Masterclass and workshop with Johan Grimonprez

Maybe the sky is really green, and we’re just colorblind? 
A crash course in reclaiming storytelling & belonging

"Who owns our imagination in a world of existential vertigo where truth has become a shipwrecked refugee? Is it not the storyteller who can contain contradictions, who can slip between the languages we have been given and who can become a time-traveller of the imagination?"

These questions will be the starting point of Johan Grimonprez’s masterclass to affectively assess what true color the sky is. Grimonprez is known for his films between art and cinema, which mix fiction and documentary through a collage-like, archival approach and weaves new narratives, pathways and stories, emphasizing a multiplicity of realities. His practice examines themes such as propaganda, the role of mass media, global power dynamics, and the nature of storytelling questioning the reliability of history and the ways narratives are constructed in the digital and television age. Overall, his work forms an acute and an indispensable criticism of contemporary media manipulation and mainstream’s consensus about History.

His famous »dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y« (1997), explores the history of airplane hijackings using found footage, news broadcasts, and literary references, while »Double Take« (2009), blends Alfred Hitchcock clips, Cold War paranoia, and doppelgänger narratives to comment on media manipulation and fear politics. His most recent documentary: »Soundtrack to a Coup d‘État« (2024) which has been nominated for an Oscar this year, explores the Cold War episode that led American musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest against the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. 

This three-day masterclass is organized in parallel to Johan Grimonprez’ retrospective »All Memory Is Theft« at ZKM.