“You are asleep and your vision is illusory; everything that you see is sheer image.(1)”
Some of the most radical questionings of reality arise from the culture of the image. “When the real world is transformed into mere images, mere images become real beings”.(2) Others emanate from mechanisms of simulation: “as soon as the copy ceases to be a pale reflection of the original image and begins to erode it in its totality, then the original is no longer anything but one copy among many, and not necessarily the one with the greatest verisimilitude.” The extreme condensation of these phenomena stems from digital technology: video games, simulation, virtual images, expanded reality, mutating into fields as diverse as leisure, military training, communication, industrial processes, personal relationships, the administration of pleasure… becoming the emotional and psychic habitat of a large part of the population.
Another of the forms of questioning is directly political in nature: the observation of the expansion of a dominant reality that threatens the fabric of other realities; that threatens to erase forms of knowledge, landscapes, people, ways of life, feelings… As if a thousand libraries of Alexandria, still inscribed in people’s daily lives, in their actions, in their spaces, were already burning once again. As if, within perhaps a very short space of time, all that will remain to be read, with any luck, will be their sad ashes cataloged by experts. There has never been such an intense or extensive expansion of a dominant reality as that of global capitalism, nor, in consequence, a comparable resistance or refusal. “Only the total refusal of reality reveals it to us in its reality, reveals it to us in its truth.”(3)
Surprisingly, this refusal of the world coincides with other visions, which stem from the poetic and the metaphysical: advaita Vedanta (Hindu non-dualism) or Sufi mysticism in Islam, among others… “The One is reality… multiplicity is only names and forms”. (4) By identifying ourselves with these names and forms, by becoming attached to them, we move away from our true nature. From this perspective, so-called “reality” only seems to persist through a kind of autosuggestion, that emanates from the dense network of desires, and fears, false identifications, actions and reactions… in an experience not too distant from a dream.
(1) The Secret Garden. Mahmud Shabistari. Persia. XII Century.
(2) Society of the Spectacle. Guy Debord.
(3) La Movilización Global (“The Global Mobilization”) Santiago López Petit.
(4) Be as You Are. Ramana Maharshi.
Program Highlights:
Videocracy Erik Gandini - Life 2.0 Jason Spingarn-Koff - Dubai in Me Christian von Borries- Paradise Later Ascan Breuer - The Hashish Army Guardian Films - Self Fiction Christian Barani - Il Corpo delle donne Lorella Zanardo - Atlantropa Samuel Stevens - Science and Non-Duality - Empotrados Alberto Arce - Soufis d'Afghanistan de Arnaud Desjardins - Oscuros Portales Falconeti Peña - Lost Satsanga Nisarghadatta - Costa de Cemento Robert Harding Pittman- Maya de Papaji - Virtual Nothing.
Videotalks: Pablo Beneito - Hakim Bey - Santiago López-Petit - John Zerzan.
(1) Mahmud Shabistari, El jardín de los secretos. Persia, siglo XIII.
(2) Guy Debord, La sociedad del espectáculo.
(3) Santiago López Petit, La movilización global.
(4) Ramana Maharshi, Sé lo que eres.
Destacados de la Programación
Videocracy de Erik Gandini - Life 2.0 de Jason Spingarn-Koff - Dubai in Me de Christian von Borries- Paradise Later de Ascan Breuer - The Hashish Army de Guardian Films - Self Fiction de Christian Barani - Il Corpo delle donne de Lorella Zanardo - Atlantropa de Samuel Stevens - Science and Non-Duality - Empotrados de Alberto Arce - Soufis d'Afghanistan de Arnaud Desjardins - Oscuros Portales de Falconeti Peña - Lost Satsanga Nisarghadatta - Costa de Cemento de Robert Harding Pittman- Maya de Papaji - Virtual Nothing.
Videotalks: Pablo Beneito - Hakim Bey - Santiago López-Petit - John Zerzan.
General information.
CCCB
February 22 to 27, 2011
Free admission
OVNI – Observatori de Video No Identificat.
CCCB - Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.
Montalegre, 5
08001 Barcelona.
Telf.: 93 306 41 00
Opening: February 22, 2011, 8.30pm
Opening Program: dis_REALITY, 90min.
February 22 to 27, Thematic screenings
SIMULTANEOUS SCREENINGS:
AUDITORIUM AND HALL: Screenings 7pm – midnight. VOSE.
CONSULTATION OF ARCHIVES: HALL: 5pm - 11pm
