I'M GLAD YOU EXIST

Protocinema x Ekrani i Artiti 2025: Postcards from Elsewhere

Coleman Collins, Onur Karaoğlu, Laura Parnes, Diane Severin Nguyen

Friday, June 20, 2025
Looping from 11:00 am - 6:00 pm
Franciscan Church of Shkodër, Auditorium
Rruga At Gjergj Fishta 42, Shkodër, Albania

Protocinema presents I'm Glad You Exist, a screening of videos by Coleman Collins, Onur Karaoğlu, Laura Parnes, and Diane Severin Nguyen, as part of Ekrani i Artit 2025: Postcards from Elsewhere, held in the auditorium of the Franciscan Church of Shkodër, Albania on Friday June 20. Curated by Mari Spirito, this program explores the nuances of cultural third spaces and honors what can be learned through confusion and misunderstanding.

The phrase “I'm Glad You Exist,” translated from the Turkish “İyi ki varsın”, is a common expression of heartfelt gratitude and emotional warmth. It says, essentially: “The world is better with you in it.” Often used when someone has been kind or supportive—particularly in difficult times—the phrase captures a softness at the threshold of understanding that a misunderstanding has occurred. Taken from a participatory dialogue on cultural divides between former lovers in Onur Karaoğlu’s Read Subtitles Aloud, Chapter 2 (2020), I’m Glad You Exist becomes a gentle invocation for connection despite, or even because of, miscommunication.

These imperfect third spaces—described by postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha as places where “something different, something new and unrecognizable” emerges—represent the ongoing negotiation of meaning and identity. Karaoğlu’s Read Subtitles Aloud is part melodrama, part experiment, part game: a theatrical experience disguised as video art, where the fourth wall is broken and everyone becomes implicated in interpersonal entanglements. All you have to do is read the subtitles aloud to become the main character in a story of camaraderie, sex, betrayal, in the digital theater of love and life.

Laura Parnes begins her excerpt from Magic Thinking (2025) with her conversation with Robert Jay Lifton, the American psychiatrist known for his work on thought reform and mind control, situating her inquiry at the intersection of intentional deception and cultural distortion. In Magic Thinking, Parnes exposes how Buddhist ideologies have been co-opted and confused within the churn of American capitalism and sacred Asian philosophies—resulting in a mashup that is absurd and unsettling done in the tone of a low-budget horror film. “I’m fascinated,” she says, “by how the cultish stories spun by ‘wellness’ devotees have come to mirror the extremism seen on the far right.” Her excerpt is part of a larger multi-channel installation “steeped in the current moment, where climate catastrophe, the COVID pandemic, and the rise of fundamentalism converge into an apocalyptic aura. Within this aura, magical thinking becomes a survival strategy.” Parnes’ work parodies the extractive and perilous mistranslation of Eastern cultures, revealing how such misuse can erode any soul the West might hope to redeem in its desperate attempt to salvage what it has not yet destroyed.

Coleman Collins’ The Upper Room (2025) offers a chilling reversal. This sci-fi video essay explores the psychology of slavery—both of the enslaved and the enslavers—using AI to generate otherworldly characters and black screens with voiceovers that lead to an expected, yet startling, conclusion that doubles back on itself. Collins reconstructs forgotten historical events, highlighting the horror of conforming to unjust systems. He suggests that the human mind is the ultimate battleground, where behavior modification captures—and refuses to release—the imagination. Arguing that everyone deserves a life free from undue influence, Collins presents a grim cautionary tale of internalized oppression. His narrative traces the destructive effects of mimetic desire, weaving together fact and speculative fiction. Drawing connections between diasporic fantasies of return, gospel music, and 19th-century nation-building projects, The Upper Roomexamines how spaces—real and imagined—are produced and reproduced through power, memory, and longing.

In Tyrant Star (2019), Diane Severin Nguyen blurs and layers cultural perspectives to prompt reflection on how songs, histories, and memories are fragmented and reassembled over time. Filmed entirely in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, the video unfolds in three chapters: beginning with images of the city accompanied by Vietnamese folk poetry (Ca Dao), shifting to an aspiring YouTube star covering Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” (1964), and concluding with footage of children in a local orphanage. Though each chapter presents a different voice and point of view, they are united by themes of grief, care, and the echoes of unheard or misunderstood experiences. Nguyen’s camera captures trash-strewn landscapes, quiet interiors, and fragmented bodies—offering subtle movements that suggest the environment itself is alive, swelling with the memories of the past.

As human life unfolds, we continue to navigate rapidly shifting political, economic, and ecological conditions. I’m Glad You Exist begins with the belief that at the core of all human interaction is a universal longing: to understand and to be understood. Even in moments of cultural misconception, mistranslation, or violent misappropriation, a shared desire for connection endures. How vulnerable we are—so often misled by our own hope for something better. I’m Glad You Exist suggests that cultural third spaces are not only where we meet, but where we live, forming a collective history that belongs to—and unites—us all.

PROGRAM:

Laura Parnes, Magic Thinking, section clip, 12:06 - New York, US
Coleman Collins, The Upper Room, 2025, 19:30 - Los Angeles, US
Diane Severin Nguyen, Tyrant Star, 16:00 - Vietnam, US
Onur Karaoglu, Read Subtitles Aloud, 2020 7:16 - Germany, Turkey
Total running time 55 minutes. Artists Biographies here.

“I'm Glad You Exist” will be screened in the Auditorium of the Franciscan Church of Shkodër, Albania which was built in 1905, known as The Big Church, raised during the twilight of Ottoman rule and weathering decades of enforced atheism under communist Albania, it is supported by the festival, Ekrani i Artit 2025: Postcards from Elsewhere, Goethe Institute, Protocinema and SAHA Association, Istanbul.

Ekrani i Artit 2025: Postcards from Elsewhere is a non-competitive festival held in Shkodër, Albania, in its eighth edition (18-22 June, 2025) with the mission is to create a generous and attentive space for films that might not otherwise reach this context, engaging both local and international audiences. The upcoming edition of Ekrani i Artit embraces a theme that is as imaginative as it is heartfelt: Postcards from Elsewhere, which envisions cinema as a means of connection- a bridge between the seen and unseen, the known and unknown, the familiar and the extraordinary. Postcards from Elsewhere also carries an emotional resonance, emphasizing relationships, the exchange of ideas, and the human longing for connection. These are values we believe resonate deeply with both our audiences and our partners. instagram.com/ekraniiartit.

Protocinema is a non-profit arts organization that collaborates with artists and institutions to create artworks exploring the shared human experiences that connect us all. We build relationships across local and international contexts, bringing together individuals with diverse perspectives and backgrounds. An international organization with a presence in both the U.S. and Turkey since 2011, Protocinema advances this urgent and nuanced work through commissions, exhibitions, public programs, the Protocinema Emerging Curator Series(PECS) mentorship program, Protozine exhibition texts, and Protodispatch, our monthly digital publication. These initiatives are rooted in our belief in the common ground where we live, gather, and grow. protocinema.org