*** Originally Programmed for April 2020, we are happy to present this work virtually for September ***

// Whose Language You Don’t Understand //
by Kim Kölle Valentine

Virtual Program presented in partnership with:
Woodland Pattern Book Center

Whose Language You Don’t Understand (2018)
Kim Kölle Valentine, 62 minutes, video

Synopsis:
Whose Language You Don’t Understand, named after a novel by the late Austrian writer Marianne Fritz (1948-2007) is a video cycle exploring the limits of language. Fritz spent most of her life, over 30 years, working on a cycle of dense and complex novels she called “The Fortress”, consisting of over 10,000 pages -- and still unfinished at the time of her death. Her project is an unusual and astonishing one that challenges the conventions of writing and reading. In Fritz’s work, writing sustains a reality. Writing becomes a movement into an alternative world, and readership offers radical possibilities.

Artist Bio:
Kim Kölle Valentine’s work is interested in layered narratives to examining the historical implications of how we understand stories, how we remember, and how we place ourselves within them. Working across video, drawing, installation, and text, she builds from a process of collecting images and material, and opens an imaginary space where the notions of self and place can be re-written through the rearrangement and dispersal of this material. 

Her work has been presented in solo shows at Dazibao (Montréal, CA), LUX (London, UK), VOX (Montréal, CA), Sporobole (Sherbrooke, CA) and k48 (Vienna, AT). Her work has also been shown widely in group exhibitions and screenings including Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, WRO Biennale, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, and Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento, Buenos Aires. She has been an artist in residence at KulturKontakt (Vienna, AT), Aberystwyth Arts Centre (UK), and the Red Mansion Foundation (Beijing, CN).