Breaking the Course of the European Boomerang: Screening curated by Una Gjerde and Krisztián Török

Two women walk through a neighbourhood, cutting branches from the hedges that guard the properties of the rich and mighty. Hedges hide wealth without excuse; everyone knows that what is on the other side is reserved for the few; even the gaze of the majority is not welcome. A choir of bank workers sing ABBAs Mamma Mia. It’s their last day as employees of the Lithuanian National Bank, the following day they will return to work for Swebank. The Georgian railway system used to be the link between Europe and Asia. Today, it’s disconnected.

Zooming in on a micro perspective, Eline Benjaminsen and Dayna Casey’s The Flora: Hedging (a.k.a. hedge heist), Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas Karaoke, and Tekla Aslanishvili’s A State in a State all trace the socio-economic and ideological transformations shaping Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall. What was proclaimed as the end of history, revealed itself not as closure, but as erasure – in the words of Jean Baudrillard – a loss of history: «We are exhausting ourselves under the illusion of the end». How did we get here? And more importantly, what forms of resistance and reconstruction are still possible?

Departing from Aimé Césaire’s imperial boomerang, Breaking the Course of the European Boomerang explores the state of Europe today. As an adaptive curatorial framework grounded in artistic practice, the project seeks to challenge the socio-economic disparities entrenched in contemporary Europe, discussions surrounding the rise of neo-fascism, and foster critical dialogue on labor, migration, resource distribution, and global power dynamics. Countries, groups, and individuals have been isolated, resulting in a hyperpolitical state of polarization. The rise in loneliness, which fuels extremism, can only be solved through coming together, and reconstructing long-lasting relationships. But where to start?

In connection with Harun Farocki’s exhibition VIDEOGRAMME EINER REVOLUTION (2026) at Index, the curators of Breaking the Course of the European Boomerang, Krisztián Gábor Török and Una Mathiesen Gjerde, present a one-night artistic program composed of screenings by Eline Benjaminsen and Dayna Casey, Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, and Tekla Aslanishvili. The screenings will be supplemented by a performative serving, organized by Jens Masimov.

The program will include the following films:
– The Flora: Hedging (a.k.a. hedge heist) by Eline Benjaminsen and Dayna Casey, 2023 (15 min)
– Karaoke by Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, 2001 (4 min)
– A State in a State by Tekla Aslanishvili, 2022 (47 min)

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Tekla Aslanishvili is an artist, filmmaker, and essayist based between Berlin, Tbilisi, and Vienna. Her practice explores the multifaceted regimes of infrastructural governance, examining how ports, railways, and smart city projects function as technologies of citizenship and sovereignty. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, an IFK and Graduate School Fellow at the Berlin University of the Arts.

Eline Benjaminsen (b. 1992, NO) works with photography, video, and publications, and investigates the often invisible and complex spaces where market fundamentalism and ecological crisis meet. A camera-based “follow-the-money” approach fuses techniques associated with documentary photography and experimental representation. Dayna Casey (b. 1988, Boorloo AU/NL) is an artistic researcher, writer, and graphic designer. Working essayistically and across disciplines, she weaves together theoretical research, archival material, text, and visual formats in publications, installations, and performative readings. Her practice explores ecology and finance, bodily and earthly extraction, and questions of ownership and reproduction. Together, Benjamin and Casey have been conducting a collective research on the language and metaphores used in the realm of finance, resulting in the video work Hedging (2024) and the publication Collapsed Mythologies: A Geofinancial Atlas (Spector Books and Page Not Found, 2026).

Jens Masimov (b. 1993 in Hedemora, Sweden), is a multidisciplinary artist based in Stockholm. Through immersive and entangled installations he explores the core idea of ritualistic distortion wherein sculptural renditions of visual and cultural anchor-points acts as frameworks for social gatherings. Masimov holds an MFA from Konstfack – University of Arts, Crafts and Design. His work has been shown at venues such as Podium (Oslo, Norway), Encooore (Biarritz, France), Pragovka Gallery (Prague, Czech Republic), and The Centre for the Fictitious Ante Facto (Stockholm, Sweden).

Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas are artists, educators, researchers, and co-founders of the Urbonas Studio, an interdisciplinary research practice that facilitates exchange amongst diverse nodes of knowledge production and artistic practice in pursuit of projects that transform civic spaces and collective imaginaries. Urbonas are full time faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology‘s Program in Art, Culture, Technology, and a Visiting Professors at VDU – Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, and NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arte in Milano.