Archive for August 2012

During the summer months the activities of Treaty of Utrecht just continue. So it happened that on a warm Monday night 40 people came to the cinema to see the movie “Little Voices”  in the series ”Checkpoint Cinema”, a collaboration between Treaty of Utrecht, IKV Pax Christi and the cinema. For this special viewing the Latin American Film Festival joined us in organizing. Why? Because the film “Little Voices” touches on many things all organizations feel connected with: depiciting the life of ordinary citizens in a conflict torn country.

As you might well know Colombia lived through awful decennia with Marxist rebels turned rebels searching for economic profits, paramilitairy groups defending interests of seated classes, and an army which couldn’t protect citizens. For years Colombia figured amongst the most dangerous countries in the world. See some old articles to refresh your memory here  and here. This might illustrate right away why an organization as IKV Pax Christi continues to work in Colombia for over 14 years already. See a bit of info here.

The film “Little Voices”, co funded by the Dutch Jan Vrijman Funds, shows the realities of four young children in Colombia. Director Juan Eduardo Carillo based his animated movie on the drawings of children in Colombia. See an earlier short film by him here, and watch the trailer here, or feel lucky and see parts of the movie here.

Critics have heralded the movie because it doesn’t choose sides in the various conflicts in CVolombia, but just shows how kids see their surroundings. For informed audiences there are plenty of little hints to put the film in an framework, for non informed audiences the omnipresence of violence is shocking to see. Before and after the viewing of the movie IKV Pax Christi’s Marianne Moor introduced the audiences to the complex political and social situation in Colombia, and reminded us that not everything in Colombia is moving in the right directions. Yes, there is less outspoken violence, yes, the army is in control of the cities and main roads again, but what happens far from the cities remains unbeknownst to even the people living in Colombia’s cities, let alone audiences in Europe or elsewhere. She stressed the importance of foreign interest in and engagement with the regular citizens of Colombia to help keeping the Colombian authorities under pressure not to forget all four corners of their country. This link shows what IKV Pax Christi’s work is like in Colombia, and here we find an article on recent developments in Colombia.

An artist who touched on the violent character of the Colombian society is the Argentina born Miguel Angel Rios. A year ago, the Amsterdam based Prince Claus Funds presented one of his installations, Mecha, in their gallery. This movie plays with images of an innocent game, but distorts the images into a warscene.  The movie “Little Voices” just does it the other way around: innocent children show their world, and their view is so childish we are confronted with the distorted reality in a way a documentary could not show us.

As the followers of this blog and the Arts in Program at Treaty of Utrecht know one of the artists with whom we are very happy to collaborate is Filip Berte. His multifaceted and multilayered project House of Eutopia now took him to Berlin. In Berlin he is working on the fourth room of the House of Eutopia. At his website he describes the choice for Berlin as follows: “With the project of The Graveyard Filip Berte focused on the geographical boundaries around and the social margins within Europe. With The Blue Room, the fourth project of Eutopia, he now focuses on ‘the centre’.‘The centre’ refers to the European Union (EU) as a territorial entity, and is represented by the city of Berlin, geographically lying at the heart of Europe and symbolically the place of the post-Cold War reconciliation between eastern and western Europe.” Filip Berte thereby leaves the focus on the edges of and walls around Europe, in order to present a complete overview of what Europe once was, and perhaps one day can be, in 2013, the year the House of Eutopia will be shown in its’ entirety in Utrecht. And don’t forget to come and see his next show in Utrecht.

Naturally there are many artists who don’t have such overreaching goals with their work, but who like specific parts of the European scenery, be it landscapes or those earlier mentioned walls around the EU. Michiel de Cleene is a photographer who focused on barriers in Europe, amongst them the wall in Melilla. His work however touches on more, and is very worthwhile looking at. He had a show within the framework of the Belgium Summer of Photography but was not amongst the ones on view in the Bozar exposition ‘Sense of Place’. One of my favourite photo series in that show was a work of Andreas Mueller Pohle. He followed that most European of European rivers the Danube for his Danube River Project.

A little further from Utrecht, but closer to many of the tourist destinations in Europe’s South East is Cyprus. Touched upon in an earlier story on Filip Berte the theme of the divided island keeps on coming back to this blog. The great Frank Jacobs wrote a nice piece on the divided island here and in the above mentioned Summer of Photography there is a show on the island as well.

So therewith we touch on the Mediterrean once again. The sea dividing the EU from the countries in the Arab Spring, or Ramadan these weeks, and subject to many great books. But also a sea which divides two spheres and which is still causing death amongst the many who want to cross from one sphere to another. Dutch blogger Flavia Tamara Dzodan kept track of how many people actually don’t make it across the Mediterrean on any day in summer. She is basing quite some of her research on the lists compiled by United, an European wide campaign against narrow thinking. See the sad list here.