Assemblies provide a crucial platform for direct decision-making in any attempt to make societies more inclusive and democratic, more just and less hierarchical than those existing today. For a long time now, assemblies have also played a central role in Oliver Ressler’s films and video installations. Together with Dario Azzellini, he produced a cycle of films on factories under workers’ control in Europe. Before that he filmed the Square and Occupy movements in Athens, Madrid and New York. His latest film shows a four-hour assembly in Madrid in October 2019, where delegates from various environmental groups gathered to prepare an act of civil disobedience to foster climate rebellion.
Biography
Oliver Ressler (Vienna) produces installations, projects in public space, and films on economics, democracy, racism, climate disruption, forms of resistance and social alternatives. He has completed thirty-five films, whereas several of them are based on filming assemblies. His work has been exhibited in galleries, museums and biennales all over the world. Currently he works on a research project on the climate justice movement, Barricading the Ice Sheets.