PROTEST AND DESIRE (exceprt)

4K / 2-channel video / 19.55 min / Surround Sound / 2019

Video by Christa Joo Hyun D'Angelo | Director of Photography Julia Geiss | Sound Design Sum Sum Shen

Protest and Desire is a video artwork that challenges popular STD / HIV discourse by focusing on how women of color deal with intimacy, sex, and age that relates to STDs and HIV within the landscape of white Europe. The video concentrates on an endearing 2 year portrait of, “Lillian”, a 49 year old woman from Uganda who has lived in Germany since the early 2000s as a consequence of her HIV status. Her words disentangle notions about how women of color relate to their own sexuality, interracial relationships, ideas of belonging, and their personal complexities with HIV / STDs. The work delicately unveils inherent biases that are bound to women of color and their struggle to attain acceptance both within and outside their own communities. Through dream like sequences and whimsical imagery, Protest and Desire imagines new ways to define what is normal and propels new meaning on “sickness”, desire, and relationships by confronting the ghosts of the past and the fears that haunt our present realities.

Kindly Supported by:  Delight Rental Service GmBH , The Berlin Senate, The District Cultural Fund of Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain, Galerie im Turm, Edited at Mentoring Artists for Women's Art, Winnipeg Canada

Cool Girl (excerpt)
4/3 Video Color / Sound / 4.55 min / 2019

I  Sound Design Sum Sum Shen I

The video collage, Cool Girl, plays with racialized female characters amid Hollywood cinema, 80s dance pop music, and video game culture. Through fast editing and vivid action scenes from culture classics - Kill Bill, Street Fighter, Waiting to Exhale and What's Love Got to Do with It? the characters in Cool Girl seek revenge, vengeance and liberation from their white counterparts and male adversaries, alluding to both the ominous and restrictive ways in which popular culture exoticize and form caricatures of women of color. Through humorous visuals and abrupt sound juxtapositions, Cool Girl confronts the audience with absurd and often violent racial depictions that are otherwise left unseen.

Bitches and Witches (excerpt)

4/3 video / color / sound /4.30 min/ 2019
I Sound Design Sum Sum Shen I

The video collage, Bitches and Witches, combines frantic editing amid various versions of Lady Gaga's song Bad Romance among movie scenes from Metropolis, Secretary, The Craft and The Witches of Eastwick. Working with themes of heartbreak, shame, misogyny and lust, Bitches and Witches strives to uncover the invisible ways in which misogyny unveils itself in relationships. Stereotypes of femininity are vividly interwoven between playful soundscapes and face-paced jump cuts to form a bold investigation on how sexual violence is ultimately linked to misogynistic attitudes and tendencies in relationships.

Labor of Love (excerpt)

HD video, Color / Sound, 22.55 min, 2016

Featuring Rafael Schistl, Francisco Franco Da Silva and Andrasch Starke | Original Score Composed by Tami T

The 22 minute length video "Labor of Love" dissects the freelance labor conditions of professional horseracing through an endearing series of portraits of several German-based international jockeys including Andrasch Starke winner of the 2011 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and the 2012 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and considered by many the best German jockey of all time.  From the side of the tracks, horseracing appears as a sport rooted in pedigree, exclusivity, and elitism; at the opposite end of the spectrum is the reality of the jockeys’ existence. Many of them come from immigrant backgrounds, and sacrifice family life, health, safety, and material comfort in their dedication to the sport they love. While their voices are rarely heard in the mainstream sports world, the jockeys in D’Angelo’s work speak freely and openly about the pressures and dangers of their everyday lives and careers, which are held to a delicate precipice and impending expiration date owing to such factors as body weight, age, and injury.

Production Credits :
Music - Original Musical Score Composed by Tami T / Director of Photography - Sander Houtkruijer & Bastian Hopfgarten
Sound Editing / Audio Mastering - Tami T / Co-producer - Bastian Hopfgarten | Supported by Alpha Nova Futura Galerie

Past, Present, Tense

HD Video / Color & Sound / German with English Subtitles / 32 min /2015

Past, Present, Tense,  is a video work that examines the question of German identity and its relationship to racism of the past and present day.

Through various interviews the viewer observes social and political transitions in Germany - the GDR, Post-reunification and the pogroms starting in Rostock, and contemporary Germany society.

The work seeks to redefine social positions and identities within the framework of intimate dialogs that challenge the status quo on how to define not only German identity but geopolitics in the context of white Europe. As such, the audience is posed with questions on what are the responsibilities of dealing with colonial pasts and how do we reflect on dominant ideologies and discourse in a time of constant mobility and global shifts?

In a time of cultural amnesia, recalling the past and the retelling of memories is becoming more and more under-rated in a time when forgetting is common practice. Through telling interviews that discuss the perspectives of Germans of minority descent, the film highlights many of the experiences and opinions that are otherwise unheard and unseen within our shared public space.

It thus asks the audience to realign their perception of class, race and privilege that run alongside labels that ultimately offer a limited scope on the complexity of identity politics rooted in colonial exclusionary traditions.

Production Credits :

Subtitles - Jason Harrell

Post-Production - Bastian Hopfgarten

Sound Mastering - Paul “SNAX” Bonomo
Supported by District Berlin

Featuring - Anonymous, Abini Zoellner, Anetta Kahane, Minh Nguyen, Martin Hyun, Jasmin Truong, Jasco Viefhues, Kien Nghi Ha, Noa Ha,Jan Riebe
Special Thanks : Jason Harrell, Sander Houtkruijer, Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, Reistrommel E.V.