Installation: Film loop and record players, 6:30 loop, 2013

“It’s been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home – only the millions of last moments… nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.”

– Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

A(nother) collaboration between film artists Ben Rivers and Ben Russell, the figures in this installation represent a conceptual prequel to the inquiry present in their feature project *A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness*. Taking its title from the Greek tragedian Aeschulys, *CALL NO MAN HAPPY UNTIL HE IS DEAD* presents a group of viking re-enactors whose vertiginous actions are variably synched to an explosive real-time collage of early black metal recordings. Man and violence, ritual and play, death as the dream of infinity.

A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness will be screened at Docpoint film festival on Wednesday 29th of January in Kinopalatsi, Helsinki, at 8.45 pm, right after the exhibition opening!

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8.2.2014 Ben Rivers & Ben Russell – Saturday Screening

Welcome to see short films by Ben Rivers and Ben Russell in Sorbus gallery! We start at half past six, sharp.

PROGRAM:

LAST DAYS by Ben Russell (5:00, 16mm, 2004)

MAY TOMORROW SHINE THE BRIGHTEST AS ALL YOUR MANY DAYS AS IT WILL BE YOUR LAST by Ben Rivers (13:00, 16mm, 2009)

BLACK AND WHITE TRYPPS NUMBER THREE by Ben Russell (11:30, 35mm, color, sound, 2007)

TERROR! by Ben Rivers (24:00, video, 2007)

TRYPPS #6 (MALOBI) by Ben Russell (12:00, 16mm, color, sound, 2009)