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Uprooting: The story of our grandfathers (2011)
Apostolos Polymeris (born 1984, Belgium)
Video installation, 2:32 minutes, loop
This installation tells the very personal and moving
history of the artist’s grandfather and his immigra-
tion to Belgium in 1972. The video is shown in a
very impersonal archive environment that makes
Kafkaesque associations with the big archives that
house stories of uncountable numbers of people.
One of these stories is brought to life in the artist’s
video.
“In the building of the archives in Brussels, in a
small room with hundreds of lists with names of
foreigners who had moved there until the middle
of the 1970’s, I found my grandfather’s name. He
and his family immigrated to Belgium in 1972. The
video illustrates the difficulties they faced in Istan-
bul and how they decided tomove to a new country,
hoping for a better life.”
Apostolos Polymeris
Apostolos is an artist and graphic designer born
in Brussels but with roots in Greece. In Brussels
he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. His
main fields are poster and book design, illustration,
animation and film.
The Lord’s Ride (2010)
Jean-Charles Hue (born 1968, France)
Feature film: 1h 24 min
The film is about the life of a Roma family, thus
presenting a living symbol of a constant metamor-
phosis of identity. Jean-Charles Hue searches for
his origins. He spent some time with the Dorkels,
a Gypsy/Yeniche family on the outskirts of society
in the north of France, and filmed their daily life.
This film recounts the search for origins in these
marginalised worlds, worlds that prefer to remain
separate rather than integrate. The film relates the
events that punctuate a nomadic life spent in cara-
vans: poaching, a strange conversation, a quest for
redemption...This unconventional reality seems
fictional to the viewer, as the events are so foreign
to normal life. The camera records everything,
even the explosion of a bullet a few inches from
the artist one drunken night.
Jean-Charles Hue is an artist and video filmmak-
er who specialises in documentary films. Jean-
Charles’s grandfather was Yenniche, giving him a
blood tie to this people. In 2009, Hue also explored
the life in marginal areas together with the inhabit-
ants of Tijuana, a border city between Mexico and
the United States, in his film,
Tijuana Carne Viva
.
In the Middle of theWay
(work in progress, 2001-2007)
Anna Konik (born 1974, Poland)
Seven-channel video installation, loop
In this seven-channel video installation, Anna
Konik presents a very personal narrative about
the lives of several people living in different cities.
They are homeless, marginalised people, but at the
same time full of dignity. The artist follows them in
their everyday activities, giving them a chance to
present themselves in very different ways. At the
same time, Konik reflects on her own nomadic way
of living, which she does between three cities and
two countries (Dobrodzien and Warsaw in Poland
and Berlin in Germany). The issue of home and its
role in the process of forming identity is the very
Lab touchscreen and projection background