Soft spot for hard things

The program Soft spot for hard things is a meditation on the tension between beauty and violence, desire and control. Desire here is not only of a sexual nature, though that is also present, for example in Sex, Lies and Religion (1993) by Annette Kennerley which explores a daytime lesbian cruising in a London cemetery, but also of the desire to speak, to have a voice, as in the monologue piece Not I (1973) by Samuel Beckett, and the violence to suppress it. It is also not a simple dualism, where one side is seen as good and the other as bad. For instance, the desire to control the body is shown for its beauty and vulnerability, as seen in Maya Deren's film on martial arts, where the art of physical violence is so refined, it appears as a graceful dance. Or in Klara Lidén's moonwalk through the city after dark, where she has full control of her movements but relinquishes the ability to navigate as she walks backwards in an urban environment.

Program

Samuel Beckett, Not I, 1973, 12 Min
Leone Knight, In Loving Memory, 1991, 5 Min
Klara Lidén, Der Mythos des Fortschritts (Moonwalk), 2008, 4 Min
Maya Deren, Meditation on Violence, 1948, 13 Min
Annette Kennerley, Sex, Lies, Religion, 1993, 6 Min

Between the films: Soft spot for hard things, performance by Elisabeth Kihlström, 2023

Elisabeth Kihlström is a visual artist based in Vienna. Her work engages with the legacy of modernism and often addresses how social and mental spaces of the modern subject are constructed through detailed analysis of cultural history and the physical environment that surrounds us. She works in diverse media such as textile, performance, photography, text, film, installations, and exhibition display. Kihlström is also the co-editor of "Agency," a Vienna-based publishing initiative.