Remember Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Seeking Locations in Palestine for The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), the ultra-rare documentary that I was fortunate enough to see (and blog) when it came to the local cinematheque last month? It turns out Ayreen Anastas, a video artist born in Bethlehem who is now a “primary organizer” with the 16 Beaver Group in New York, has produced a follow-up called Pasolini Pa* Palestine, which will be shown at the BJCEM‘s biennial gathering of young artists in Naples this September:
Pasolini Pa* Palestine is an attempt to repeat Pasolini’s trip to Palestine in his film “Seeking locations in Palestine for the Gospel According to Matthew” in 1963. It adapts his script into a route map superimposed on the current Landscape, creating contradictions and breaks between the visual and the audible, the expected and the real. The video explores the question of repetition. For Heidegger Wiederholung ‘repetition, retrieval’, is one of the terms he uses for the appropriate attitude towards the past. ‘By the Wiederholung of a basic problem we understand the disclosure of its original, so far hidden possibilities.’ The project ventures a conversation and a dialogue with Pasolini esp. his Poem for the Third World. Discutere, ‘to smash to pieces’ is the Latin source of dialogue, discussion. The piece does not criticize Pasolini, but reveals unnoticed possibilities in his thought and works back to the ‘experiences’ that inspired it.
Make of that what you will!
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