Ghost games

2002 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

9 min 15

Anri Sala

location: Berlin, Germany
year born: 1974
gender: male
nationality: Albanian
home town: Tirana, Albania

Ghost Games , follows the enigmatic dance of crabs “steered” by a flashlight in the night of darkness of a South American beach. The video produces a surreal impression, typical of Sala’s work, with no plot in the classical sense, no story being told. Like in Blindfold (2002), in which a sunrise is reflected in urban billboards, and Time After Time (2001), in which the figure of a horse emerges from darkness lit by the headlights of an automobile, Sala likes to explore the phenomenon of light and its effects; In Ghost Games , he uses the threatening reflection of the flash light through the darkness of the beach. But unlike several of Sala’s videos’ deliberately slow style, where sometimes the camera does not even move at all, this film is punctuated by the erratic moves of the monster-like creature , its ghostly disappearances into sand holes; the crab’s occasional encounters with the feet of unidentified people standing in the sand, at times like an aggressive dance of protagonists, dramatically adds to the creepy feeling of the scene.


Anri Sala received a degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in that city, and went on to study at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and at the Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Tourcoing (film and video). His work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Berlin Biennale, the Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana and in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He combines techniques from two realms of art, the moving image and painting. His captivating visual projects on the one hand constitute a penetrating analysis of culture and the human condition as determined by place and political context, and on the other an exploration of the language of imagery, codes of visual communication and structures of film narration. Many of his projects relate to the identity of individuals who function at the fringes of multiple cultures. Anri Sala was born in 1974 in Tirana, Albania. He lives and works in Berlin.


Colors:



Related works of genres: » video artist, » video artists, » contemporary artist, » born 1974

Suspension
© » KADIST

Sebastián Díaz Morales

2014

In Suspension a young man is hanging in the air, falling, or perhaps drifting through time and space...

Pasajes I
© » KADIST

Sebastián Díaz Morales

2012

Pasajes I is the first in a series of Sebastián Díaz Morales’s four videos Pasajes , which focuses on a solitary man walking through Buenos Aires...

Meeting #100
© » KADIST

Jonathan Monk

Meeting #100 is one in a series of text works by Jonathan Monk...

Untitled (series)
© » KADIST

Francis Alÿs

2006

This series of small drawings is executed with varying materials—pen, ink, colored pencil, charcoal, and masking tape—on architect’s tracing paper...

Mushroom Cloud
© » KADIST

Raymond Pettibon

2000

The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...

Tarahi IV
© » KADIST

Haris Epaminonda

2012

Haris Epaminonda’s work questions the manipulation and the flow of images as well as their power of fascination...

Sal Sem Carne
© » KADIST

Cildo Meireles

1975

Meireles, whose work often involves sound, refers to Sal Sem Carne (Salt Without Meat) as a “sound sculpture.” The printed images and sounds recorded on this vinyl record and it’s lithographed sleeve describe the massacre of the Krahó people of Brazil...

The Parle Ment Metal Woman Welcoming You
© » KADIST

Laure Prouvost

2017

The Parle Ment Metal Woman Welcoming You is a character originated from a series of works combining sculpture and video with a specific role— lying on the floor playing a romantic elevator tune, this Metal Woman welcomes and flirts with viewers in the space where she is posed...

Tarahi VI
© » KADIST

Haris Epaminonda

2007

Haris Epaminonda’s work questions the manipulation and the flow of images as well as their power of fascination...

Untitled (Wall Street's Chosen Few…)
© » KADIST

Raymond Pettibon

2000

Untitled (Wall Street’s Chosen Few…) is typical of Pettibon’s drawings in which fragments of text and image are united, but yet gaps remain in their signification...

Festival of Gratitude: Muammar Gaddafi
© » KADIST

Walid Raad

2022

For his first NFT release artist Walid Raad made a series of animated birthday cakes, titled Festival of Gratitude , for some of the world’s most toxic and larger-than-life leaders...

La Loge Harlem
© » KADIST

Abigail DeVille

2017

The work La Loge Harlem focuses on the history of Harlem and its development over the last 200 years...

Appendix XVIII: Plates
© » KADIST

Walid Raad

2009

“The Lebanese wars of the past three decades affected Lebanon’s residents physically and psychologically: from the hundred thousand plus who were killed; to the two hundred thousand plus who were wounded; to the million plus who were displaced; to the even more who were psychologically traumatized...

Monteverdi Ici – Deeply, Feeling Filling the World
© » KADIST

Laure Prouvost

2018

Monteverdi Ici – Deeply, Feeling Filling the World by Laure Prouvost is a tapestry that references a video by the artist entitled Monteverdi Ici (2018)...

8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America
© » KADIST

Kara Walker

2005

In her masterpiece 8 Possible Beginnings or The Creation of African-America , Walker unravels just that, the story of struggle, oppression, escape and the complexities of power dynamics in the history following slave trade in America...

Perpetual Motion Two
© » KADIST

Diana Thater

2005

In Perpetual Motion (2005) the seemingly erratic flight of the bright orange Monarch butterfly—filmed in its winter habitat of Michoacán, Mexico—is intensified by the artist’s editing in which frames are randomly dropped and the film is sped up...

Pipe Opening
© » KADIST

Jeff Wall

2002

As suggested by its title, Pipe Opening (2002) depicts a hole in a wood wall exposed by the removal of a pipe...

Plug the well ( July / August 2003)
© » KADIST

Keith Tyson

The work of Keith Tyson is concerned with an interest in generative systems, and embraces the complexity and interconnectedness of existence...

Serious Games 3, Immersion
© » KADIST

Harun Farocki

2009

For Immersion , Harun Farocki went to visit a research centre near Seattle specialized in the development of virtual realities and computer simulations...