Context (Pool) 1: Art & Escape

World War II, a group of Allied soldiers in a German prison camp collectively engineer the escape of 250 prisoners. This, in a nutshell, is the plot of “The Great Escape”, a cult film from 1963. Is it possible to overcome the male, militaristic, white frame to recover the irresistible energy of the collectivisation of ingenuity and passion for escape that transpires in the film? The question is not a rhetorical one. But perhaps it is possible to start from this rocambolic Hollywood fiction to dream up new, more successful and subversive escapes.

We will also look at other films and respond to the trite wilderness rhetoric represented by the cult “Into the Wild” (2007) with the brilliant queer imagery of Ulrike Ottinger's “Madame X: an Absolute Ruler” (1978),  the harsh gaze on tourist escapism and exoticization of “Paradise Love” (2012) by Ulrich Seidl, the adventurous comedy “Chicken Run” (2000) – that we will watch through the lens of Jack Halberstam's queer art of failure, the survival tale of “All Together Now” by Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, and the theatrical escapades that the nuns shut-in in the Monastery of the Convertite della Giudecca in Venice used to subvert the monotony and normativity to which monastic life forced them.

In this seminar we will explore the lexical knot escape/escapism, that contains an intricate web of meanings and possible narratives. Escape from spaces – whether mental or physical – is a moment of subversion and breaking out of cages that requires and generates creativity, that moves in and creates interstices, that provokes and nurtures stratagems.

About the lecturer:

Pauline Curnier Jardin (b. 1980, Marseille, France) is an artist working across installation, performance, film, and drawing. Her cinematic installations create unorthodox universes and tell stories, thus proposing alternative narratives. Her work was included or commissioned most recently in: Kiasma, Helsinki (2024), MACRO, Rome (2024), Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2023), Kunsthaus Pasquart, Bienne and Kunsthalle, Winterthur (2023), CRAC Occitanie, Sète (2022); FRAC Corsica (2022); Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin (2022).