Catalogue > List by artist

Shabnam unfolded a research on my colonial history in relation to Muslin where I tried to visualize a certain nerve-racking situation when people from a certain part of the world reflect an accumulation of knowledge and wealth. Sometimes the monumental museum display gives a strange complexity. The difference between the one who needs to rumble around archives all around the world to connect the threads between past and present and one who gets everything compiled and labelled is an important one. By process, Shabnam is like a patchwork. The idea was cautiously extended over found images and sounds. Here, the Bangla language is a part of the sonic experience; that is why the subtitle is always coming later as part of an image. I think the sonic experience of the film is something to bear the uneasiness about unequal relationships and exchanges that we have in this world. The drawing of the Bangla letters or the sound of the language played a pivotal role in telling disturbed cartography. What was a work about cotton and lost heritage, has reached me to few questions. How do you visualize the feeling of ‘other’? How do you visualize the churn in your stomach when you find yourself in front of unresolved loss?

Reetu Sattar is an artist and film-maker, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her practice, both performative and experimental in nature, questions human perception and imperceptible nature by re-examining history and the creation of knowledge. In a constant dialogue with immediate surroundings, her work engages with the poetics of environments and explores inner urges for change, perception, (re)relation to body and matter. Born in Dhaka Reetu works and lives in Dhaka. Her recent exhibitions include Istanbul Biennial, British Textile Biennial, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Liverpool Biennial, and Dhaka Art Summit as well as venues including the British Film Institute, London; Alserkal Avenue, Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai; Artspace, Sydney; Palais de Tokyo, Paris and NTU CCA Singapore. Her performances have been staged internationally at venues in London, Birmingham, Bangkok and Goa. Reetu’s first film premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam, in 2019 and the second film Shabnam premiered at the latest IFFR. Reetu’s performance installation programmed in Spring 2020 will be presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York on a date forthcoming. Reetu Sattar is a member of Britto Arts Trust, an artist collective based in Dhaka. She also works with Dhaka-based theatre group Prachyanat. Reetu is currently in an 11-month residency at Jan Van Eyck, Netherlands.

In this unusual city portrait, Berlin is not presented as a buzzing new metropolis, but as a city that goes about its business quite unexcitedly. Choosing a slow pace, this documentary grants us the privilege of observing from afar the gestures and movements of people pursuing their different activities in Berlin`s often vast and surprisingly empty urban spaces. A seemingly indifferent camera takes us to international summits, demonstrations, parades, housing estates and shopping centres. As we begin to discern the patterns of life in the city, it is as if we are witnesses to life on another planet, an impression enhanced by the film`s intricate score which provides the film`s only, yet subtle commentary.

Powyłamywanymi is an experimental video. The inspiration and the title comes from a polish tongue twister "Stół z powyłamywanymi nogami" meaning "a table with broken legs". The word in the title means breaking only in context of this sentence. Supposedly it dates back to the Soviet times when everything used to be more or less broken. Through repetitive breaking of different tables the work examines how absurd is constructed, but also fragilities of any given systems such as language, political structures or a human body.

Heta Saukkonen (b. 1990) has a Bachelor of Arts from Aalto University and currently completes master’s degrees in Photography at Aalto University and in Time and Space Arts at University of the Arts Helsinki. She works with mediums of video, photography and installation in the borderline between the visual and the verbal and is interested in the absurd, systems and the unexplainable.

Nønspace A filmic artwork by Nicolas Sauret & Ashley Wong 2-channel video / 23min / 2009 Nønspace is a work that attempts to probe at the often puzzling and elusive space of Hong Kong. Through its unique history, geography and politics, Hong Kong has sprouted from a small Chinese fishing village to a globalized financial city. From British influence of Western capitalism to a return to a long lost Chinese reality, Hong Kong has formed into a place of in-betweenness. Through interwoven voice interviews with artists, academics, architects, Nønspace approaches notions of space to reveal aspects of a city and culture that is difficult (and perhaps impossible) to underpin. Topics of density, public/private space, colonialism/post-colonialism, identity, society, urban development, and government policy quickly emerge. Through collected materials, photographs and field-recordings from a two and three year stint in Hong Kong, the creators piece back through memory in a desire to understand and in a dialogue with the city and self. Nønspace is hazy in content and in form. The fluid construction of photographic stills and voice, speak around a city, but never at it. It is an approach to space that can be used to navigate any city and environment to explore what is behind the construction of a space and place. Conversations with: Linda LAI (professor, City University), Andrew LAM, (director Museum of Site), Kit LAM (sociologist, Chinese University), Warren LEUNG (independent artist), Map Office (Laurent Gutierrez & Valérie Portefaix, artists), Alvin YIP (architect, Poly University)

Nicolas Sauret is a filmmaker and artist based in Paris, France. After attaining a degree in Engineering of Cultural Industries at Université de Technologie of Compiègne, he spent 3 years in Laos working in documentary film. He later moved to Hong Kong to pursue an MFA in Creative Media at City University. His work has been featured in a number of exhibitions and festivals including the Tokyo Video Festival, Hong Kong Asian Film Festival and Urban Nomad Film Festival. Ashley L. Wong is an artist and curator/facilitator. Born and raised in Canada, she attained a BFA in Digital Image/Sound and the Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal. She is founder of experimental events project LOUDSPKR and is former project manager of Videotage - Hong Kong`s Media Art Institution. She is completing an MA at Goldsmiths`, University of London.

One of the main thrusts behind the making of the film is an attempt to return to the time of childhood, vacation, and hot summer. I remember the feeling when the indefinite number of noteworthy details, things to discover, stories to explore, matters to think over made each day seem to last forever.

Marcin Sauter Born in 1971 Works as a press photohrapher for the biggest daily newspapers in Poland. Author of the photographic set design projects for the theatre and co-director of a feature film ?I co wy na to, Ga³uszko? (2000) shown in art house cinemas across Poland. Graduated from the Documentary Course at the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. ?Behind the Fence? (10 min, 2005) is his first documentary.

In 2021, during the second summer of the pandemic, I lived and video recorded in the small coastal town of Ratnagiri, India. Shot in the mango orchards of this region the film, "The Orchard and the Pardes", chronicles the last two months of their work with 4 immigrant (Nepalese) labourers during the mango harvesting season. In doing so it reveals not only their conditions of work but also a certain politics of intimacy across conflicting power relations between the labourers, their employer and myself as the filmmaker. It is a personal documentation film in a series of films, I have been making in this region. The film looks at once into small inter-personal spaces and at the same time critically examines the day to day working of a deeply fraught phenomenon of our global times - migrant labour. While looking critically at the processes of ethnographic filmmaking itself, "The Orchard and the Pardes", is a self-reflexive and personal work as much as it documents working conditions of immigrant labour in this western coastal region of India. It casts questions of identity, language and interpersonal politics and importantly the role of deceit in communication across class and gender. Mango growing, a booming agro-industry in this region, relies almost solely on seasonal migrant labour. The film reveals the vulnerability faced by the migrant labourers and how power dynamics works at the micro, day to day level. It explores the relationship between the woman filmmaker and the masculine world of agro-business playing out through various currents of interpersonal dialogue and becomes a deliberation on the complex insidiousness of power systems and their unfolding at a micro level.

Renu Savant is a filmmaker based in Mumbai. She is a Film and Television Institute of India graduate and has worked as a journalist and researcher. She is also a lover of literature and has completed her MA in English Literature. In 2012 she received the Special Jury Award in the 59th National Film Awards held in New Delhi for her short film “Airawat”; and the “Swarna Kamal” for Best Direction in the 62nd National Film Awards in 2015 for her short film “Aaranyak”, amongst other awards.

The film strives to create the symbolic echoes in the story of two girls searching for their imaginary friend, whose invisible quality they associate with the anonymity of the industrial black hole - the water pipe. On this, the backdrop of another story - an elemental and existential search for water in a dried up river by two migrant workers from the city. The film moves between the lyrical and the referential, the self-reflexive statement and the existential search, ending in an ironic arrival into the real.

The director, Renu Savant, is a graduate from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. Before this she has worked as researcher, journalist, lecturer. Her short film, Airawat, received the National Award in 2012, apart from other accolades.

A la vallée de Joux, en Suisse, un vélo cycliste tente la traversée d`un lac gelé. Le titre de la vidéo, Pégase, provient de la sculpture que l’on voit en arrière plan. Ce petit film s’inscrit dans une série d’une trentaine de films autonomes réalisés entre 2003 et aujourd’hui.

Denis Savary est né en 1981 à Granges-Marnand en Suisse. Il vit et travaille à Genève. Diplômé de l’Ecole Cantonale d’Arts de Lausanne, il est en résidence à l’atelier des Arques, puis au Pavillon du Palais de Tokyo en 2006/2007. Il a participé à de nombreuses expositions de groupe : Enchanté château, organisée par Christian Bernard à la Fondation pour l’art contemporain Claudine et Jean-Marc Salomon en 2005, au MAMCO de Genève en 2006, Voici un dessin suisse (1990-2010), au Musée Rath (Genève), Wind, me souffle entre les images au Quartier à Quimper, au Printemps de Septembre à Toulouse en 2009 et 2008... Son travail a également été montré en 2008 au Jeu de Paume (Paris) dans le cadre de la programmation Satellite et au Musée Jénisch à Vevey (Suisse). Lors de l’exposition Le Narrenschiff au Centre Pasquart en 2010, on a pu découvrir un vaste ensemble de films de l’artiste. En 2012, la Kunsthalle de Berne lui consacre une exposition intitulée Balthiques. Plus récemment, une sélection de ses films a été projetée au Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) lors du festival Hors Pistes. En 2015, une exposition monographique lui sera consacrée au MAMCO de Genève.

Choreographies of everyday life in a small town in Belarus. Through static images and associative montage, Telo Khana (Khan’s Flesh) conveys a perspective on society and the intangible power relations it is permeated by. The priest's ear recognizes the sins of the parishioners. The heartbeat of the fetus is monitored. Workers leaving factory. Telo Khana (Khan’s Flesh) shows the everyday life of a small town in Belarus as choreographies within stage-like images. The inhabitants move and position their bodies depending on the situation and according to their social and professional status. A skeleton of norms, rules and role models, completed with the bodies of active citizens, becomes a vital structure whose components alternatingly discipline themselves through mutual control, praise and punishment. These interwoven social structures are getting traced, broken up and recontextualized by a dance-like montage. The images strict tableau-style reveals a surreal theatricality of the institutionally shaped everyday life. At the same time Telo Khana (Khan’s Flesh) is a contemporary document of life in the Belarusian province, barely a year before the beginning of the nationwide protests against the state apparatus.

Kristina Savutsina was born in 1989 in Riga, into a Belarusian family. From 1993 to 2014 she lived in Belarus. She graduated with diploma in cultural studies in Minsk. In 2014 Kristina moved to Germany, where she has been studying film and fine arts at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK). In her work Kristina deals with regulatory politics and its concrete manifestations in Belarus. Besides artistic practice she works as curator and translator. She lives and works in Hamburg. Georg Kussmann was born in Halle/Saale, East Germany in 1989 and grew up there. He studied photography and film at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. Currently he lives in Berlin and works as an artist, filmmaker and cinematographer.

A few years ago, artist Jacky Sawartzky was living in the West End, a neighbourhood in Vancouver (Canada). Her apartment looked out on a back alley and four garbage bins. At dawn her wake-up call was the sound of the homeless pushing their shopping carts through the back alley intersected by car doors slamming and motors starting. The back alley was a lively place. In that same period she was doing research around surveillance methods that use a computer application other then vision to discriminate. "Social Metronome" is seven videos in which the image as well as the editing structure is determined by movement in the back alley. A camera controlled by a computer program uses the syntactical structure of a computer programming language - the logical proposition of 'if followed by then', to create a portrait of this back alley. The program selects according to the intensity of movement and not the content of movement. For seven days of a week, this system was set up from dawn to dusk, resulting in an average of 500 clips a day. These clips were then assembled into seven videos that portray a back alley based on movement.

Jacky Sawatzky is a performance and media artist. Originally from Winnipeg (Canada), she spent most of her life in the Netherlands, where she completed the majority of her formal training, and later moved to Vancouver to complete a MFA degree at Simon Fraser University. Her recent projects are intended to create an awareness of the concepts behind digital technology and explore the influence this technology has on our perception and consumption of such. She taught at Ryerson University, School for Image Arts, in Toronto, and is currently spending time on her own art-practice.

Tromü (o un studio para un volcán) Author: Victoria Sayago and Bruno Stecconi Tromü means cloud in mapuche* language. A volcano becomes active and emits not lava but ashes so the inmense Patagonia is transformed. What is beautiful and tragic blends into a record that far from mummifying perhaps sublimes the openness of time and its transformations. The tragedy is only an instant in time, a man a point in space and life is in every particle, above all things, as a question form. *The word Mapuche is used both to refer to the original inhabitans of southwestern Argentina and southcentral Chile and to the language they speak.

Victoria Sayago (Argentina, 1980) Graduate (BA Cinematography) by Universidad del Cine. Her field of investigation, teaching and production is audiovisual experimental arts and photography. Curator of “El cine experimental de Narcisa Hirsch” by MQ2 Editora. She teached in FUC and IUNA (Universitary National Art Institute). Nowadays she teaches in Electronic Arts career UNTREF. She won the national grant of Fondo Nacional de las Artes and worked in the art curator department of the National Ministry of Education of Argentina. Her videos were shown in 60 Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, 15º Festival de Artes Electrónicas Videobrasil, BIM (First Price), 11ème Biennale de l’image en Mouvement Geneva, Premio MAMBA- Fundación Telefónica 2005, others. She lives and works in Buenos Aires. Bruno Stecconi (Argentina, 1981) Graduated from the FUC (Cinema University Fundation) he is finishing his master degree in Media and Arts, at the European Degree School. His field of work is photography, video and cinema. His videos and photos took part of many different international and national festivals like: 60 Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, BIM (First Price), Premio Repsol Lima Perú (First price), Talent Campus Berlin-Buenos Aires, FIVA, Bienal del Fin del Mundo, Bienal de Almeria, among others. With Daniel Böhm created MQ2 Editora. He lives and works in Buenos Aires city.

4 Août 2020. Explosion de 2750 tonnes de nitrate d’ammonium sur le port de Beyrouth. Nous disparaissons; un instant. Certains n’apparaitront plus. Les images déferlent. Elles sont spectaculaires. Fascinent. Me viennent alors ces mots: De L’Impotence De L’Image. Image Partiale Image Partielle Impotente Inapte Assassine Faire Feu De Toute Image Tordre La Pellicule Saboter Les Pixels Pulvériser La Chambre Obscurcie Non Je N’Irai Pas Capturer L’Image Du Crime Faire Brasier De Toute Image Et Tenter Le Mot Encore Une Photographie Ne Saurait Faire Office De Document Empreinte Cérébrale Empreinte Corporelle Ceci Est Mon Image Ceci Est Mon Apocalypse Nous Sommes La Photographie Nous Sommes Le Document Ceci Est Mon Corps Exhibez-Le Sur La Place Publique Dans Vos Musées Puis Approchez Vous Regardez Dans Nos Yeux Tout Au Fond Le Brasier Le Souffle La Puissance L’Horreur Plus tard, cette autre tentative: “Où Nul.le Autre Ne Peut Voir Et/Ou Violets For My Furs”. Prologue, préliminaire, chant dernier, ce film est un essai de déplacements / polyphonies / frottements / césures erratiques / plaques mnémoniques et autres failles didascaliques. A travers l’archive intime et/ou collective, je tente de composer un prologue-prolongement d’images, pré-texte aux mots en cours, et ceux à venir.

Les images [photographies, collages, montages, broderies et mots] de Nasri Sayegh sont troubles, floues, furtives. Inquiètes, elles encourent à tout moment le risque soudain d’effacement. Puisant dans ses archives intimes, Sayegh altère, déconstruit l’image pour mieux reconstituer sa propre historiographie. Fouille archéologique/archétypale, il remonte le fil de ses Histoires au gré d’impulsions mnémoniques. Découpage, dissection dans le corps de l’image et recoupement de données visuelles deviennent prétextes pour inventer/déterrer/monter de nouvelles strates d’images et de mots. Interstitielle, l’entre-image, la presqu’image, ou le glitch (la Faille), deviennent quelque part le portrait en négatif, en creux, de l’artiste. Après des études de Lettres à l’USJ (Beyrouth) et à la Sorbonne (Paris), Sayegh s’investit dans les pratiques théâtrales et cinématographiques à l’ESAD-Paris. Acteur, il a été dirigé par Christian Merlhiot, Eileen Hofer, Jad Youssef, Jocelyne Saab. Performeur, il a été l'artiste-invité de Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, de Saâdane Afif, et de Rabih Mroué.  Son approche multidisciplinaire a été présentée dans de nombreuses expositions au Liban parmi lesquelles: «Beyrouth, Peut-Être» (2016), «Unravelled» (2016), «Keine Fotos Bitte», «Tout doit Disparaître»(2018), et au Salon d’Automne du Musée Sursock de Beyrouth (2018). En 2017 il reçoit le second Prix Photomed et publie “Mes Nuits sont plus Amères que vos Jours”. En 2021, il  a été résident à la Cité des Arts (Paris), la Villa des Auteurs (Marseille) et la Villa Arson (Nice). Né à Zahlé (Liban) en 1978, Nasri Sayegh Jr. vit et travaille dans un déplacement permanent.

The city I live is the city I die. "The Ballad of Death" is a hybrid film that uses real and fictional scenes to question the different forms of urban violence. Mostly about the reality on Brazil, but most of all to treat the issue as a universal problem.

Lucas Sá was born in Brazil, 1992. He realized his short films: "O Membro Decaído" (2012), “Ruído Branco” (2013), “No Interior da Minha Mãe” (2013), "Nua por Dentro do Couro" (2014) and "Balada para os Mortos" (2016). Graduated on Cinema at Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPEL), his films was on the selection of Cinélatino – Rencontres de Toulouse, Guanajuato International Film Festival , PiFan - Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival, Festival Luso-Brasileiro de Santa Maria da Feira, Festival de Brasília, Janela Internacional de Cinema de Recife, Festival Internacional de Curtas de São Paulo, Mostra de Tiradentes and others. Nowadays, he is on the process of finalizing his first feature called "Canecalon - The Long Hair of Death".

The city of Delhi, like any other metropolis in the world, has a parallel economic system other than the state driven or corporate initiated economies. This operates among the millions of rural migrants who flow into the city in order to survive every day of their lives. Their upbringing and way of life are different than that of the urban middle class. They are not trained in any managerial studies schools and not even educated enough to understand the sophisticated tools of global, as well as local, economy. But they do possess a "native intelligence" and a burning stomach. The ideas click for them when they walk around aimlessly, sleeping on the pavements or under the hot sun. Then the action follows, such as hiring a cycle rickshaw on a daily rental scheme, preparing snacks on a portable stand then selling them on the streets, always on the move, sell flowers, handkerchiefs, magazines, pens, toys balloons, sunshades, guide maps and many other suddenly invented local products at red traffic lights. Their inventions incorporate religious festivals, changes of seasons, and patriotic events in the country. Muhammad Kurshid Alam, a thirteen year old boy from a small village called Ajim Nagar in Bihar (state), migrated to Delhi to support his family back in the village. Gigi Scaria met him in front of the Jama Masjid Mosque in the old city of Delhi in the first week of April when the boy was trying to persuade him to buy some of his posters. Scaria was curious to see the posters as well as to observe the "local aesthetics" and technology put together in each of his frames. Apart from the religious faith, he was totally unaware of the geographical locations of the places in his poster collection. He also changes his collection and location according to the festival season. The "aesthetics" of his minute labour create a world parallel with the sophisticated multinational high tech world. Among thousands of differences, the striking difference between these two worlds is that the latter is intentional and the former accidental.

Born in Kerala, India, Gigi Scaria received his BFA from the College of Fine Arts Thiruvananthapuram, in 1995, and his MFA from Jamia Milia University, Delhi, in 1998. His scholarships/awards, among many, include: 2005, Sanskriti Award in Visual Art; 2002, Inlaks scholarship; 1995/97, Ministry of Human Resources and Development, Scholarship for Visual Arts. He had completed residencies at: 2005, CCA7 (Caribbean Contemporary Arts), Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies; 2004, Khoj at Khoj studios, Kirkee Village, New Delhi; and 2002, Unidee at Cittadellarte, Foundation Pistoletto, Biella, Italy. His many workshops include: 2006, "Dilli Dur Ast" a lens based workshop in Delhi; 2005, Sandarbh, an artist workshop and residency program; 2002, GASTHOF 2002, Frankfurt, Germany; and 2001, Khoj international artists' workshop at Modinagar, Near Merrut. He has also had many solo shows, of which: 2005, "Where are the Amerindians?" At Inter America Space at CCA7, Trinid; 2001, Exhibition of recent works at Art Inc., Shaprjhat, New Delhi; 1998 Exhibition of paintings and sculptures at The Great Art Gallery, New Delhi. Selected participations include: 2006, "Impossible India" at Frankfurt Kunstverein; "Ghost in the machine and other stories" (video, interactive media, and sound) at Apeejay Media Gallery, Delhi; "REAL 2006", Visual Art gallery, Habitat Center, New Delhi; "Dilli Dur Ast" a lens based workshop in the walled city of Delhi; Art in Cinema at Habitat center, New Delhi; 2005, Double?Enders at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; "Are we like this only?" in Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi, New Delhi, Vadehra Art Gallery; 2003, "Crossing Generations Diverge" at National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai; "Indians + Cowboys" at Gallery 4A, Asian-Australia Arts Center, Sydney, Australia; "Arting Jerusalem", art project in Jerusalem, Israel; 2002, 'Photographica', Cittadellarte, Biella, Italy; Circo Fragile, a storytelling event at Pavia University, Italy; and Unidee in Progress at Pistoletto Foundation, Biella, Italy.

It depends on who you are that an entrance is closed or open to you. If you enact your coincidence as incidence you can outsmart this mechanism. The cast of the dice in a card game is a good example -- the ritual of including or excluding cards in order to make the number of cards dealt into a complete group or not. Another is the game played by Kafka's “Fellowship” (“Gemeinschaft”), which counts five people and does not know how to exclude a rejected sixth person, who keeps coming back. Does he embody that first coincidence of every biography -- being born somewhere? Does he speak in an accent that since Biblical times can prevent access? Can assimilation in language, clothes, gestures help? These questions come up for a foreign guest staying in a New York apartment building when the doorman doesn't simply repeat his rehearsed „how are you?“ and exchange it as a password. The coincidence of this encounter transforms the lobby entrance into the staging area for stories that roam through persons, places, times, and mix their affiliations anew.

Skulptur21 is an 8 meter long sculpture made of wood, wire, carbon fiber and acrylic paint. It consists of individual hollow elements that are loosely assembled together, partly elevated on wires, on a specially constructed table. The different elements are painted white, light and dark grey, and black. The sculpture is a structural visualisation of Hans Richter‘s experimental film Rhythmus 21. The film, created around 1921, is considered a milestone in film history and is one of the first abstract films ever made. It consists of varying geometric elements that move within the pictorial frame of the screen and change in shape. The elements also change in size, giving the impression of movement towards and away from the viewer, thereby creating a feeling of depth. Skulptur21 shows this movement in space. In the sculpture, every element of the film is shown as a three- dimensional object. Size, position and colour of the elements correspond to those shown in the film. The viewer can physically retrace the elements of the lm by walking along the sculpture. One second of the 3-minute lm corresponds to about 5 cm of the 8 meter long sculpture. The lm can be seen in its entirety at one glance. The sculpture reveals relationships between the elements over the entire duration of the film. However, the translation of the film Rhythmus 21 into sculpture goes beyond a mere reinterpretation of the lm. Skulptur21 creates a connection between the time present in film and the space of architecture. In his paintings, Hans Richter was concerned with studying movement and rhythm. Taking as a basis musical theories, he started developing horizontal rolls depicting geometric elements that gradually change in shape and thus suggest movement. Skulptur21 can likewise be read as a musical score, a linear experimental notation that visualises dynamic proportions and progressions. In addition to o ering a new way of looking at the film Rhythmus 21, the aim of Skulptur21 is to enable the viewer to make their own personal discoveries and experiences, no matter what background or field they come from.

Gerald Schauder a.k.a. KABELTON, born and raised in Munich, socialized in Graz, now living in Cologne, produces media art, electronic music and electroacoustic compositions. He is working as a sound engineer for film and music

The film Passing the Rainbow, shot in Kabul by Sandra Schäfer and Elfe Brandenburger in 2007, serves as the starting point for the installation stagings. The film presents female Afghan filmmakers and their strategies for subverting the gender norms of Afghan society. The practice of filmmaking in Afghanistan and the activities of everyday life are the film?s central concerns. At issue are changing roles and the enabling of freedom of action. Passing the Rainbow dramatizes scenes from its protagonists? daily lives, making visible the interactions and contradictions between constructed images and real living conditions. The installation stagings is devided in two parts: In the two-channel video installation to act in history, Sandra Schäfer uses images from the photo archives of Nancy Hatch Duprée and the Williams Afghan Media Project. Schäfer has combined this rarely seen material with footage of her own, shot during multiple research trips between 2002 and 2008. The installation reflects the creative process behind Passing the Rainbow as well as its reception in Kabul and Berlin, and it uses historical images to trace the representation of women in Afghanistan. A mobile cinema installation will show Passing the Rainbow as well as two films made in 2007 by Afghan women: 25 Darsad (25 Percent), by Diana Saqeb, and Nejat (The Rescue) by Saba Sahar. With the short film Saya (Shadow) by Nacir Alqas an historical arc is drawn to the short and changeful history of Afghan cinema.

The artist, writer and curator of film programs is located in Berlin. In her artistic work, Sandra Schäfer has previously dealt with themes of representation of gender, urbanity and (post-) colonialism. Schäfer has made repeated visits to Kabul and Tehran since 2002. She has been involved in different collaborative projects with filmmakers, activists and theoreticians. Together with the Berlin based filmmaker Elfe Brandenburger and in cooperation with actresses, filmmakers and activists from Kabul she made the film Passing the Rainbow. She is co-curator of the film festival Kabul/Teheran 1979ff: Filmlandschaften, Städte unter Stress und Migration that took place 2003 at the Volksbühne Berlin. She is co-editor of a book with the same title, published in 2006 by b_books, Berlin. 2007/08 she co-curated the film festival SPLICE IN and a lecture program on gender and society in Afghanistan, its neighboring countries and Europe. In 2009 her book stagings. Kabul, Film & Production of Representation got published in the series metroZones/media at b_books, Berlin. www.mazefilm.de

At the heart of this movie is the reconstitution of a women's demonstration after the Taliban bans them from working. These sequences were born during the shooting of the movie "Osama", in November 2002, in the streets of Kabul. One thousand women came to act out the scene. Most of them did so in order to earn money. By asking for work they hoped to improve their situation in life.

Sandra Schäfer studied arts, politics and sociology in Kessel, London, and Karlsruhe. She is a Berlin based director and movie curator. In November 2002 she visited Kabul and Tehran to perform research for her documentary film, "Passing the Rainbow", and the Film Festival "Kabul/Tehran: 1979ff". She curated a series of movies for Afghanistan and Tehran in Belfast, Lüneburg, Karlsruhe, and Berlin. She is currently working in collaboration with Elfe Brandenburger on the documentary movie "Passing the Rainbow". Schäfer is the co-editor of the book "Kabul/Tehran 1979ff: Filmlandschaften, Städte unter Stress und Migration", published and released in 2006 in Berlin by b_books-Verlag. Films/videos/video installations: "Traversée de la Mangroves" (2006), "The Making of a Demonstration" (2004), "A country?s new dawn" (2001), "Die unsichtbare Dienstleistung" (2000), "Kontaktfreudig, offen und gewandt im Umgang" (1999), "England-Deutschland" (1997), "Shift" (1996).

What waves and signals run through the hybrid landscapes between agricultural use and fallow land? Who passes through them? Working, traversing, and intervening in the landscape and space meet the atmosphere, the wind, the earth. Posthuman modes of production encounter magnetism and visions of Afrofuturism. The settings of the film include a field in the Lower Rhine region, outer space, a forest in Bad Marienberg, and a research site for migratory birds. Generated voices quoting texts by feminist science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin, theorist Mark Fisher, artist Lygia Clark, and interviews with foresters and bird researchers form the soundtrack together with music by Dominik Eulberg, Manuela Schininà, Maya Shenfeld, and Tim Tetzner.

Sandra Schäfer’s artistic practice deals with the production of urban, rural and geopolitical space, history, and visual politics. Often her works are based on researches, in which she is concerned with the margins, gaps and discontinuities of our perception of history, political struggles, urban, rural and geopolitical spaces. Her works were exhibited at 66th and 67th Berlinale (Forum Expanded), Berlin; at Camera Austria, Graz; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen; Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; mumok, Vienna; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Depo, Istanbul; La Virreina, Barcelona; Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe. In 2018, she completed her doctorate focusing on militant visual and spatial politics at HFBK University of Fine Arts Hamburg. Schäfer also is professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich and an associated member of the feminist film distributor Cinenova in London. Schäfer’s practice involves curating film and lecture programmes. In 2003, for example, she curated the film festival Kabul/ Tehran 1979ff: Film Landscapes, Cities under Stress and Migration at the Volksbühne Berlin and the Filmkunsthaus Babylon together with Jochen Becker and Madeleine Bernstorff.

In her video installation “Westerwald: A Visitation”, the Berlin artist Sandra Schäfer - based on August Sander's series of Westerwald farmers - deals with the transformation of the rural region in which the artist herself grew up. Sandra Schäfer juxtaposes August Sander's perspective with her own and contemporary view. For it is also about how a region, its landscape and agricultural use have changed over the course of time. In her artistic work, Schäfer is interested in the various contemporary witnesses and their entanglements: How do the relatives/portrait subjects speak about the (artistic/documentary) pictures by August Sander? What does it mean to hear the dialect that always also marks a class difference? What knowledge is there about the photographer and his approach? How does this differ from that of photo curators in the museum context? And what does it mean for the artist, who was born and raised there, to return to create this artistic work?

The artist Sandra Schäfer works with film and video installations. Therein she deals with processes of unfolding and rereading of documents, images, spatial narratives and performative gestures. Often her works are based on longer researches, in which she is concerned with the margins, gaps and discontinuities of our perception of history, political struggles, urban and geopolitical spaces. Her works were exhibited at 66th and 67th Berlinale (Forum Expanded), Berlin; Camera Austria, Graz; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen; Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; mumok, Vienna; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Depo, Istanbul; La Virreina, Barcelona. Schäfer also is professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich and an associated member of the feminist film distributor Cinenova in London. She edited the books: Moments of Rupture: Space, Militancy & Film, Spector Books, Leipzig (2020), stagings. Kabul, Film & Production of Representation, b_books, Berlin (2009) and Kabul/ Teheran 1979ff. Filmlandschaften, Städte unter Stress und Migration, b_books, Berlin (2006, together with Jochen Becker and Madeleine Bernstorff).