Location Change: This event will be held at the Or Gallery’s new location at 236 East Pender Street.

The screening of This Unwieldy Object will be followed by an artist talk by Anna Zett.

This Unwieldy Object
Dir. Anna Zett
47 min, HD Video, Stereo
R: Anna Zett, USA/ Germany 2014
Dialogue: English

This Unwieldy Object is a research drama and personal investigation into the colonial myth of the dinosaur by Berlin-based artist, writer and filmmaker Anna Zett. On a road trip through the dusty heart of the USA, a researcher intends to make physical contact with a phantasy, traversing a mythical non-place between East and West, masculine and feminine, material and projection, past and future. Meetings with various paleontologists, fossil hunters, sculptors, and scientists on both sides of the American Frontier trace diverse interpretations of the past. Narratives of natural history and progress intermingle and digress as the reconstructed bodies of dinosaurs become less and less comical in the background of the brutal history of European settlement in indigenous territories. The story ends in the middle, in Rapid City, South Dakota, at the foot of an imported Berlin Wall fragment from the researcher’s home country, but the journey continues.

This screening and artist talk is accompanied by the opening of Anna Zett’s exhibition Hold On at the Or Gallery on October 16, at 7pm. The exhibition will run from October 17, 2019 through January 11, 2020.

Or Gallery is pleased to screen this film as a VIFF MODES Community Partner. Please click here for more information about the MODES series.