Rosa Menkman + ‘Ways of Something’

MOVING IMAGE Art Fair

September 4

through September 6th, 2015

FAIR HOURS + LOCATION

Friday, September 4 – Saturday, September 5 from 12-8PM and Sunday until 6PM

Istanbul, Turkey

WAYS OF SOMETHING

TRANSFER is pleased to present a special screening of ‘Ways of Something’ in Istanbul to close the Moving Image Fair. This four-part series compiled by Lorna Mills has been screened internationally, episodes 1 – 3 are making their debut in Istanbul.


Sunday, September 6th at 5PM

Kuleli Building
Haliç Congress Centre
Sütlüce Mah. Karaagaç Cad. No.19 34445
Beyoglu, Istanbul / TURKEY

Tweet @transfergallery or email the director@transfergallery.com to reserve seats.

Artists in Episode 1

1: Daniel Temkin, 2: Rollin Leonard, 3: Sara Ludy, 4: Rhett Jones, 5:Jaakko Pallasvuo, 6: Dafna Ganani, 7: Jennifer Chan, 8: Rea McNamara, 9: Theodore Darst, 10: Matthew Williamson, 11:Hector Llanquin, 12: Christina Entcheva, 13: V5MT, 14: Marisa Olson, 15: Joe McKay, 16: Carla Gannis, 17: Nicholas O’Brien, 18: Eva Papamargariti, 19: Rosa Menkman, 20: Kristin Lucas, 21:Jeremy Bailey & Kristen D. Schaffer, 22: Giselle Zatonyl, 23: Paul Wong, 24: Alfredo Salazar-Caro, 25: Sally McKay, 26: RM Vaughan & Keith Cole, 27: Andrew Benson, 28: Christian Petersen, 29: Faith Holland, 30: Jennifer McMackon

Artists in Episode 2


1: Kevin Heckart, 2: Geraldine Juarez, 3: Gaby Cepeda, 4: Angela Washko, 5: Emilie Gervais, 6:LaTurbo Avedon, 7: Lyla Rye, 8: Mattie Hillock, 9: Antonio Roberts, 10: Georges Jacotey, 11:Daniel Rourke, 12: Sandra Rechico & Annie Onyi Cheung, 13: Yoshi Sodeoka, 14: Alma Alloro, 15: LoVid, 16: Andrea Crespo, 17: Ad Minoliti, 18: Arjun Ram Srivatsa, 19: Carrie Gates, 20:Isabella Streffen, 21: Esteban Ottaso, 22:ZIL & ZOY, 23: Hyo Myoung Kim, 24: Jesse Darling, 25: Tristan Stevens, 26: Erica Lapadat-Janzen, 27: Claudia Hart, 28: Anthony Antonellis

Artists in Episode 3

1: Carine Santi-Weil, 2: Nicolas Sassoon, 3: Tom Sherman, 4: Kim Asendorf and Ole Fach, 5:Rafaela Kino, 6: Alex McLeod, 7: Kate Wilson and Lynne Slater, 8: Aleksandra Domanović, 9:Systaime, 10:Erik Zepka, 11: Adam Ferriss, 12: Rodell Warner and Arnaldo James, 13: Debora Delmar, 14: Brenna Murphy, 15: Nick Briz, 16: Carlos Sáez, 17: Jenn E Norton, 18: Juliette Bonneviot, 19: Luis Nava, 20: Vince McKelvie; 21: Claudia Maté 22: Evan Roth, 23: Shana Moulton, 24:Sabrina Ratté, 25: Jordan Tannahill, 26: Vasily Zaitsev feat.MON3Y.us, 27: Ann Hirsch

TRANSFER is pleased to present in our fifth Moving Image Art Fair,exhibiting ‘Xilitla’ an algorithmic artwork from Dutch artist Rosa Menkman, and hosting a screening of ‘Ways of Something’ compiled by Lorna Mills in Istanbul.

Xilitla is a little village in the Huasteca region of Mexico. Here, in the early 1940s, Sir Edward James – a poet known for his patronage of the surrealist art movement – started the construction of his own idyllic, surrealist pool garden, Las Pozas, in which he deconstructed the many forms and styles of functional architecture. In the hands of Rosa Menkman, ‘Xilitla’ has been transformed into a hallucinatory, futuristic 3D architectural environment consisting of moving images, laced with polygons and dysfunctional objects. Inside this algorthimic piece, a Janushead is used to navigate Menkman’s digital dreamscape. Taking advantage of the tensions between gameplay and audiovisual art, this aesthetic experiment opens up a new, eerie poetic and fantasmatic universe.

Trailer _"From far away it all seemed so clear" _ Liminal Pattern Recognition _ Xilitla Videoscape from Rosa Menkman on Vimeo.

‘Xilitla’ exists as a free downloadable application, released in 2013 by the artist. An enhanced and expanded edition with three audiovisual video pieces documenting Menkman performing the gameplay was acquired by the Museum of the Image in the Netherlands (MOTI) in 2014, where it has been on display ever since. Its exhibition at Moving Image Art Fair makes available the remaining two editions of the enhanced collectors edition (‘Xilitla’ 2014, Edition of 3 +1 AP) packaged for appreciation on a dedicated MAC mini configured to run the piece, accompanied by the three gameplay videos and a certificate signed by the artist.

‘Ways of Something’ compiled by Lorna Mills

Screening at the Moving Image Art Fair, Sunday September 6th, 2015 at 5PM, followed by a Q&A with Mills

“Ways of Something” is a contemporary remake of an episode from John Berger’s BBC documentary, “Ways of Seeing” (1972). The project consists of one-minute videos by over 85 web-based artists who commonly work with 3D rendering, gifs, film remix, webcam performances, and websites to describe the cacophonous conditions of artmaking after the internet.


Still from Episode 1, Minute 7 by Jennifer Chan

Curated and compiled by Lorna Mills, this remake is based a four-part series of thirty-minute films created by art theorist John Berger and produced by Mike Dibb. In the original films, voice-of-God narration over iconic European paintings offer a careful dissection of traditional “fine art” media and the way society has come to understand them as art. This current project invited artists to respond to what Berger called “learned assumptions” about art in dialogue with the camera and the screen in its reproduction.

It is, in effect, art about art about television about the internet.

Featuring formal, figural and kitsch practices to videomaking, “Ways of Something” consists of aesthetically diverse interpretations of Berger’s ideas on looking at art after the introduction of digital media. Ultimately, it turns the highbrow nature of documentary film into a wondrous and disjointed series of alternative outlooks on how artists understand art today.