Andrea Luka Zimmerman

Andrea Luka Zimmerman is a winning artist, filmmaker and cultural activist whose work focuses on aspects of working class experience, and that of people living on the margins of society, that are seldom seen or discussed.

Films include the Artangel produced (2019), winning Special Mention at the Cineasti Del Presente international competition of the 72nd Locarno Film Festival, 2019 and first prize (feature film) at the Palmares Festival De Cinema En Ville! - 2020,^[1] Erase and Forget (2017),^[2] world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival (nominated for the Glashutte Original Documentary Award), Estate, a Reverie (2015) (nominated for the Grierson Award) ^[3][4] and Taskafa, Stories of the Street (2013)^{[5][better source needed]} which was written and voiced by John Berger.

Life and career[]

Andrea Luka Zimmerman grew up on several large public housing estates, including the Wohnring in Neuperlach, Germany, and left school at 16. After moving to London in 1991, she studied at Central Saint Martins for a PhD. She co-founded the film collective Vision Machine (collaborators on Academy Award-nominated feature documentary The Look of Silence). Vision Machine was created in 2001 as an experimental filmmaking collective with the aim to research, analyse and respond to the conditions and mechanisms of economic, political and military power. Its members were Christine Cynn, Joshua Oppenheimer, Michael Uwemedimo, Andrea Luka Zimmerman.^[6] Zimmerman co-founded the cultural collective Fugitive Images, alongside Lasse Johansson and David Roberts in 2009.^[7] She is Reader at Central Saint Martins.

Awards[]

In 2020 Zimmerman received the Filmlondon Jarman Award, with Michelle Williams Gamaker, Rosie Hastings & Hannah Quinlain, Jenn Nkiru, Larissa Sansour, Project Art Works.^[8]

Films[]

Zimmerman's film Taskafa, Stories of the Street (2013) explores resistance and co-existence through the lives of the street dogs of Istanbul.^[9][10] Featuring text and readings by John Berger, Taskafa gathers the voices of diverse Istanbul residents, shopkeepers, and street based workers, all of whom display a striking commitment to the wellbeing and future of the city's canine population (a community of street dogs, and cats, free of formal ownership but fed and cared for by numerous individuals). It also references the Hayırsızada Dog Massacre of 1911 at Sivriada.

Estate, a Reverie (2015) was made over seven years and tracks the passing of the Haggerston Estate in East London and the utopian promise of social housing it once offered, with a celebration of everyday humanity. Erase and Forget (2017) was made over ten years and, through a documentary portrait of "Bo Gritz" explores the limits of deniability and social conscience in an age of constant warfare.^[11] It premiered at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival.^[12]

Here for Life (2019) is a long term collaboration with theatre-maker and CEO of Cardboard Citizens, Adrian Jackson. The film follows ten Londoners through a city framed by capital and loss, as they navigate their wild and wayward way, travelling on their own terms towards a co-existence far stronger than 'community'. On reclaimed land they find themselves on the right side of history, caught between two train tracks, the present tense and future hopes. They question who has stolen what from whom, and how things might be fixed, in an often contradictory rite of passage. Finding solidarity in resistance, they demand the right to go on. Kieron Corless, Sight & Sound called it "A film of great compassion and political and aesthetic ambition, in which the idea of a collective is prioritized for a change, but without sacrificing or downplaying the individual voices and idiosyncrasies that it comprises".^[13] The film was widely and warmly received and notably moved in its reception beyond filmgoing audiences. Lemn Sissay wrote, "I just wanted to share the vastness of this beautiful piece of work with people".^[14]

Art[]

Art exhibitions and projects include i am here, a public artwork in Haggerston, Hackney, which was made in response to the experience of living on a council estate which was being gentrified. For this, large photos of residents from the estate were placed over the windows of vacated flats, with the intention of opening up a "reflective space concerning issues about visibility and 'urban regeneration'".^[15] Real Estates (co-curated with David Roberts), PEER with LUX, London (2015), was a multifaceted project around issues of housing, social justice and public space in East London. Common Ground, Spike Island, Bristol (2017) comprised an exhibition, screening, talks and discussions around strategies of social and cultural resistance and ways of living together.^[16] Civil Rites (2017) was made in response to a speech on the interlinked nature of "war, poverty, racism" given by Martin Luther King Jr. at Newcastle University, and was first shown at Tyneside Cinema Gallery in Newcastle in 2017/18, and London Open triennial at Whitechapel Gallery in 2018.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Zimmerman curated this season of films for Loneliness Awareness Week, with Birds Eye View. She wrote about Věra Chytilová's film Daisies, highlighting the 'invigorating rigour that Daisies brings to my perception of reality'^[17] and also for the Harun Farocki Institute asked 'what does it mean to consider the lives of others?'.^[18]

Filmography[]

• The Delmarva Chicken of Tomorrow (short, 2003)^[19]
• The Globalisation Tapes (2003)^[20] (additional editor and camera)^[21] a collaboration between the Independent Plantation Workers' Union of Sumatra, the International Union of Food and Agricultural Workers (IUF), and Vision Machine
• The Last Biscuit (short, 2005)^[22] a collaboration with Paul Hallam
• The Ramp (short, 2010)^[23]
• Merzschmerz (Film and Video Umbrella) (short, 2012)^[24]
• Towards Estate (short, 2012)^[25]
• Taskafa, Stories of the Street (2013)
• Estate, A Reverie (feature, 2015)^{[26][27][28][29]}
• More Utopias Now (Channel 4 Random Acts), (short, 2016)^[30]
• Lower Street, a Night's Journey (Tintype) (short, 2016)
• Civil Rites (Tyneside Cinema) (short, 2017)^[31][32][33]
• Erase and Forget (feature, 2017)^{[34][35][36][37][38][39]}
• Onions in the Plughole (short, 2018), on artist Marcia Farquhar
• Here For Life (Artangel) (feature, 2019) a collaboration with Adrian Jackson^[40]

Exhibitions and projects[]

• i am here (Zimmerman, Johansson, Fennell), large scale public art work on the Haggerston Estate (2009–2014)^[41]
• Real Estates (co-curated with David Roberts), PEER Gallery, in association with LUX, London (2015)^[27][42]
• Common Ground (solo), Spike Island, Bristol (2017)^[16]
• London Open (group), triennial at Whitechapel Gallery (2018)^{[43][44][45][46]}
• Art Class, METAL, Liverpool (2020) ^[47]
• Selter in Place (3 screen installation, Chalkwell Park, 2021), Esturary Festival

Books[]

• Co-author of Estate: Art, Politics and Social Housing in Britain: Myrdle Court Press, 2010 ISBN 978-0-9563539-2-4
• Contribution in Truth, Dare or Promise: Art and Documentary Revisited. London & New York: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013, ISBN 9781443849593. (Edited by Gail Pearce, Jill Daniels, Cahal McLaughlin)
• Featured in With Dogs At The End of Life: Columbia University Press, 2015, Colin Dayan ISBN 9780231167123.
• Featured in Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema: I.B. Tauris, 2016, So Mayer ISBN 0857729942.
• Featured in The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics: edited by Yannis Tzioumakis, Claire Molloy, 2016 ISBN 978-0415717397.
• Featured in Non-Cinema: Global Digital Film-making and the Multitude, William Brown, 2018,ISBN 9781501327292.
• Featured in Other Modernities in conversation with Caterina Sartori, Università degli Studi di Milano, 2018, ISSN 2035-7680
• Contribution to and co-editor of Doorways: Women, Homelessness, Trauma and Resistance - Shiri Shalmy and Andrea Luka Zimmerman on cultural production under capitalism and the role of art and artists in a social crisis, House Sparrow Press, 2019^[48]
• Contribution in Annual Art Journal ISSUE 08, ERASE, On Erasure, Lasalle College of the Arts, 2019, ISSN 2315-4802
• Contribution in Another Gaze, a Feminist Film Journal, Vol 04, Otherwise: Notes on Being Perennially In-Between, pp. 30-35, 2020 ISSN 2516-3876

Articles[]

• Andrea Luka Zimmerman Interview - Here For Life, Studio International, 2019^[49]
• Secreting History - Screening 'History': 21 takes in "La Furia Umana" LFU/36,^[50] April 2019
• Text for the Living School publication, conceived and ed. by Brandon LaBelle (for South London Gallery), 2018.
• Co-existence: A modest proposal for preventing the street dogs of Istanbul from being a burden on their neighbourhoods and citizenry, in SEQUENCE New Artists' Film and Video, Vol 4., ed. Simon Payne, no.w.here, 2016, pp.36-38
• Estates of Being: Thoughts on the place of living and working, Focaalblog, 2015^[51]
• Human Conditions: the Lives of Estate/s in "La Furia Umana", April 2015^[52]
• Amsler; Pinder; Hope; Owen; Roberts; Shah; Zimmerman; Theron Schmidt; a response to Beyond Glorious, the Radical in Engaged Practices, Rajni Shah; in 'CTR Backpages 24.2', Contemporary Theatre Review, Routledge, Vol. 24, No. 2, 284–299, May 2014
• The Certainty of Uncertainty (Zimmerman / Roberts), in "London's Regeneration Realities", ed. Ben Campkin, David Roberts, Rebecca Ross. Urban Lab, 12/2013
• Truth, Dare or Promise: Art and Documentary Revisited. (text and image): Homeland (In)Securities, ed Jill Daniels, Cahal McLaughlin and Gail Pearce, Camebridge Press, 11/2013
• On common ground: the making of meaning in film and life, Open Democracy, 2013^[53]
• Estate in three Parts. Text, Image and moving image for The Home and The World, Dartington, online publication, 10/2013
• Thinking in Practice, Balmond Studio. Re-imagining Council Housing, Q&As. Andrea Luka Zimmerman and David Roberts respond to Alisha Haridasani. September 5th 2013.
• Come Together, (text and image) Signes du Nuit, June 2013.
• Homecultures, (peer reviewed text and photo essay) Zimmerman / Johansson, Berg, 2011
• Estate: Art, Politics and Social Housing in Britain. Myrdle Court Press, ed. and photography by Zimmerman / Johansson, with Tristan Fennell, Paul Hallam, Victor Buchli, Cristina Cerulli, launched during TINAG [This is not a Gateway] festival, Oct. 2010. Second edition August 2012.
• 2010: In Wait, Visual essay in Estate: Art, Politics and Social Housing in Britain (Zimmerman, Johansson, Fennell) Myrdle Court Press.
• Street Signs. Zimmerman / Johansson, Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, University, spring, 2010
• I AM HERE: some thoughts on site-specificity and instrumentality. Site Specific Art. Zimmerman / Johansson, December 2009

References[]

External links[]

• Andrea Luka Zimmerman at IMDb