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 featuring themes of: » Collective History, » Color Photography, » Contemporary Participation, » Contemporary Surrealistic, » Albanian

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...

Nachbau
© » KADIST

Simon Starling

2007

Invited in 2007 to the Museum Folkwang in Essen (Germany), Simon Starling questioned its history: known for its collections and particularly for its early engagement in favor of modern art (including the acquisition and exhibition of works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse), then destroyed during the Second World War, the museum was pillaged for its masterpieces of ‘degenerate art’ by the nazis...

The Tower of Babel: Independence of the country
© » KADIST

Du Zhenjun

2010

The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...

Condition Report
© » KADIST

Glenn Ligon

2000

Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...

Untitled (City Limits)
© » KADIST

Allen Ruppersberg

1970

Untitled (City Limits) is a series of five black-and-white photographs of road signs, specifically the signs demarcating city limits of several small towns in California...

I am the Greatest
© » KADIST

Hank Willis Thomas

2012

Like many of his other sculptural works, the source of I am the Greatest is actually a historical photograph of an identical button pin from the 1960s...

Black Imitates White
© » KADIST

Hank Willis Thomas

2012

Thomas’ lenticular text-based works require viewers to shift positions as they view them in order to fully absorb their content...

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...

100 Hand drawn maps of my country, India
© » KADIST

Shilpa Gupta

2014

These hand drawn maps are part of an ongoing series begun in 2008 in which Gupta asks ordinary people to sketch outlines of their home countries by memory...

A meditation on the possibility…
© » KADIST

Daniel Joseph Martinez

2005

Martinez’s sculpture A meditation on the possibility… of romantic love or where you goin’ with that gun in your hand , Bobby Seale and Huey Newton discuss the relationship between expressionism and social reality in Hitler’s painting depicts the legendary Black Panther leaders Huey P...

Bread and Roses
© » KADIST

Hank Willis Thomas

2012

Bread and Roses takes its name from a phrase famously used on picket signs and immortalized by the poet James Oppenheim in 1911...

Empire's Borders II-Workers
© » 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...

Radical Hospitality
© » KADIST

Andrea Bowers

2015

Bowers’ Radical Hospitality (2015) is a sculptural contradiction: its red and blue neon letters proclaim the words of the title, signaling openness and generosity, while the barbed wires that encircle the words give another message entirely...

Nothing New
© » KADIST

Oded Hirsch

2012

Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...

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...

The Class
© » KADIST

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

2005

The Class (2005) by Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook challenges the viewer’s personal sense of morality and tolerance by depicting a classroom from hell...

Ante la imagen
© » KADIST

Oscar Munoz

2009

In Ante la imagen (Before the Image, 2009) Muñoz continues to explore the power of a photograph to live up to the memory of a specific person...

Untitled (Sword)
© » KADIST

Shilpa Gupta

2009

In Untitled (Sword) , addressing histories of colonialism with abstraction, a large steel blade extends from the gallery wall...