Bel Ami invites you to a special screening of Rosalind Nashashibi’s film Denim Sky and publication launch. The screening will be followed by an in-person conversation with Rosalind Nashashibi, Miljohn Ruperto, Mashinka Firunts and Danny Snelson.
FILM:
Rosalind Nashashibi, Denim Sky, 2018 – 2022 (1 hour, 7 min)
Made between 2018-2022 across different time scales and locations across the world. Denim Sky is a feature film in three parts. Together the trilogy is a playful exploration of non-nuclear family and community structures, the theoretical effects of non-linear time travel on human relationships, and how this could aid or problematize communication. The narrative is based on a fiction about a spaceship crew brought together in order to develop a crew mentality, so that they can be used to test a new form of space travel that uses non-linear time. Throughout, the light humor and fraternal mood of the group are disrupted by unsettling and unexpected events.
PUBLICATION:
Denim Sky – Rosalind Nashashibi
Photographs by Gintaras Didžiapetris and Algirdas Šeškus, taken on location during the shooting of Denim Sky between 2018 and 2021.
Essay by Miljohn Ruperto
Designed by Julie Peeters
Edition of 500
Printed by Benedict Press, Münsterschwarzach
Published by Bel Ami on the occasion of the film screening
Rosalind Nashashibi is a London-based filmmaker and painter of Palestinian and Northern Irish heritage. Her films use both documentary and speculative languages, where close observations from her own life and the world around her are merged with fictional or sci-fi elements; often to propose models of collective living. Her paintings likewise operate on another level of subjective experience, they frame arenas or pools of potential where people or animals may appear, often sharing the picture plane with their own context of signs and apparitions. Nashashibi has exhibited in Documenta 14, Manifesta 7, the Nordic Triennial, and Sharjah X. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2017 and won Beck’s Futures prize in 2003. She represented Scotland in the 52nd Venice Biennial. Her most recent solo shows include Nottingham Contemporary, Carré d’Art Nimes, CAC Vilnius, Vienna Secession, CAAC Seville, Chicago Art Institute and Kunstinstuut Melly, Rotterdam. She was National Gallery artist in residence in 2020.
Miljohn Ruperto (b. 1971 Manila, the Philippines) lives and works in Los Angeles. Ruperto has exhibited his work internationally at numerous venues, including: Cantor Arts Center, Palo Alto (2022); Jakarta Biennial (2021); Friends Indeed, San Francisco (2020); Singapore Biennale (2019); Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2019); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018, 2012); REDCAT Gallery, Los Angeles (2017); Kadist, San Francisco (2017); ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur (2016–17); Para-Site, Hong Kong (2016); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2016); and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014) among others.
Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is an Associate Professor in Technology and Social Justice at ArtCenter College of Design. She was a 2021 visiting Mellon Professor of the Practice at Occidental College, where she co-curated the exhibition “Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI” with Meldia Yesayan. She is the guest co-editor of the Spring 2023 Art Papers special issue on AI, with Sarah Higgins. With Avi Alpert and Danny Snelson, she makes up one-third of the media and performance collective, Research Service. Her writing and commentary have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Performance Research Journal, Art in America, and Archetypes with Meghan Markle. Her book, The Institute for Other Intelligences, was released by X Artists’ Books in 2022. mashinkafirunts.com
Danny Snelson is a writer, editor, and archivist working as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of English and Design Media Arts at UCLA. His online editorial work can be found on PennSound, Eclipse, UbuWeb, Jacket2, and the EPC. His books include Full Bleed: A Mourning Letter for the Printed Page (Sync, 2019), Apocalypse Reliquary: 1984-2000 (Monoskop, 2018), Radios (Make Now, 2016), EXE TXT (Gauss PDF, 2015), Epic Lyric Poem (Troll Thread, 2014), and Inventory Arousal with James Hoff (Bedford Press/Architectural Association, 2011). With Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and Avi Alpert, he performs as one-third of the academic performance group Research Service. dss-edit.com