Christopher Roth - THE SEASONS IN QUINCY: Four Portraits of John Berger

Film screening with director Christopher Roth, followed by a conversation with Klearjos Papanicolaou and Susanne Hefti 02.05.2022 THE SEASONS IN QUINCY: Four Portraits of John Berger The Seasons in Quincy is the result of a five-year project that gives a portrait of the intellectual and storyteller John Berger. In 1973, Berger abandoned the metropolis to live in the tiny Alpine village of Quincy. The four-part film examines different aspects of his life in this remote village while also combining ideas and motifs from the writer’s own work. Each film was created as an individual work of art but in the end combine to make this feature film. In this session, we welcome Christopher Roth, the director of “Spring,” the part that contextualises Berger’s seminal writing on animals in the local farming culture. Christopher Roth is a film director, artist, and television producer. In the summer of 2022, So Long Daddy. See You in Hell will be launched. A fictional feature film he made with Jeanne Tremsal about her youth in a commune in the 1980s. Jana McKinnon and Clemens Schick play the lead roles. Roth was one of the curators of the German Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, looking back from the year 2038 at how we barely managed to get a grip on the big problems. Over 4 hours of film have emerged from the New Serenity period. In 2018, Roth co-launched space-time.tv a cooperative television platform with now 4 channels. The same year marked the premiere of Architecting after Politics, the third film with architects Brandlhuber+ after The Property Drama (Chicago Biennale 2017) and its predecessor Legislating Architecture (Venice Biennale 2016). Roth made Hyperstition with Armen Avanessian and The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger with Colin McCabe and Tilda Swinton (Berlinale, 2016). Roth’s film Baader was awarded the Silver Bear for “New Perspectives in Cinema” at the 2002 Berlinale. Christopher Roth shows at Esther Schipper Gallery. The event is part of the lecture series SESSIONS ON TERRITORY—Urbanism & the Countryside. CONCEPT AND REALISATION Chair of Architecture and Territorial Planning, ETH Zurich Department of Architecture Prof. Milica Topalović Dr. Nitin Bathla Dr. Nazlı Tümerdem Hans Hortig VIDEO RECORDING AND EDITING Aymane Hayyene Filali GRAPHIC DESIGN Goda Budvytyte SESSIONS ON TERRITORY is a series of public debates on the political economy of architecture and territory. Focusing on agriculture, the upcoming series will draw upon relationships of care and reciprocity with soil and biodiversity from the past and present, to help move beyond consumerist techno-fixes, and toward more self-sufficient and ecological land practices. Through a series of debates with invited guests, the seminar will explore the critical agrarian questions emerging under 21st-century (extended) urbanisation. Every intervention by a guest speaker is followed by a panel discussion with invited respondents. Please find all lectures here: https://topalovic.arch.ethz.ch/Course... CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 11:03 Milica Topalović starts the discussion 12:19 Christopher Roth responds 20:00 Susanne Hefti 26:18 Klearjos Papanicolaou 36:20 Milica Topalović 46:59 Klearjos Papanicolaou 52:38 Susanne Hefti 55:30 Milica Topalović closes the session