Uriel Orlow, Imbizo Ka Mafavuke (Mafavuke’s Tribunal), 2017. Video still
Imbizo Ka Mafavuke (Mafavuke’s Tribunal)
2017. HD video, black and white / colour, stereo, 16:9, 28′
Imbizo Ka Mafavuke (Mafavuke’s Tribunal) is an experimental documentary set at the edge of a nature reserve in Johannesburg. A kind of Brechtian ‘Lehrstück’, the film shows the preparations for a people’s tribunal where traditional healers, activists and lawyers come together to discuss indigenous knowledge and bio-prospecting. The pharmaceutical industry has come to consider traditional medicine as a source for identification of new bioactive agents that can be used in the preparation of synthetic medicine. This raises new questions about intellectual copyright protection of indigenous knowledge. Imbizo Ka Mafavuke asks who benefits when plants become pharmaceuticals, given multiple claims to ownership, priority, locality and appropriation. The protagonists in the film slip into different roles and make use of real-world cases involving multinational pharmaceuticals scouting in indigenous communities for the next wonder drug. Ghosts of colonial explorers, botanists and judges observe the proceedings.
Uriel Orlow, Imbizo Ka Mafavuke (Mafavuke’s Tribunal), 2017. Video still
Uriel Orlow, Grey, Green, Gold, 2015-2017
Grey, Green, Gold
2015-2019. Lecture-performance at the symposium, 25′
The lecture performance Grey, Green, Gold expands on the themes and concerns of Orlow’s long-term project Theatrum Botanicum (2015-2018), considering plants and gardens as active agents in politics and history. Following human-plant entanglements, Grey, Green, Gold explores the role played by the garden Nelson Mandela and his fellow inmates planted on Robben Island prison during their 18-year incarceration and the implications of an ongoing battle between a flower and a squirrel.
Bio
Uriel Orlow lives and works between London, Lisbon and Zurich. He studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design London, the Slade School of Art, University College London and the University of Geneva, completing a PhD in Fine Art in 2002.
Orlow’s practice is research-based, process-oriented and multi-disciplinary including film, photography, drawing and sound. He is known for single screen film works, lecture performances and modular, multi-media installations that focus on specific locations and micro-histories and bring different image-regimes and narrative modes into correspondence. His work is concerned with spatial manifestations of memory, blind spots of representation and forms of haunting.
Orlow’s work was presented at major survey exhibitions including the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), 8th Mercosul Biennial, Brazil (2011), Aichi Triennale (2013); Manifesta 9 in Genk (2012); Bergen Assembly (2013), Qalandia International (2014) EVA International (2014, 2016), 13th Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017), 7th Moscow Biennial (2017).