Two Minutes to Midnight + talk Yael Bartana

We live in a time of international crises with dominant male leaders, and a nuclear threat is still a big part of geopolitical disputes. In her speculative video work Two Minutes to Midnight (2021), the Israeli artist Yael Bartana presents a fictional all-female government that has the task to resolve an international nuclear crisis. Their discussion ranges across the global emergencies of our male-dominated reality, with climate change, toxic masculinity and the nuclear arms race rising to the fore. A screening of the film will be followed by a conversation with Bartana and others. What would happen if countries around the world were governed by women?

Yael Bartana (1970, Kfar-Yehezkel, Israel) investigates subjects like trauma, displacement and national identity in films, installations, photographs, staged performances and public monuments. Her work has been exhibited in many museums‭, ‬including the MoMA‭, the Tate Modern and the Centre Pompidou‭. She currently lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam‭. ‬

About Two Minutes to Midnight

At a large conference table, a group of female politicians comes together to save the world from nuclear catastrophe. Two Minutes to Midnight blends fiction and political debate, with five female representatives of a powerful nation played by actors consulting real experts. The footage was shot in 2017 and 2018 during the live performances What if Women Ruled the World? in Aarhus and Berlin and Bury Our Weapons, Not Our Bodies in Philadelphia.

From 14 January until 11 February the work will be on display in the Annet Gelink Gallery.

About the speakers

Annette van Soest is a journalist and moderator. She makes in-depth podcasts and radioshows for BNR Nieuwsradio, Haagsch College and Follow the Money.