Short Film Screen­ings
Klara Hobza

Salt Beyoğlu

May 27 – May 29, 2011

ars viva 2010/11 winner Klara Hobza is inspired by historical research and narratives. Imposing playful, sometimes risky, challenges on herself, Hobza’s artistic practice often involves pursuing tasks with one particular thing in common: none is likely to succeed. An installation documenting the first stages of Hobza’s project to dive across Europe is currently on show in the Laboratory exhibition on the first floor of SALT Beyoğlu.

Coinciding with the last days of the Laboratory exhibition, two of Hobza’s short film projects will be screened in the Walk-in Cinema: Nay, I’ll Have a Starling and The New Millennium Paper Airplane Contest.

Nay, I’ll Have a Starling is based on the following story: In 1890, Eugene Schieffelin and the Acclimation Society of North America decided to introduce all birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays to the U.S. from Britain. Among these were 60 European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), referenced by Shakespeare in Henry IV: “Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but Mortimer…” (I.I.III.). Today, foreign Starlings are overpopulated in the U.S.; the birds destroy crops and steal native species’ nesting cavities. Nay, I’ll Have a Starling sees Hobza’s attempts to capture 60 Starlings in Central Park, New York, send them back to England, and release them in Buckingham Palace Park.

The New Millennium Paper Airplane Contest and corresponding book were inspired by a historic paper airplane contest that took place in 1967 in the Great Hall of what is now the New York Hall of Science, built by Wallace K. Harrison to display rockets during the 1964 World’s Fair.


15.00 Friday 27 / Saturday 28; and 14.00 Sunday 29 May



The Starling Trilogy:
Nay, I’ll Have A Starling, The Plan (01:13”)
Camera: Jake Rifken; 2007

Nay, I’ll Have A Starling, Plan B (00:33”)
Camera: Klara Hobza, Actress: Karen Brandl; 2008

The Great Starling Hunt (Excerpt 00:40”)
Camera: Zach Rockhill; 2009

Paper Airplanes:
Paper Airplanes (00:30”)
Camera: Stefanie Trojan; 2004

The New Millennium Paper Airplane Contest (Excerpt 01:42”)
Camera: David Kim, Annie Shaw; 2009
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