Introduction

Esther Schipper is pleased to announce Europe Endless, a presentation by Christopher Roth with Materials, Trailers, Out-Takes.

Christopher Roth’s presentation takes place on occasion of his forthcoming trilogy of films exploring the history of geographical and philosophical borderlands, family and friendship and the future. Setting the scene with sculptures of over dimensional bags of French Fries and a colorized edition of English PEL chairs (redesigned by Jasper Morrison for TYP) as a make-shift cinema, the presentation addresses Europe as a constantly moving target. The daytime opening in the gallery will feature a reading by Lukas Kubina from his new novel Boludo, followed in the evening by a concert by Macedoniasintetica (Carlo Camerin, Mattia Rigon, Simone Carraro) and a screening of Metagoon 24h by Matteo Stocco and Matteo Primiterra.

At the gallery a selection of materials and out-takes from the films will be screened. Roth’s trilogy—The Spectre of Eurocommunism, Infinite Histories, Look! We have come through! —is in the tradition of the essay film, weaving found footage, documentary and interviews to construct competing histories of Europe through personal stories, political ideas and the history of film. In recent years, Roth has developed his own style in this type of film, using writing, music and fictional elements to exaggerate things in order to create tension and new contexts.

The first film, The Spectre of Eurocommunism, reflects on the 1970s taking as its central nexus the life and work of Roth’s friend Colin MacCabe. The second, Infinite Histories, focuses on the end of the 1980s, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communist states in Eastern Europe told from the perspective of Lea Ypi, an acclaimed Albanian-British philosopher and political scientist, and Oana Bogdan, a Brussels-based Romanian architect and short-time secretary of state in Bucharest. With its shift into the year 2038, the third film alludes to Roth’s project for the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennial. In this film a series of never completely specified events have dramatically altered history, so that society has learned to harness the tremendous potential of immigration, to invent new forms of participatory politics, and to claim Europe as “Utopia, Newropa, Eutopia...” A new cast of younger thinkers and activists, such as the ‘digital Marx’ Evgeny Morozov from Belarus, the Italian economist and urban thinker Francesca Bria, the Swedish philosopher Martin Hägglund, and the British artist-activists Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn, provide new and optimistic perspectives, while participants in the earlier films make briefer appearances.

The sculptures on view, brightly colored overdimensional felt bags with large pieces of drift wood doubling as French fries, are a humorous nod to the idea of Europe Roth brings to his films. Each bag a different color, with the term French Fries in other European languages, the work draws on a communality alongside the differences. In addition, the work draws on an experience that imagines a world outside of the capitalist market economy: seeing toy-look-a-likes of bags of fries outside of a school in his Venice neighborhood, Roth was told by the young children they would only accept barter in exchange, no currency. The playful understanding of an exchange economy and the communality of the dish across Europe is a witty, lighthearted take on an ideal of Europe, and indirectly invokes the history of Marxist thought told in the new films.