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A film that shows locations in California that has "played" other parts of the world in early Hollywood films. By revisiting these old locations, documenting them as they look today and by letting sounds from the old films inhabit them, the films constructs the Californian landscape as a place out of time and place.

John Skoog (born 1985 in Malmö, lives and works in Copenhagen) studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. He was awarded the Baloise Art Prize in 2014 and the Ars-Viva prize in 2013. Recent exibitions and screenings include Mad Horizon, Index Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, SE (2016) Värn, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (MUMOK, 2015), Slow Return, Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main (2015), Shadowland, Pilar Corrias, London (2015),Berlin International Film Festival (2015) and Federsee, Johan Berggren Gallery, Malmö (2013). Skoog is currently the professor of the film class at the Art Academy in Mainz.

Synopsis: A film taking place in the dusk hour between that the sun has set and it gets dark. Thirteen scenes that show a rural village in the southern provinces of Sweden. Dusk falls, and you`re walking home and suddenly you can?t tell if it is the neighbor?s dog or a wolf standing further down the road.

Sent på Jorden is John Skoog?s debut film. Skoog, b. 1985, started as a teenager making experimental film, photography and film installations, shown at film festivals and museums around the world. John studied fine arts at Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Kunst, Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main.

In the early 1940’s the farm-worker Karl-Göran Persson started to fortify his small house in the flat farmlands of southern Sweden. He wanted to build a place where he and the people in the village could find refuge in the event of a Soviet invasion. He took any metal he could get cheap or for free from the neighboring farmers and used it as reinforcement for the cement casting of the house`s new exterior walls. Karl-Göran lived alone in the house and continued his re-construction until his death in 1975.

Working with film and video John Skoog follows in the tradition of Scandinavian film making through the use of stark landscapes and slow pacing. The poetic use of the Swedish landscape and powerful studies of character and emotion evoke memories of film works by cinema greats such as Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller. Skoog has been awarded the Baloise Art Prize, Art Basel (2014), ’1KM film scholarship’ from Stockholm Film festival (2013), the Hessische Kulturstiftung travel grant (2013), the ARS-VIVA Prize (2013/14), Malmö Art Museum 2013 Art Grant, Aase & Richard Björklund fund, and the ARTFILM Prize, Lichter International Film Festival (2013) and a one year working grant from Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn (2014). As part of winning the Ars-Viva Prize 2013/14, Skoog has shown at Neues Museum Weimar, MMK Museum fur Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main and GAM – Galleria civica d’arte moderna e contemporanea Torino. In 2015, as the winner of the Baloise Art Prize, Skoog will have two major solo exhibitions at Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK), Frankfurt am Main and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (MUMOK). Born in Kvidinge 1985, Skoog graduated from the Staedelschule, Frankfurt in 2012. Selected shows and festivals include: Slow Return, MMK Museum fur Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main (2015); 65th Berlinale, Berlin (2015); Real DMZ Project 2014, Cheorwon-gun, Gangwon-do & Artsonje Center, Seoul (2014); Redoubt, Towner Contemporary Art Museum, Eastbourne (2014); A Time for Dreams: 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA), Moscow (2014); Ars Viva Prize: Truth/Reality, MMK Museum fur Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main; GAM Galleria civica d’arte moderna e contemporanea, Turin (2014); Taming the Narrative, Basis as a part of b3 Biennale, Frankfurt am Main (2013); Echo Release, NKV Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden (2013); Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (2014 & -13); Video_Dumbo, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York (2013); Spectrum Rotterdam International Film Festival, Rotterdam (2013); Sent på Jorden, Art Lab Gnesta, Gnesta (2013); Indielisboa, Lisbon International Film Festival, Lisbon, (2014 & -12), Rencontres Internationales: Paris, Centre Pompidou, Paris, (2014 & -11). John Skoog lives and works in Frankfurt.

A Radiophonic Fairytale Digital film, specially made for the Cronica 021-2005 DVD: "Can I have 2 minutes of your time?". All Images by Ran Slavin Audio by The Beautiful Schizophonic

ran slavin aka Tonr, Extract, Iran_Comp, Aerial, Rose Of Jericho, is an audio/video composer and improviser. As a bassist, guitarist and installation artist, he started playing and performing in various experimental noise bands in Israel and London in the 80?s and 90?s, but since the mid 90?s became involved in digital music, sound and video processing. His work is often a cross over between sound and image and the symbiotic connection between them, exploring non linear video and real-time cinema with customized video and sound software through themes of abstract graphics, urbanism, dislocation and digital processing. His narratives evolve and mutate around deconstruction of video and sound.

ALENBI MOMENT. IMAGINED SCENARIO. THIS SHORT FILM FOCUSES ON THE MEMORY OF A PLACE. AS IF THE `PLACE`, IN THIS CASE ALENBI STREET IN TEL AVIV, WOULD HAVE ITS OWN GHOSTLY MEMORY OF A MURDER. THE ONLY WITNESSES AND SILENT COMMENTATORS ARE THE MYSTERIOUSLY SHED MANNEQUINS IN A DARKLY LIT STORE FRONT AND THE GRAFFITI BASHED IMAGES OF A BUS STOP SIGN.

>Bio Ran Slavin is a cross media audio-visual artist. An image hunter. He is working with various forms of video and sound, live audio visual improvisation, non interactive video, cinema, digital and acoustic music, painting. Working within the contemporary art world and the new music scene, his visual and sound oeuvre are hard to define and have been described as multi faceted, intensely urban, dark and often surreal. His audio work is a wide culmination of sonic processes and panoramas of electro acoustic digital manipulations, often guitar and piano derived. His exploration into live audio visual improvisation is image based, collapsing the narrative. Digital formations of non linear story telling and generative sound. Holding a close interaction between real time sound and video where the visual flow triggers sound alternately, based on data such as colors and speed of the moving image, like a mind stream or a reassembly of memory. For this he has built a program where he can take control or lose control over the course of things, in real time, in a platform where text sound and image juxtapose, streams of images morph and surface. His diverse catalogue of videos is a hybrid body of works ranging from short mini `stories` to medium length feature videos. He released on the record labels Cronica, Mille Plateaux, Sub Rosa among others and exhibiting and performing his works in various platforms. www.ranslavin.com BIO Currently Lives in Tel Aviv, works freelance as director and online/compositing artist 1986-1990 Graduates from the Betsalel Art Academy - Jerusalem 1985 Lives in Singapore 1983-1986 Lives in London 1975-78 Lives in San Francisco 1967 Born in Jerusalem AWARDS 2007 Production benefit for Insomniac City, the Rabinowits-Yehosua fund for cinema projects, Tel Aviv Israel 2006 Prize in Art and Design from the Ministry of Science and Culture, Israel 2006 Production benefit for Insomniac City, the Rabinowits-Yehosua fund for cinema projects, Tel Aviv Israel 2004 Prize for alternative music video with Lior Har Lev at the ?951? video awards, Tel Aviv Israel 2002 Prize for best music video at the ?951? video awards, Tel Aviv Israel 2002 First prize for sound design of channel `5+` id`s, Promax, Los angeles USA 1999 Best soundtrack prize for the music of the documentary film: `Stress`. at the Doc-Aviv Film Fest, Tel Aviv Israel 1996 Prize for original director at the haifa music video competition, Israel 1994 The Young Artist Award, Tel Aviv Israel 1991 The Sharet Fund Award, Tel Aviv Israel

GOLDEN TWILIGHT MOMENTS Digital film, specially made for the Cronica 021-2005 DVD: "Can I have 2 minutes of your time?". All Images and Audio by Ran Slavin

ran slavin aka Tonr, Extract, Iran_Comp, Aerial, Rose Of Jericho, is an audio/video composer and improviser. As a bassist, guitarist and installation artist, he started playing and performing in various experimental noise bands in Israel and London in the 80?s and 90?s, but since the mid 90?s became involved in digital music, sound and video processing. His work is often a cross over between sound and image and the symbiotic connection between them, exploring non linear video and real-time cinema with customized video and sound software through themes of abstract graphics, urbanism, dislocation and digital processing. His narratives evolve and mutate around deconstruction of video and sound.

Insomniac City [vesion1] `Insomniac City` Is based upon an interlaced mix of urban contemporary snapshots and fiction, presenting the current city of Tel Aviv, and an unstable radical shift of the city space time and matter. This video works with the city space, with its scapes and sounds, combining digital interventions in the real [in the documentary] drifting between the known reality and a hallucinatory one. The movie blenders urban spaces and modes of perception. It encounters a loss of identity, estrangement, water, dream, a gun, a girl, present, futuristic architecture, a cab, deserted space and an artificial island. Through the figure at play, It explores the city spaces, from the new shiny high towers to the slums, from air to sea, processing the city / experienced through a confused labyrinth of insomnia. It explores through video and sound, a hidden psych in the chaos of urban texture and offers a mixed gaze on a city in transit, shift and decay while continuously checking the boundaries of reality and illusion, present dream and future, architecture - possible architecture and artificial islands - both physical and meta physical. Through an insomniac like stream, a gaze drifts from external perception to internal suspension, rendering what we see and what we think we see into an emotional twilight zone. Insomnia: A periodical suspension of the functions, as well as of those of the voluntary and rational soul; that state of the animal in which there is a lessened acuteness of sensory perception, a confusion of ideas, and a loss of mental control, followed by a more or less unconscious state. Insomniac City, by video and sound artist Ran Slavin is a cinematic project in parts which changes form and length as it develops. The first part has been shown at the 9th Venice Biennial of Architecture in september 2004, then at the Tel Aviv Haifa and Jerusalem Cinematheque`s, at the 27th festival Cinéma Méditerranéen de Montpellier in October, at "Documentaire Sur Grand Ecran" ? Paris in November [part1], at Audio-Frames sonic arts festival ? Lille ,France and at the 9th International Istanbul Biennial. written ,directed, edited, music, camera, & post production: Ran Slavin actors: Irad Matzliah, Ran Slavin stereo mix: Ran Slavin dolby mix: Itzik Cohen underwater camera: Alain Daniel special thanks to Daniel Milo and Itzik Cohen made in Tel Aviv [2004-5]

BIO 1967 BORN IN JERUSALEM, ISRAEL. 1975-78 LIVES IN THE USA. 1983 1986 LIVES LONDON. 1985 LIVES IN SINGAPORE 1986-1990 GRADUATES FROM THE ?BETSALEL ART ACADEMY? 1990-2005 LIVES IN TEL AVIV, WORKS FREELANCE IN POST PRODUCTION AS ONLINE EDITOR. AWARDS 1991 ?THE SHARET FUND AWARD? 1994 ?THE YOUNG ARTIST AWARD? 1999 BEST SOUNDTRACK CATEGORY PRIZE FOR THE FILM ?STRESS? AT THE ?DOC-AVIV?  DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL, TEL AVIV. 2002  FIRST PRIZE FOR SOUND DESIGN FOR CHANNEL IDS, PROMAX,LOS ANGELES. 2002 FIRST PRIZE FOR BEST VIDEO CLIP AT THE ?951? VIDEO AWARDS, TEL AVIV SECOND PRIZE FOR BEST ALTERNATIVE MUSIC VIDEO CLIP AT THE ?951? VIDEO AWARDS, TEL AVIV

"Insomniac City" is a mutation of experimental cinema and dark thriller, combing digital interventions over documentary images. Tel Aviv is cut up and seemingly grafted into a landscape that is both physical and mental; between reality and dreams, and documentary and fiction. Through figures that are staged, this video explores the areas of the city, which is experienced through maze-y insomnia, from the sparkling new towers, to the poorest districts, from the atmosphere to the sea. It explores a psyche hidden in the chaos of urban texture.

Ran Slavin was born in Jerusalem in 1967. He has lived in the USA, London, and Singapore. He currently lives and works in Tel Aviv. His videos are screened in film libraries, art centres, international digital art and new media festivals and exhibitions, and events in the area of sound and experimental music. A selected few include Transmediale, at V2 in Rotterdam, and at the Istanbul Biennial in Peking. Slavin participated in the 9th Venice Biennial of architecture with "Insomniac City". In addition, he collaborates with dancers and choreographers, and with musicians like John Zorn and Thomas Köner.

Radio Digital film, specially made for the Cronica 021-2005 DVD: "Can I have 2 minutes of your time?". All Images by Ran Slavin Audio by James Eck Rippie

ran slavin aka Tonr, Extract, Iran_Comp, Aerial, Rose Of Jericho, is an audio/video composer and improviser. As a bassist, guitarist and installation artist, he started playing and performing in various experimental noise bands in Israel and London in the 80?s and 90?s, but since the mid 90?s became involved in digital music, sound and video processing. His work is often a cross over between sound and image and the symbiotic connection between them, exploring non linear video and real-time cinema with customized video and sound software through themes of abstract graphics, urbanism, dislocation and digital processing. His narratives evolve and mutate around deconstruction of video and sound.

Smoke and Mirrors / Ran Slavin / Video and sound / Length: 3:54 minutes/ Loop / Media: 1 or 3 channel HD video file screening. Exterior, south Tel Aviv, night, a gas station`s spot lights suddenly burst with steam, a nearby car suddenly sets on fire. Mirrored smoke patters appear to hover under a bridge and to burst in old dusty luck machines in a beat pinball game arcade. A silhouette of a mysteriously still man blinks on and off nervously. Smoke and Mirrors. from Wikipedia: Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a fraudulent, deceptive or insubstantial explanation or description. The source of the name is based on magician`s illusions, where magicians make objects appear or disappear by extending or retracting mirrors amid a confusing burst of smoke and also a slang for magic acts and `freak show` displays that depend on`trompe l`oeil` effects. More generally, "smoke and mirrors" may refer to any sort of presentation by which the audience is intended to be deceived. The term is derived from the dubious vaudeville ( vaudeville etymology: voix de ville, or "voice of the city") techniques traditionally used by stage magicians.

Ran Slavin is a video and digital media artist. After graduating from the Art Academy in Jerusalem in 1990, continuously treading both visual and sound paths. Today Ran works with video installation, cinema, experimental film and live-video-sound performance. Attracted to the uncanny, a world of wonder and a universe of unresolved mysteries, some of the narratives and visual vocabulary in his work feature images of an abandoned gas station bursting in steam and a car on fire (Smoke and Mirrors), a sunken man underwater with a gun, a tied tattooed woman in a hotel room in Shanghai plotting with a stranger on the phone and a dancing dandy assassin in the corridor (The Insomniac City Cycles), people sound-synched to the barking of dogs (Everything Is Urgent), a medieval science fiction history revealed under Jerusalem (Ursulimum). Sound; With various wide activity in the Israeli underground music scene, from pioneering punk in the early 80`s and post punk in late 80`s in London, to experimental and contemporary electronica. Ran`s brief history in music includes collaborations with musicians and dance ensembles, groups, and performances with over ten solo records released on the labels Crónica, Mille Plateaux, Sub Rosa, Ak Duck, Earsay, Hed Arzi, Nana Discs. Ran has explored metal music, drum and bass, punk, ambient, glitch, experimental. His sound is restless and currently verges on drone compositions. Live video-sound; In Ran`s live performances, pulses of video and texts translate live into a visual-sound meltdown in a process of randomization. Disturbance and contradiction form a visual-musical score. Accidental esthetics form a music of chance. A custom Module, interprets video data of motion, color velocity, mouse movements into sound. The result can`t be fully predetermined. This exploration questions the true essence of live performance. Is it destined to be a repetition and presentation of a well rehearsed and predetermined score or a complete new and unforeseen event? How does video interpret into sound? What kind of meanings will it produce? Selected exhibitions, screenings and presentations include Mediations Biennale (Polin), Manifesta (Belgium), Venice Architecture Biennial, Liverpool Biennial, The Torino Film festival, Maerzmusic (Berlin) Ars Electronica [Austria, an honorary mention], Transmediale [Berlin], Deaf [Rotterdam], Rencontres Internationales [Madrid-Berlin-Paris], 9th International Istanbul Biennial, Videoformes (France) Netwerk Contemporary Art Centre [Aalst], Petah Tikva Art Museum [Israel], Museum on the Seam (Jerusalem), Gallery Givon (Israel)

THE INSOMNIAC CYCLES Written produced and directed by Ran Slavin 70" min. A man is waking up in a parking lot, shot in the shoulder, he can?t recall how he ended up there, where did the gun he carried with him disappear and whether he is a victim of a crime, or alternatively, a killer. ?The insomniac city cycles?, fluctuates at that point on the axis of reality versus fiction, reality versus imagination and creates an affinity between the protagonist?s mental space and the urbanite one. The colossal and frantic urban topography which envelops the protagonist exhibits a limbo which fables to a mental state where the character is ?stuck? between wakefulness and sleep up to the point where all borders become blurred and reality itself resembles a dream, or better said, a nightmare, in which one can no longer distinguish between truth and lie. He continuously asks himself, ?Is it real??, ?Am I dreaming??, ?Where am I?? Slavin succeeded in creating a spectacular cinematic process in which opposites simultaneously occur as an action of self negation (for example, through the intelligent and rational use of instant replay) and by doing so constructs a space-time devoid reality, both imaginary and real at the same time, which enables us to examine all occurrences, including dreams and memories, as having an equal ontological status. The 2nd part of the film starts when a woman waking up in a hotel room in Shanghai to the sound of a ringing phone. Her legs are weakly tied and she is lying alone in bed. On the line there is a guy who, according to the woman, ?resembles the shot man from the dream?. That is to say, was it a dream after all? The plot keeps branching out and the photogenic solitude asks for her own death. She paid in advance and she is entitled to it. A serial killer enters the frame. The city?s denseness clears off itself to re-repeated images of helpless caged animals which exhibits the woman?s hallucinatory mental space, which in itself, is the mind, the consciousness. The first encounter with a narrative based screenplay (after more than 30min into the film) initially creates a factious sense of a firm grasping point, of orientation, though Slavin creates a screenplay without determination. By that, it enables the viewer to continuously ask himself ? Is it real? A dream? Or is it a memory? The fact that the tale of the protagonist is actually the woman?s own dream (which her own story might be a dream, a hallucination or a nightmare deprived of concrete time and space) discerns the veracity question of ?what?s real? as irrelevant and thus expands the discussion to the rational recognition and the perception of time as an a-priory conscious idea. In order to understand the artistic process in ?The insomniac city cycles? one must remember that this film is actually the 4th version of this film project, created as a direct continuation to the 3rd version named ?Insomniac City? (which is the first part of this film with slight changes). The fact that the film is so much different from one version to the other, changing the narrative using the same images in a different cut, and thus expand and deepen the discussion over it, while using documentary photography to create a hallucinatory alternative reality. (Liora Belford) Cast: Lee Trifon, Adi Gilad, Yaniv Abraham, Irad Mazliah, Ran Slavin Crew Dialogues co-written with Monika Bielskyte Voice of man in pet shop: Ohad Naharin Line Producer; Lior Ianai Lighting; Nimrod Golan Dressing; Maayan Goldman Makeup; Dorit Cohen Camera; Ran Slavin Underwater camera; Alain Daniel Editor; offline, online and post production; Ran Slavin Music and soundtrack design; Ran Slavin Sound mix; Itzik Cohen Sound editors; Ran Slavin, Itzik Cohen, Omri levy

Ran Slavin, who is in charge of writing the screenplay, directing, editing, sound design and original music of ?The insomniac city cycles?, is one of the most prominent new video-sound artists to emerge from Israel with continuous international screenings and exhibitions. His work is cross media and includes photography, cinema, video and sound installations, digital and acoustic music and lives video/sound improvisations. He is active in both the contemporary international music and art scenes. His audio work is a culmination of digitally processed acoustic sources which he turns into generative yet evasive atmospheres. It exists somewhere between the audible and the visual, at times, combined into real time performances.

"Walk" is a 28 minute long video, which should be looped. It depicts the Orange Order at their annual parade in Portadown, Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland. The Orangemen say that they do not march - they walk, accompanied by various marching bands playing flutes, fifes, accordions, bagpipes, drums, and brass and silver instruments. The stereo soundtrack of their music has been distorted. The participants walk into themselves, eventually disappearing, leaving only an empty road. The Orange Order is a Protestant organisation based predominantly in Northern Ireland. It was founded near Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland in 1795. To its members and supporters the Orange Order celebrates Protestant culture and identity, but its critics accuse it of sectarianism and anti-Catholicism. These parades take part throughout the summer "marching season", climaxing on the 12th of July. They celebrate the victory of the Protestant King William of Orange (William III) over the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Each year in Portadown the demonstration causes friction as they attempt to pass through the Catholic Garvaghy Road on their way to church in Drumcree, and often ends in violence with the police and British army intervening to keep order.

Victor Sloan was born in Dungannon, Co. Tyrone in Northern Ireland. He lives and works in Portadown, Co. Armagh. He studied at Belfast and Leeds Colleges of Art. Victor Sloan is an influential artist and educator. As one of Ireland's major visual artists, he has developed an international reputation for creating powerful images, which display his prodigious versatility and inventiveness. He employs video and photography to produce works commenting on various political, social and cultural aspects of Northern Ireland. The Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast initiated a major retrospective exhibition in 2001. In 2002 Victor Sloan was awarded an MBE. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and an academician of the Royal Ulster Academy. He has won many awards including the Academy?s Conor Prize in 1988 and the Gold Medal in 1995. Victor Sloan has exhibited widely throughout Europe, North America, South America and Asia. His work can be found in numerous private and public collections worldwide.

Paris - temps incertain, temps de la fin. Une cycliste, cavalière d'une possible apocalypse, erre autour de la ville éteinte, déserte, muette - guettant d'hypothétiques survivances. La Samaritaine, cube blanc, désaffecté, semble s’offrir comme un refuge ; mais elle se révèle le théâtre d’univers parallèles où se décide, avec les quatre derniers vivants, le sens de l'effondrement en cours. Les personnages qui y vivent sont en “arrêt de mort”, suspendus entre deux états, traversant les possibles, pris dans une fin du monde sans cesse imminente, et pourtant sans cesse différée, et encore sans cesse recommencée. C’est le bâtiment même qui va incarner de manière vivante cet interstice travaillant toutes les apparitions qui semblent traverser le lieu. Ce sont les modalités fluctuantes de cet espace de la Samaritaine qui vont se déployer, amenant d’oracles SM en chansons nihilistes, de danses de séduction désespérées en rituels de mutation, la révélation claire qu’il n’y aura pas de révélation. Les fins du mondes et les croyances sont défaites. Il n'est plus question de fin du monde, mais de commencements d'autres mondes - par la métamorphose. Apocalypse nous-autres.

SMITH ?http://www.fillesducalvaire.com/artiste/smith/ Le travail de SMITH s’appréhende comme une observation des mues de l’identité humaine. La photographie y côtoie le cinéma, la vidéo, la chorégraphie, le bio-art, la sculpture et l’utilisation des nouvelles technologies, dans une exploration des combinaisons des approches scientifique et philosophique, ouvertes sur les potentiels de la fiction. Après l’obtention d’un Master de Philosophie à la Sorbonne, du diplôme de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Photographie d’Arles, et du Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains, SMITH engage l’écriture d’une thèse de doctorat, à l’UQAM (Montréal). Ses travaux furent présentés sous la forme d’expositions personnelles aux Rencontres internationales de la photographie d’Arles, à la galerie les Filles du Calvaire et au Palais de Toyko à Paris, au musée de la Photographie d’Helsinki en Finlande, mais aussi dans de nombreux pays d’Europe (Suisse, Suède, Autriche, Luxembourg, Allemagne, Espagne, Italie...), d’Asie (Chine, Cambodge, Corée du Sud) et d’Amérique Latine (Mexique, Chili, Uruguay) et aux USA. Sa première monographie, «Löyly», est parue aux éditions Filigranes en 2013, suivie de « Saturnium » aux éditions Actes Sud en 2017, et d’un livre d’entretien avec l’historienne de l’art Christine Ollier en 2017 aux éditions André Frère. Paraissent en 2018 puis 2019 deux autres livres de photographie : "Astroblème" (Filigranes) et "Valparaiso" (André Frère). Son premier et son second moyen-métrages, "Spectrographies" et "TRAUM", furent diffusés en festivals et cinémas en Europe. Ses performances artistiques et chorégraphiques furent présentées au Centre Pompidou, au Théâtre de la Cité Internationale avec le soutien de la Fondation Hermès – New Settings, au CND (Pantin), au Musée de la Danse (Rennes) et au CCN de Montpellier. SMITH travaille actuellement à l’élaboration de son nouveau projet-monde "Désidération", avec la Cellule Cosmiel (Lucien Raphmaj, Jean-Philippe Uzan, SMITH) et le studio DIPLOMATES, qui explore les liens entre l’humanité contemporaine et son cosmos originaire : http://www.desideration.space ** Lucien Raphmaj https://lucienraphmaj.wordpress.com/ Lucien Raphmaj, écrivain né d’une œuvre élaborée avec SMITH, a écrit avec lui le scénario de ses films, depuis "Spectrographies" (2015) jusqu’aux "Apocalyptiques" (2019) en passant par leurs projets multidisciplinaires tels que "TRAUM" (film, exposition, textes, vidéos, spectacle de danse). C’est cette écriture à mille voix, fruit d’un travail personnel, mais aussi expérience d’une spectralisation de l’écriture qui se laisse traverser par d’autres voix, qui est celle qu’il mène encore à travers l’univers des « Apocalyptiques ». Il participe, en tant que critique, à la revue culturelle en ligne Diacritik et tient un blog sur la latérature. Son premier ouvrage, "Blandine Volochot", paraît aux éditions Abrüpt en Janvier 2020.

Dad?s Stick features three objects that my father showed me shortly before he died. Two of these were so well-used that their original forms and functions were almost completely obscured. The third object seemed to be instantly recognizable, but it turned out to be something else entirely.

Born 1952 - London, England John Smith was born in London in 1952 and studied film at the Royal College of Art. Since 1972 he has made over 40 film, video and installations works. His films have been shown in cinemas, art galleries and on television throughout the world and awarded major prizes at film festivals in Leipzig, Oberhausen, Hamburg, Cork, Geneva, Palermo, Graz, Uppsala, Bangkok, Ann Arbor and Chicago. One-person presentations of his work include exhibitions at Ikon Gallery (Birmingham), Pearl Gallery (London), Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool), Kunstmuseum Magdeburg (Germany) and retrospectives at the Venice Biennale and Oberhausen, Cork, Tampere, Uppsala, Regensburg and Winterthur international film festivals. John Smith is Professor of Fine Art at the University of East London. "The films of John Smith conduct a serious investigation into the combination of sound and image, but with a sense of humour that reaches out beyond the traditional avant-garde audience. His films move between narrative and absurdity, constantly undermining the traditional relationship between the visual and the aural. By blurring the perceived boundaries of experimental film, fiction, and documentary, Smith never delivers what he has led the spectator to expect." ?Mark Webber, Leeds International Film Festival, 2000 "The popularity of John Smith?s films can be explained by his wry sense of humour, his play on language, and the elegance of his visual style. His understated humour thinly conceals a darker layer of meaning in his films. John Smith?s skill as both narrator and composer of visual narratives leaves us discomforted even as we smile." ?Catherine Elwes, UK/Canadian Video Exchange, 2000 "These films can be enjoyed as stories; films for everyone, especially in their humour. They comprise a personal topography of East London, blighted but alive. Viewers are enticed to interrogate the very illusions that films construct in front of their eyes?and behind their backs." ?A.L. Rees, A Directory of British Film and Video Artists, 1996

“Things are never by themselves. Neither are we. They are among themselves and linger in our surroundings. And we sometimes see them, and us among them, as things among things. Yes, but not quite, not only.” This is how Jan Verwoert starts his text ‘Enter the Eerie Thingscapes’ on Sam Smith’s video installation ‘Form Variations’ (2014). The work, shot in the widescreen CinemaScope ratio, is an atmospheric looping meditation on cinema’s relationship to space and things. The non-narrative structure coalesces object, figure and location into a series of composed vignettes that swing between the hyperreal and the surreal. Key to the work are two specific references from the beginning of Michelangelo Antonioni’s ‘L’Eclisse’ that illuminate ideas that lie subtly in the fabric of the 1962 film. Specifically, the opening shot in which the character of Riccardo`s arm is perceived first as inanimate form, then revealed as flesh.

Sam Smith lives and works between London and Sydney. His current artistic practice spans video, sculpture, installation and performance. From 2013 to 2014 he was an artist in residency as part of the Künstlerhaus Bethanien International Studio Programme in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions and performances include ‘The Performative Minute’ at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2014); ’Notes on the Apparatus' selected by Vdrome for the Artists' Film Biennial, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2014); 'Frames of Rererence', a solo exhibtion at The Royal Standard as part of their Liverpool Biennial 2014 programme (2014) and 'Form Variations' at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2014); He has participated in numerous group shows including 'Online/Offline. Encoding Everyday Life for Vorspeil Transmediale', Altes Finanzamt, Berlin (2014); 'Oblivion', Zweigstelle Berlin (2014); 'Conquest of Space', COFA Galleries, Sydney, Australia (2014); 'Larger than life', Temporära Konsthallen, Stockholm (2013) and 'Framed Perceptions', Sinne, Helsinki (2013).

The loose narrrative follows the progress of a young man who has arrived in a small provincial town in order to present his candidature for job there. The job at hand entails the overseeing of the redevelopment of a piece of land. As agriculture has declined in the area, there are those who would like to see the land used more profitably, through the construction of a dormitary suburb for a nearby city. In order to expediate such a project however, there would need to be someone put in charge of its management who would tolerate some fairly unorthodox procedures. The young man is seen to be suitable for this post. It soon becomes evident that there are other forces at play in this territory. The area seems to physically affect all those who move through it, with various forms of movement. It seems that the body of those affected becomes charged by a rhythmic force, moving them to sporadic and involuntary dance, during everyday activities. These movements are never noticed or remarked upon.

Gregg Smith is originally from Cape Town. He obtained a degree from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in Cape Town, and after having studied at the National Studio of Contemporary Arts in Fresnoy, he has since, put on art projects and theatre in South Africa and abroad, blending performance, painting and art in public space. His work has recently been shown in different places: Biennale of Dakar, Musée de Jeu de Paume, the Rotterdam Film Festival, etc. Among other remarkable projects in the domain of art in public places, we have "The Lovephones" (Cape Town, 2000) and "The Lovephones in London" (London, é//&), "The Long Street Baths Mural Project (Cape Town, 1994-98), and his project coming to Cape Town "very Real Time". Recently , the Contemporary Art Space of Castille in Spain commissioned a new work for the exhibition "Our Hospitality" directed by Rodrigo Alonso.

Synopsis ? Love, jealousy and wanting to be in two places at once Like a nighthawk at the diner, a young man recounts his story of love gone wrong. His marriage has been quietly growing lifeless, when his wife proposes that they attempt to rekindle their passion through, the dance which first brought them together, the tango. But not any old tango, rather a more risqué partner swapping form of the dance, with different partners in separate venues.

Gregg Smith: biography Gregg Smith is an artist from Cape Town, South Africa. He completed his studies at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 1991 and since then has been active in a range of contemporary art and theatre projects in South Africa and abroad. With origins in painting, performance, and art in public space, his present work incorporates aspects of all these practices in the development of video installations. Until 2000, he lived in Cape Town, where he was active as an artist and also a professor of painting at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. In 2001-02, Gregg was a participant at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, and following this moved to France where he studied film-making at Le Fresnoy studio national des arts contemporains (2002-04). His work is equally accepted in contemporary art and film festival circuits; recent projects have been shown at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Le Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France), La Biennale de Dakar (Senegal) and Galerie Krinzinger (Vienna, Austria). He is at present based in Paris, France and is a professor in the Master of Arts in public sphere program (MAPS) at ECAV.

'Covid Messages' is a video work in six parts, based around broadcasts of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 press conferences. The work focusses on the British government’s attempts to eliminate the virus through the use of magic spells and rituals. While the pandemic spreads and the death toll rises, the Prime Minister makes repeated errors of judgement. Exasperated by his many mistakes, the spirits of the dead rise up and intervene.

John Smith was born in Walthamstow, London in 1952 and studied at the Royal College of Art, after which he became an active member of the London Filmmakers' Co-op. Inspired in his formative years by conceptual art and structural film, but also fascinated by the immersive power of narrative and the spoken word, he is renowned for a diverse body of work that subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary, fiction, representation and abstraction, playfully exploring and exposing the language of cinema. Since 1972 he has made over sixty film, video and installation works that have been shown in museums, galleries and independent cinemas around the world. Smith’s solo exhibitions include Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover; Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig; Centre d'Art Contemporain de Noisy-le-Sec, Paris; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, Magdeburg; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Weserburg Museum for Modern Art, Bremen; Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden and Royal College of Art Galleries, London. His work is held in public collections that include Tate Gallery; Arts Council England; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz; FRAC Île de France, Paris and Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, Magdeburg.

In the dead of winter, the gas flares and spectral sounds of an oil boom awaken the long-abandoned prairies and ghost towns of North Dakota.

Adam James Smith is a British filmmaker based in New York. His filmmaking practice spans rural and urban environments across China, Japan, and the United States. His first feature film, The Land of Many Palaces, on the Chinese "ghost city" of Ordos, participated in the Sundance Institute workshop and premiered at the 2015 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The film then went on to screen at festivals and on television around the world, picking up awards in Moscow, Rome, and Kyoto. His follow-up film, Americaville, on the Chinese replica of Jackson Hole, Wyoming was sponsored by the Whicker's Foundation and the Asian Cinema Fund. The film was released in 2020 and has since been screened around the world at festivals and universities. Adam is currently completing a series of films documenting the diversity of the rural experience throughout the American heartland, including the country’s oldest Black rodeo in Okmulgee Invitational, the oil boom awakening the abandoned homesteads of North Dakota in Frontier Phantom, and Native American cowboys in Arapaho Pasture. Adam was educated in film at Stanford and anthropology at Cambridge, the latter of which he is currently an Affiliated Filmmaker at the university’s Visual Anthropology Lab.

The abandoned spaces of a Wild West theme-park, a love hotel, and a billionaire's mansion are brought to life with plant overgrowth and animals, late-summer rain, and the haunting remnants of past human habitation.

Adam James Smith is a British-American filmmaker based in New York. His filmmaking practice spans rural and urban environments across China, Japan, and the United States. Adam was educated in film at Stanford and anthropology at Cambridge, the latter of which he is currently affiliated with the university’s Visual Anthropology Lab.