Vernissage: Kelman Duran

For over ten years, video artist and musician Kelman Duran has been portraying members of the Sioux First Nation living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the Northern United States. The area is considered a sacred place by the First Nation, but at the same time, it is one of the poorest in the United States. For Duran, the cinematic examination of the reservation is an attempt to create an archive from below, a kind of counter-archive. Quite deliberately, this counter-archive allows for chaos. It is created in close collaboration between insiders and outsiders, witnesses and witnessed. Documentary scenes are juxtaposed with references to the history of oppressed populations in the two Americas. There are, for example, numerous allusions to Oscar Micheaux, the first black film director in American cinema. These works ultimately engage with different scenarios of oppression, from the reservations to the inner-city ghettos of Duran's childhood. Kelman Duran's essay films are characterized by a deep empathy for people and a great immediacy and directness. The result is cinema verité that is as unsparing as it is poetic and complex.

When: 19-27 Nov. 2023 (opening and artist talk with Kelman Duran and the curators on 19 Nov. at 4pm)
Where: Kunsthalle Mannheim, Atrium
Admission: Free