita Khrushchev, April 17, 1964, Courtesy of Universal & Zapomatik.

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall
Frihamnen, SE – 115 56
+46 8 545 680 40
Stockholm
Johan Grimonprez
March 28-June 7, 2009

Johan Grimonprez’s latest work Double Take (2009) is part of the Magasin 3 collection and is presented at Magasin 3 for the first time in Europe. The film is a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock and his popular role as presenter in his own TV series The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1955-65). Material by and about Hitchcock is interwoven with TV footage of the Cold War — a period where prosperity and the American idyll were disrupted by political turbulence. Fact and fiction merge in this experimental film investigating how our perception of reality is influenced by mass media, advertising and Hollywood.

Grimonprez's second film essay, Double Take, questions how our view of reality is held hostage by mass media, advertising and Hollywood. Written by award winning British novelist Tom McCarthy, the film targets the global rise of fear-as-commodity, in a tale of odd couples and hilarious double deals. Paying tribute to the themes of doubling and mistaken identity, Grimonprez creates a unique interpretation of Alfred Hitchcock's illustrious cameo television and film appearances, through which Grimonprez examines the influence of this cinema-icon on a deeper, more socio-political level. The film covers the post World War II period, characterized by prosperity and innocent consumerism, as well as institutionalized fear, through the beginning of the 1960s featuring Sputnik, Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon. The cold war era was characterized by the conquest of space, sexual politics, anxiety and paranoia disrupting the idyllic American suburban dream. In the words of Alfred Hitchcock, "Television brought murder into the American home, where it has always belonged." Not without humor, Double Take invites the viewer to question today's hegemony of the image, the truth and lies of reality and its influence on our society, politics and culture.

The narrative is inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ novella August 25, 1983 where the author meets an older version of himself. For Double Take the British writer Tom McCarthy has changed the plot to make Hitchcock meet himself. To a certain extent the work is an adaptation and continuation of Grimonprez’s film Looking for Alfred (2005).

A compilation of short films, selected by Grimonprez and Charlotte Léouzon titled MAYBE THE SKY IS REALLY GREEN AND WE'RE JUST COLORBLIND accompanies the exhibition. Shown for the first time in Europe, it is presented in the form of a YouTube-o-Theque library, which contains clips from online television, cell phone videos, blogs and YouTube. As a product of a sophisticated generation brought up on a diet of television, and homemade productions, Grimonprez mixes reality and fiction in a wholly innovative fashion, and presents contemporary history as a multi-perspectival context, readily open to manipulation.

The artist first gained prominence at the end of the 1990s with the work Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997) — a film collage of airplane hijackings as shown in different media such as TV news, propaganda films and cartoons. Johan Gimonperez was born in 1962 in Belgium; he lives and works in Brussels and New York.

Johan Grimonprez's work is included in numerous collections such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, the Kanazawa Art Museum, Japan, the National Gallery, Berlin, Germany, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark. Curatorial projects have been hosted at major museums worldwide such as the Whitney Museum in New York, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Germany and the Tate Modern in London, England. Grimonprez achieved international acclaim with his film essay Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y at Documenta X in Kassel, Germany, in 1997, which eerily foreshadowed the tragic events of September 11th in New York. His films have been included in prestigious film festivals in Telluride, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo and Berlin. Grimonprez is currently a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts (New York).

The exhibition is curated by Tessa Praun.

Johan Grimonprez, Still from Double Take, 2009, 80 minutes, digital beta, edition of 15, Courtesy of Universal & Zapomatik.

Johan Grimonprez, Looking for Alfred, film still, 2004, courtesy of Zapomatik / Film & Video Umbrella.

Johan Grimonprez, Looking for Alfred, film still, 2004, courtesy of Zapomatik / Film & Video Umbrella.

Johan Grimonprez, Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, 1997, Photograph Johan Grimonprez and Rony Vissers, © 1997-2003 Johan Grimonprez.

Pinakothek der Moderne
Barer Straße 40
+49 (0)89 23805 360
Münich
Johan Grimonprez,
Looking for Alfred,
Retrospective 1992-2007
May 10-August 19, 2007

Belgian media artist Johan Grimonprez (born 1962) achieved international acclaim with his video collage Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, which had its premiere at the Documenta X in Kassel in 1997. In a breathtaking recycling of pictures from news broadcasts, Hollywood movies, animated films and commercials the approximately one-hour-long film tells the story of the airplane hijackings in the 1970’s. Reality and fiction are blended together to relate new stories. This way, Grimonprez — child of the first TV generation — presents history in a completely new way: from a multitude of perspectives, fragmentally and manipulatively.

As with Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, Grimonprez’ latest and by no means completed project Looking for Alfred plays with simulations and optical illusions. Point of departure is the figure of film director Alfred Hitchcock and his legendary guest appearances in his own films. Innumerable Hitchcock doppelgangers act out a mysterious game of confusion in which it rains umbrellas and swarms of birds evoke a sinister atmosphere. The imaginable claims to be true, the real seems improbable. This homage to Hitchcock, the “Master of Suspense”, also pays tribute to the imagery of the Surrealist painter René Magritte — and, in doing so, to one of the central themes of the Sammlung Moderne Kunst (Modern Art Collection) at the Pinakothek der Moderne.

Looking for Alfred consists of film installations in two parts as well as hundreds of hand drawings, collages and photographs. The acquisition of this complex of works for the Pinakothek der Moderne has been made possible with the support of the foundation Theo Wormland Stiftung. The first presentation of these works in a museum gives an overview of Grimonprez’ remarkable artistic development during the past 15 years.

Johan Grimonprez, Looking for Alfred, film still, 2004, courtesy of Zapomatik / Film & Video Umbrella.

Johan Grimonprez, Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, 1997, Photograph Johan Grimonprez and Rony Vissers.