We are excited to be back for September and thinking about the intersections between critical writing, and documentary film with our debut event presented with unbag, an arts & politics publication that supports a range of artistic writing and practice in NYC. We’ve teamed up with them on the occasion of their latest and forthcoming issue devoted to stories from places that are formed by entropy.

This event will center three film works interested in narratives, explorations, and investigations that, through an examination of local concerns, speak to broader social, historical, and political questions of place and ruin in dialogue with this issue of the magazine. Our program of films will be introduced by unbag’s editors and tie films from Suneil Sanzgiri, Ishmael Marika, Arantza Santesteban Pérez and Irati Gorostidi Agirretxe into the themes from this issue to open up questions to collectively think through how entropy arises in social, political, and economic systems. We’ll ask what is the relationship between entropy and time? and examine how social and political histories permeate physical and/or social spaces. This evening is co-presented with reading room / publisher Wendy’s Subway who will have Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves present to lead the discussion following the program.

A review of the narrative Klara eta biok, written by Itxaro Borda in 1985. Pitting the author against the words of her past, it updates her view on the peripheral relationship around the Basque character.

An uncanny vision of power in the age of climate disaster, a narrator reconciles the radical possibilities of resilience and creation out of the ruins of a former utopian society in 1850’s Texas, sparking questions of what becomes of our dreams for a better world.

In Arnhem Land, people believe that galka (dark heart person) is still living with us.
You will find them in the bushes with painting on their body. Galka is the second film by Yolŋu film maker Ishmael Marika. It brings to the screen a character and a danger long since spoken of in Yolŋu culture, and heralds a warning to all who may find themselves in the presence of Galka.

Arantza Santesteban Pérez began working as a director in various documentaries in 2012, including the noteworthy PASSATGERES, her first work. Together with others, she curated the GORPUTZ_GRAFIAK exhibition at the Koldo Mitxelena Cultural Centre (San Sebastian) in 2015. This work brings together genealogy and research work from the Basque Country’s feminist movement. Together with Irati Gorostidi, she directed the film EURITAN in 2017, which was selected in the 2017 KIMUAK catalogue. She has made the rounds at festivals such as Punto de Vista, Miradas Doc and the Malaga Film Festival. In 2017 she was selected by the Huarte Centre for Contemporary Art to develop a curatorial research residency. Within the framework of this residency, in 2018 she curated the international seminar Imágenes a través: reflexiones sobre imágenes en conflictos. She is a researcher working on the Communication, culture, society, and politics master’s programme (UNED-Spain), and studies questions that relate to cinematographic representation, feminism, and contemporary political conflicts.

Irati Gorostidi Agirretxe (Valle de Egües, 1988) is an artist and film-maker. In 2016 she directed and produced her first film, Pasaia Bitartean, which premiered at the Seville European Film Festival and has been screened by the Anthology Film Archives (New York). Her latest work, Euritan, forms part of the Basque short film selection for Kimuak 2017. She holds a degree in Fine Arts and a master’s in Contemporary Film and Audiovisual Studies.

Suneil Sanzgiri is an Indian American artist, researcher, writer, filmmaker, and video journalist working to understand how systems of oppression are informed and reinforced by trauma, history, and memory. His work spans experimental video, animations, essays, and installations span questions of identity, heritage, culture and diaspora in relationship to structural violence. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Masters of Science in Art, Culture and Technology in 2017 and was a 2016 resident of the SOMA program in Mexico City. He has participated in several programs at Union Docs in New York, and exhibited in Mexico City, New York, Baltimore, Cambridge, British Columbia, and Gaza.

Ishmael Marika is an artist and director at the Mulka Project. His work is filming, directing, editing and producing, working in the Yirrkala community and surrounds in Eastern Arnhem Land.

Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves (New Yorker, b. 1980) is a Pushcart-nominated poet concerned with postcolonial ethnobotany, the limits of language, and archive as medium. Greaves has most recently been published in the collections Letters to the Future: Black Women / Radical Writing (Kore Press, 2018), and Creature/Verdure (Pinsapo Journal : Issue 2, 2018), as well as in her chapbook Close Reading As Forestry (Belladonna*, 2017). She will be an artist-in-residence with The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation on Captiva Island, Florida in early 2020 and serves as Site Director of Wendy’s Subway in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Wendy’s Subway is a non-profit reading room, writing space, and independent publisher located in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Since our founding in 2013, we have provided a versatile platform for expanding modes of reading, writing, and publishing. Wendy’s Subway is dedicated to encouraging creative, critical, and discursive engagement with arts and literature, with the belief that collaborative practice and equitable access to reading are catalysts for social transformation.

unbag is an arts & politics publication and community arts organization based in New York. unbag will be releasing its fourth issue centered on discussions of politics, place, and entropy during the New York Art Book Fair. In addition to the publication, unbag regularly hosts community programming tied to the discursive themes of each issue.