"REMOTE" MIKA ROTTENBERG & MAHYAD TOUSI

The Julia Stoschek Foundation is pleased to present the Berlin-premiere of REMOTE (2022), a film by Mika Rottenberg and Mahyad Tousi. The screening will be followed by a conversation between Lisa Long, Artistic Director, and Mika Rottenberg, one of the first artists whose work entered the Julia Stoschek Collection early on.

Set in a near future, REMOTE follows Unoaku, an expat architect living in a solar-punk apartment in Kuala Lumpur, and four other women living on their own in Iran, Argentina, Puerto Rico, and South Africa. While watching a popular South Korean dog grooming show, the five women discover they are connected through mysterious portals hidden in their homes. Embarking on a quest for answers, they use the portals to bridge the distance between them, uncovering a phenomenon with universe-altering consequences. The story grew out of a weekly conversation between friends and collaborators Mika Rottenberg and Mahyad Tousi during the onset of the covid pandemic about how people around the world were physically isolated and yet still able to connect through technology.

REMOTE was commissioned by Artangel; the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm; in association with Hauser & Wirth. The film was completed with support by MOCA’s Environmental Council, Los Angeles; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; X Museum, Beijing; the Busan Biennale, Korea; and The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, US. REMOTE will join the permanent collections of both the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and Moderna Museet.

MIKA ROTTENBERG (b. 1976, Buenos Aires) is a New York-based artist whose rigorous practice combines film, architectural installation, and sculpture to explore ideas of labor and the production of value in our contemporary hyper-capitalist world. Using traditions of both cinema and sculpture, she seeks out locations around the world where specific systems of production and commerce are in place, such as a pearl factory in China, and a Calexico border town. Through the editing process, and with footage from sets built in her studio, Rottenberg connects seemingly disparate processes and places to create elaborate and subversive visual narratives that are often situated within a theatrical installation made up of objects from the lush and bizarre parallel worlds in her videos. By weaving fact and fiction together, she highlights the inherent beauty and absurdity of our contemporary existence.

Rottenberg has had recent solo exhibitions at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark; Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; the New Museum in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and MOCA Toronto

Born in Portland and raised in the Iranian capital of Tehran, MAHYAD TOUSI (b. 1973, Portland, Oregon) spent his childhood amid revolution, war, and a drastic reorganization of society. He emigrated to the United States as a teenager and now splits his time between Los Angeles and New York. Tousi is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and filmmaker working across multiple media platforms. He is currently writing and producing a television adaptation of Ted Chiang’s award-winning novelette “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate.” REMOTE, for which he is the screenwriter and co-creator, marks his directorial debut. Previously, he was the executive producer of two seasons of the CBS primetime comedy UNITED STATES OF AL.

Originally a conflict zone documentarian, Tousi has been writing and producing narratives across film, TV, VR, and new media for 18 years. Beyond the screen, he founded Starfish, a hybrid social enterprise investing in underrepresented artist-entrepreneurs and amplifying their culture-defining ideas. He is also the co-founder of BoomGen, an independent incubator and cross-platform development studio, and sits on the advisory board of MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality.


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