Ronde de Jambe

2015 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

15:00 minutes

Aimée Zito Lema

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Rond de Jambe by Aimée Zito Lema is a series formed by two works: a three-channel video installation and a live performance. Each component in this project approaches the same subject matter through a different medium in order to investigate politics as they are made manifest in and through the body. Using archival footage of protests of the Stopera building project in Amsterdam as a starting point, artist Aimée Zito Lema worked with dancers to translate the protest movements into a choreography. The Stopera Building was built between 1979 and 1986 to house both the city hall of Amsterdam and the Dutch National Opera and Ballet. The building project was met with heavy protests from local left-wing groups who argued that the space should be used for social housing, rather than an exclusive space serving only the elite class. The opposition claimed that it had been planned without any historical and social awareness, ignoring the traumatic history of the area marked by World War II. This work is indicative of Zito Lema’s practice, and her interest in the way in which the history of socio-political events are documented, recalled through representation, and activated through new juxtapositions and material form.

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Aimée Zito Lema explores collective memory and knowledge, and the ways in which knowledge is transmitted from one generation to the next. Her practice consists of performance, video, sculpture, installation, and photography. Her work frequently uses the body, or representations of the body, to generate questions about our relationship to history, how it is recorded, and remembered. Her practice is primarily motivated by research into social forms of resistance and the political body, often drawing from revolutionary and guerrilla movements in history.

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Colors:

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• politics.n.01
• body.n.01
• protest.n.01
• motion.n.03
• injury.n.01
• memory.n.01