Routine Pleasures

Five nuns of the order of the Presentation Sisters in Cork carry out ritual actions – morning prayers, making tea, washing – in which time builds up, becomes fragmented, and the whole structure of the day is contained. David Hockney smokes five cigarettes, more recurring gestures in his working room, his Los Angeles studio. The collision of different places and times in Tacita Dean’s PRESENTATION SISTERS (United Kingdom 2005) and PORTRAITS (DAVID HOCKNEY) (United Kingdom 2016) creates parallels between ways of performing actions at work, as a collective, and as an individual artist, of religious and domestic ritual, and of working with images. The film evening “Routine Pleasures” places the question of ritual, repetitive actions, and their specific temporality within the 16mm film image within the framework of how photographic and cinematic evidence is created, which forms the subject of research for the “BildEvidenz. Geschichte und Ästhetik” research group at the Freie Universität. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Tacita Dean and Katja Müller-Helle. (kmh) (11.12.)