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  
» see more

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...

Cemetery #1
© » KADIST

Gabriel Orozco

2002

Gabriel Orozco comments: “In the exhibition [Documenta 11, Kassel, 2002], I tried to connect with the photographs I took in Mali in July...

Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion)
© » KADIST

Adrian Wong

2012

Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion) is part of a series drawn from architectural objects that mark the boundary of public and private spaces Wong encountered while strolling in Hong Kong...

Open Mind
© » KADIST

Yoan Capote

2007

Open Mind is a model created by Capote for a traversable public maze that, when seen from above, resembles the human brain...

Collectors’ Favorites
© » KADIST

Jennifer Bornstein

1994

Collectors’ Favorites is an episode of local cable program from the mid-1990s in which ordinary people were invited to present their personal collections—a concept that in many ways anticipates current reality TV shows and internet videos...

Empire's Borders II-Passage
© » KADIST

Chen Chieh-Jen

2010

Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion)
© » KADIST

Adrian Wong

2012

Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion) is part of a series drawn from architectural objects that mark the boundary of public and private spaces Wong encountered while strolling in Hong Kong...

Open Mind
© » KADIST

Yoan Capote

2007

Open Mind is a model created by Capote for a traversable public maze that, when seen from above, resembles the human brain...

n°5 The International Sail
© » KADIST

Enrique Ramirez

2017

Ramirez’s The International Sail is the fifth in a series that features an upside-down worn out, mended and fragmented boat sail...

Untitled (Don’t See, Don’t Hear, Don’t Speak)
© » KADIST

Shilpa Gupta

2008

The three monkeys in Don’t See, Don’t Hear, Don’t Speak are a recurring motif in Gupta’s work and refer to the Japanese pictorial maxim of the “three wise monkeys” in which Mizaru covers his eyes to “see no evil,” Kikazaru covers his ears to “hear no evil,” and Iwazaru covers his mouth to “speak no evil.” For the various performative and photographic works that continue this investigation and critique of the political environment, Gupta stages children and adults holding their own or each other’s eyes, mouths and ears...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

Weekly Southeast Asia Radar: Is film programming underrated?; Ramayana x SEA
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Weekly Southeast Asia Radar: Is film programming underrated?; Ramayana x SEA | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Radar Jamie James for Hyperallergic October 10, 2019 ArtsEquator’s Southeast Asia Radar features articles and posts about arts and culture in Southeast Asia, drawn from local and regional websites and publications – aggregated content from outside sources, so we are exposed to a multitude of voices in the region...

Marlon Riggs Screening
© » KADIST

Screening at 5pm at Little Roxie In connection to his exhibition, Evidence of Things Not Seen at KADIST , photo-conceptual artist, Hank Willis Thomas selected these films as a homage to innovative and influential creators in the medium of film whose work supports social justice as well as explores contemporary notions of identity, race, history and a national legacy of resistance...

Carl Andre: Pioneering Minimalist Artist Dies Aged 88
© » ARTLYST

Carl Andre, a central figure in the Minimalist Movement, since the 1960s, has died (January 24) in a Manhattan hospice facility at 88...

Meiro Koizumi
© » KADIST

Meiro Koizumi, Theory on the Desk...

Related works from the » 2000's created around » Berlin, Germany  
» see more

Blind Spencer (Mirror)
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

2002

Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner...

The Left Hand Can't See That the Right Hand is Blind
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

2004

Douglas Gordon’s single-channel video The Left Hand Can’t See That The Right Hand is Blind, captures an unfolding scene between two hands in leather gloves—at first seemingly comfortable to be entwined, and later, engaged in a struggle...

Corrupted file from page 14, (V1)
© » KADIST

Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck

2008

Part of a larger series of photographic works, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck’s Corrupted file from page 14 (V1) from the series La Vega, Plan Caracas No...

Related artist(s) to: Anri Sala » Hans Ulrich Obrist, » John Bock, » Douglas Gordon, » Lawrence Weiner, » Maurizio Cattelan, » Peter Fischli, » Anton Vidokle, » David Weiss, » Mona Hatoum, » Paul Chan  
» see more

AUTOTROFIA
© » KADIST

Anton Vidokle

2020

Shot in Oliveto Lucano, a village in the south of Italy, AUTOTROFIA (meaning self-eating) by artist Anton Vidokle is a cinéma vérité style film that slides fictive characters into real situations, and vice-versa, to draw a prolonged meditation on the cycle of life, seasonal renewal, and ecological awareness...

The Making of Monster
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

1996

In Monster (1996-97), the artist’s face becomes grotesque through the application of strips of transparent adhesive tape, typical of Gordon’s performance-based films that often depict his own body in action...

Blind Spencer (Mirror)
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

2002

Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner...

The Left Hand Can't See That the Right Hand is Blind
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

2004

Douglas Gordon’s single-channel video The Left Hand Can’t See That The Right Hand is Blind, captures an unfolding scene between two hands in leather gloves—at first seemingly comfortable to be entwined, and later, engaged in a struggle...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Orión
© » KADIST

Adriana Martínez

2015

Her 2015 work Orión is a black flag-like cloth with glow-in-the-dark symbols embroidered in the shape of the constellation...

Monelle
© » KADIST

Diego Marcon

2017

Monelle by Diego Marcon was filmed at night inside the infamous Casa del Fascio, the headquarters of the local Fascist Party in Como Italy, designed by Giuseppe Terragni under Mussolini’s rule...

Elaborate Personas Spring to Life During Carnival in ‘We the Spirits’ by Jason Gardner
© » COLOSSAL

Between January and March in Christian communities around the world, incredible personas emerge for Carnival in the form of mythological creatures, folkloric emblems, and historical figures...

The Oblivion
© » KADIST

Audra Knutson

2009

Audra Knutson’s work The Oblivion was carved and printed in conjunction with the print The Death ...