Microscope is excited to welcome Berlin based filmmakers Anja Dornieden and Juan David González Monroy, most commonly known as OJOBOCA, for an evening of screening of their latest 16mm films “The Skin is Good” (2018) and “Comfort Stations” (2018) as well as performance with their double, flipped 90° 16mm projection work “New Museum of Mankind” (2016). The latter also involves the use of external motorized shutters and color strobe lights.
Dornieden and Monroy formed OJOBOCA — which translates from Spanish to “Eye-Mouth”, the term used by Pier Paolo Pasolini to describe the camera — after meeting during an end-of-semester screening in Jeanne Liotta’s class at The New School in 2011. Since then, the duo has become stalwarts of the international experimental film and expanded cinema scene amassing a body of work thus far of twelve 16mm films and nine multi-projector film performances.
Their work shows an interest in experimenting with independent film lab techniques (they are members of the artist-run lab LaborBerlin) and in creating a distance between image and sound. Their films often include a narrating voice to add to and affect the interpretation of the images projected on screen. Similarly, written synopsis that may seem at first obscure and misleading expand upon the meaning of each piece.
The artists also wrote their own description for this event, which reads as follow:
“Take, as an example, becoming a synthetic slug that has been reinforced to push a button. During your training, every time you pushed the button you received a synthetic iris by a synthetic hand as a reinforcer. So, whenever you are hungry you will push the button to be fed. However, if the button were to be turned off, you will try pushing the button just as you had in the past. When no iris is forthcoming, you will likely try again…and again, and again. After a period of frantic yet very slow activity, in which your pushing behavior yields no result, your pushing will decrease in frequency.”
Anja Dornieden and Juan David González Monroy will be available for a Q&A following the program.
Program:
The Skin is Good
16mm film, color, silent, 2018, 12 minutes
Comfort Stations
16mm film, color & b/w, sound, 2018, 26 minutes
New Museum of Mankind
double 16mm film, color, sound, 2016, 30 minutes
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Anja Dornieden and Juan David González Monroy are filmmakers based in Berlin. Since 2010 they have been working together under the moniker OJOBOCA. Together they practice Horrorism, a simulated method of inner and outer transformation. They are members of the artist-run film lab LaborBerlin. Their work has been shown among others at MassArt Film Society, Boston, MA; FLEXFest; Gainesville, FL; Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI; Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, CA; Chicago Underground Film Festival; Chicago, IL; WNDX Film Festival; Winnipeg, Canada; LIFT Residence, Toronto, Canada; Berlinale, Forum Expanded Berlin, Germany; International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Image Forum, Tokyo, Japan; BFI London Film Festival, London, UK; Goethe Institut, Barcelona, Spain; Edinburgh International Film Festival, Edinburgh, UK; Close-Up Film Centre, London, UK; Diffraktion at LaborBerlin, Berlin, Germany; Festival des cinémas différents et expérimentaux de Paris, France.