VAMPIRE GRILL
Screening, dicussion and barbecue
Thu 27 July, 7 p.m.

 

Language: English
With food and drinks

7—7:30 p.m.: Screening "Nosferasta: First Bite"
7:30—8:15 p.m.: Diskussion
from 8:15 p.m. onwards barbecue

Join us for a film screening, discussion and an evening barbecue dedicated to the themes of vampirism and colonialism.

Bloodsucking creatures - Have you heard about them? Have you seen them? You won't believe until you're bitten, unless, you already know - about the price of blood paid by many. Do they all bite? Are they all bad? Are they all white? In Hollywood movies 99 out of 100. Did you see the color of a bat's eyes? They say these are folk stories from the Caribbean—blood-sucking masters being afraid to be eaten by their slaves. They say these are folk stories from Eastern Europe—bloody lords feasting on peasants hungry for human flesh. Some people are afraid of foreign bats. They say if it's a poor woman you'll be torn to pieces with your bones crushed. They say if a vampire is a rich man you will want to marry him and ornate your veins with his blood. She was not rich, why would she be? She drank just enough, piercing her friend's skin and speaking of justice — softly — the sun pointed to the South.

Oba, Trinidadian artist and musician based in Brooklyn, protagonist and co-producer of Adam Khalil's and Bayley Sweitzer's film "Nosferasta: First Bite" was bitten by Christopher Columbus in 1492. Taking a cue from the film we will reflect on the vampire as a liminal figure holding impossible relationship to flesh as a vessel of inherited violence. As such the vampire circulates as a folk story, a genre in popular culture, a literary trope but also as a rumor and a gossip—a signifier of cultural formations and differences. Reaching out loosely for texts of Octavia E. Butler, Franz Fanon, Alexander Dumas, Gisele Lisa Anatol, Jackie Wang, Bohdan Baranowski and more, we will process the film and situate the vampire within the complex matrix of colonial relationships of race, gender and class. We will linger to continue and shift conversations with food prepared by the electric grill in front of the gallery.

Adam Khalil is an artist and filmmaker from the Ojibway tribe; and Bayley Sweitzer is a filmmaker from Southern Vermont. Khalil and Sweitzer’s acclaimed debut feature film, Empty Metal (2018), is a science-fiction political thriller set against a backdrop of racialised police brutality and mass surveillance, delving into anti-colonial politics by weaving together indigenous histories and speculative imagination with a subcultural sensibility. Recent screenings include the Museum of Modern Art (2016), Anthology Film Archives (2019), and eflux (2018) in New York; the Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis (2019); LACMA, Los Angeles (2019) and Tate Modern, London (2019). Their works have also featured at the Whitney Biennial, Toronto Biennial (both 2019) and Sundance Film Festival (2018).

Oba is a multi-disciplinary artist, chef and actor born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. His paintings, sculptures and t-shirts have been featured at Motel Gallery and Rumplestiltskin, Brooklyn. He was lead singer of the avant-noise supergroup Dead Companionship from 2016-2018. He starred as King Alpha in Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer’s 2018 film Empty Metal. Oba’s world-class corn soup has been slurped at the legendary Club Temptation in Flatbush, as well as fine establishments across the world.

Curated by Hubert Gromny and Aneta Rostkowska.

Image:
Adam Khalil, Bayley Sweitzer, Nosferasta: First Bite, 2022 (Still)