Catalogue 2023-2024

A multi-vocal triptych through peripheral sites of urban infrastructure: a data center, a ring road, and a run-down mall. All three sites were built with certain worldviews: visions of the future and promises of progress that didn't turn out to be the utopias they presented themselves as. Through multi-lingual texts, a site-specific soundtrack, 16mm and 3D images, the spaces and their implications are subjectively mapped, poeticized and questioned. A poetic materialism of decay, renewal, remembering and projecting, "Center, Ring, Mall" is perhaps a mourning, but one that desires and demands a rebirth.

Mateo Vega (1994) is a filmmaker and artist from Peru raised in Amsterdam, and a graduate of Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam University College and The New School. The starting point of their work is the subjective experience of (urban) space, and the politics, histories and futurities embedded in landscapes, architecture and infrastructure. Their films and installations have been supported by Mondriaan Fund, Netherlands Film Fund, Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, and shown at places like MoMA, Film at Lincoln Center, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Framer Framed, Amsterdam Museum, and Theater Rotterdam.

Faces, bodies and actions are juxtaposed endlessly. Fragmented pieces of the woman come together and form the volume of what has been her image in the history of cinema; one marked by the routinary domination and exploitation of her body.

Colombian moving image artist and film curator whose work focuses on feminism, anticolonialism, experimental-expanded animation and new technologies. His work has won the ZINEBI Grand Award (Oscar Qualifying) at Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Film, the Silver Lynx Experimental Award at FEST - New Directors | New Films and has premiered several times at Annecy International Animation Festival.

This video was filmed in February 2022 from one of the rooms at Oriental Hotel in the city center of Hargeisa, interfering in a way in between the two opposing positions to a place that it is being referred to as fictional and real at the same time. -Position One: I was never here and therefore I never filmed this video, these images don't exist because this place doesn't, the hotel, the buildings around, the people and that military entity. The filming took place entirely somewhere else. -Position Two: I certainly was here and therefore I certainly filmed this video, these images do exist because this place does, the hotel, the buildings around, the people and that military entity. The filming took place entirely in Somaliland. Both of this positions emphasize two points of political actions, one being exterior and the other interior.

Vangjush Vellahu born in 1987 in Pogradec, Albania, lives and works between Berlin and Tirana.

Nuoro's unfinished sports hall, a scenic ruin lost in the countryside beyond the last urban offshoots, is the film's protagonist. The undisputed star. Planned during the late 1990s, contracted out in 2012, the project was finally shelved in 2017: what remains is a forest of concrete hubbed pylons, with its mammoth entrance gate, a barren esplanade surrounded by piles of debris and wild vegetation. Through this movie, Alterazioni Video depicts the “Incompiuto” (Unfinished) through a new interpretative key which overturns the scornful conception surrounding Italian unfinished public works. The phenomenon is explored on all its complexity; thanks to a plurality of registers, references to ancient Greek mythology, youtube flavored neorealism, spaghetti western stereotypes with with Sci-Fi twists and turns which will eventually end up flirting with a meta-documentaristic approach. Among Nuoro’s Palasport, different characters roam freely; there is the grumpy guardian who time travels, a young tiktoker lost in the brambles, 4 red necks musician tourists, and a dowsing surveyor fond of monologues and digging. They all have different desires which lead them to different actions, almost as if they were willing characters driven around the concrete stage by that humoungus deus ex machina that is none other than the forgotten ruins of the unfinished sports hall.

Alterazioni Video is a group of five artists founded in Milan in 2004 and now based in New York, Berlin, Faro and Palermo. The members of the group are Paololuca Barbieri Marchi, Alberto Caffarelli, Matteo Erenbourg, Andrea Masu and Giacomo Porfiri. Their work has been exhibited internationally in museums and art institutions such as: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin 2005, 52nd International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale 2007, Manifesta 7 Rovereto 2008, Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture 2009, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Turin 2010, Museo Maxxi, Rome 2010, Performa 09 and 11 New York, MoMA PS1 Performance Dome New York 2012, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York 2013, PAC Milan 2014, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum Berlin 2015, Quadriennale di Roma 2016, Film Retrospective at Spazio Oberdan Milan 2016, Manifesta 12 Palermo 2018, Galleria Campoli Presti Paris 2019, VAC Foundation Venice 2019 and, Triennale Milan 2020, Museo Nivola Nuoro 2021 In 2007, for the 52nd Venice Biennale, in the main exhibition curated by Robert Storr, they presented "Painting" a work documenting the continuous layering of writing and erasures on the exterior walls of the San Vittore prison in Milan. Writings, images and attempts at censorship become the linguistic elements of one work, one large "painting" that documents, as it progresses, the life of a community. They are also known for creating "Unfinished." For more than 15 years, the art collective Alterazioni Video has been investigating the phenomenon of unfinished public works in Italy, documenting and mapping more than 750 buildings scattered throughout the country, works that were never completed and therefore had no function, becoming monuments to something that never existed. These unfinished works are the ruins of the contemporary era, the perfect interpretive paradigm for understanding our country's recent history. This study led to the definition of a new architectural style: Unfinished. In 2009 the group was invited together with Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson to participate in the performing art biennial Performa 09 NY to perform Symphony No. 1. In 2015 for the exhibition "Dieter Roth und die Musik," curated by Gabriele Knapstein at the Hamburger Bahnhof museum in Berlin they presented Symphony No. 2 Since 2009, the collective has produced a series of 12 docu-films called TurboFilm. TurboFilm is a filmic system or methodology, which refers to the continuous reconfiguration of experience in everyday life and social relations, work, economics, and politics. It aims to raise questions about problematic issues through a cross-format multi-format production that can circulate through different media platforms. In 2016, Cineteca Italiana dedicated a retrospective at Spazio Oberdan in Milan. They have recently collaborated with renowned fashion designer Virgil Abloh as art directors for Off-White's fashion show in Paris for the 2019 menswear collection, as well as collaborating on works inspired by the Incompiuto project presented at the Campoli Presti Gallery. They have published two volumes: Turbo Film - the uncertain future of moving images published by Lupetti Editore Incompiuto - the birth of a style published by Humboldt Books

Un jeune homme marche dans l’hiver, pour tenter de dépasser ses propres interdits : une rencontre amoureuse avec un autre homme, et une rencontre avec l’absolu et la spiritualité chrétienne. Signal GPS Perdu raconte son voyage intérieur, en associant les paysages enneigés du Jura, un texte courtois du Moyen Âge, et une application de rencontres gay sur smartphone. Tourné en Super 8 noir et blanc, le film nous emmène dans une quête contemplative et ascétique, où le contemporain se mêle à des récits anciens.

Né en 1992 à Dole (FR), Pierre Voland est réalisateur et enseignant. Il a étudié la littérature et le cinéma, puis a fait un master artistique à l’École de Recherche Graphique à Bruxelles, où il vit actuellement. Marqué par le volet lyrique du cinéma expérimental français et américain, il intègre dans son travail des éléments autobiographiques et littéraires. Son premier film, Signal GPS perdu, a été présenté dans plusieurs festivals internationaux tels que le FIDMarseille (FR), le Bejing International Short Film Festival (CN), et EXiS (KR).

Ausbeutung oder wie man die Oberfläche durchbricht (Exploitation or How to Break Through the Surface) tells the story of a restorer who studies the history of mining, guided by Hans Hesse's painting on the back of the mountain altar in St Anne's Church in Annaberg-Buchholz. The protagonist sinks deeper and deeper into her research, trying to get behind the surface of the painting and into the present of extraction of new resources.

PAULA ÁBALOS Born in 1989 in Santiago, Paula Ábalos lives and works in Leipzig (Germany). Her work has been presented at the 18th Videonale of the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2021), at the 37th Kasseler Dok Fest (Kassel, 2020), at the City Screen of the LOOP Barcelona festival (2017), at the Kunst-Film-Festival of the GEH8 (Dresden, 2020) and at the Galería Concreta Matucana 100 (Santiago, 2019). In 2020, she received the GOLDEN CUBE award from the 37th Kasseler Dok Fest, as well as the Rundgang 50Hertz award from the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum (Berlin, 2021). In 2021, one of her video works was acquired by the Kulturstiftung collection of Freistaats Sachsen. EMERSON CULURGIONI Born in 1986 in Munich (Germany), Emerson Culurgioni lives and works between Berlin and Leipzig (Germany). Director and visual artist, iI recently completed his second feature film. Trained in photography and classical documentary, he developed a research based mode of filmmaking that includes actors and non-actors. CHARLOTTE EIFLER Born in 1986 in Rostock (Germany), Charlotte Eifler lives and works between Leipzig (Germany), Berlin and Karlsruhe (Germany). Her work is located at the intersection of cinema, sound and technology. In her videos and multimedia installations, she questions the politics of representation, abstraction and computation. With a focus on feminist approaches and elements of science fiction, Charlotte Eifler explores the processes of image production and the imaginaries of alternative futures. She currently teaches image politics and editing practice at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe. Her work was presented: at the Short Film Festival in Oberhausen (2021), at the International Art Festival in Sapporo (2020), at the Siggraph Congress (Los Angeles, 2020 and 2015), at the Ann Arbor Film Festival (2020), ISCP (New York, 2019), IMPAKT (Utrecht, 2019), Grassi Museum (Leipzig, 2016), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin, 2015; to come in 2022), at the Museum of Literature in Tblisi (2015), at the Folkwang Museum (Essen, 2014), among others. DEBORAH JEROMIN Born in 1987 in Flensburg (Germany), Deborah Jeromin lives and works between Leipzig (Germany) and Crete (Greece). She develops a research on mainly historical topics and makes them accessible through different media. She focuses on textile handcraft processes, feminist history and sites of National Socialism. MIKHAIL TOLMACHEV Born in 1983 in Moscow, Mikhail Tolmachev lives and works between Leipzig (Germany) and Moscow. After studying photojournalism in Moscow and media arts in Leipzig, he began to develop a research-based practice and became interested in the ever-changing status of a document and the politically mediated production of truth and reality. He collaborates with writers, historians and artists to explore the fractures of representation and to rethink the conventions of spectatorship. His practice encompasses sound installations, videos, photographs and spatial interventions. CLEMENS VON WEDEMEYER Born in 1974 in Göttingen (Germany), Clemens von Wedemeyer lives and works between Berlin and Leipzig (Germany). He has participated at the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2020, the Cologne Film Festival in 2008, documenta 13 in Kassel (2012), the Berlin Biennale (2006) and the first Moscow Biennale (2005). Monographic exhibitions have also been devoted to him, notably at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2021), at the Auditorium du Louvres, Paris (2019), at MIEFF, Moscow (2019), at Tate Modern, London (2015), at MAXXI, Rome (2013-2014), at MoMA, New York (2007), and at ARGOS Centre for Art and Media, Brussels (2007).

In a small village on the Pacific coast of Colombia, there is a single mountain surrounded by the ocean. On this mountain, a very special bird species settled a long time ago named Soledad de Montaña, directly translated as ‘the solitary mountain’. These birds carry a magical story and it's said that it can be heard during the stormy winds once in a while..

Matthijs Vuijk (1995, NL) is a director, artist and cinematographer with a diverse background in photography, film, and virtual reality. After studying photography at the Royal Academy of the Arts in Ghent, Belgium, he pursued a Bachelor Honours in Film & Television at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) in Johannesburg, South Africa. Matthijs' collaborative graduation film, "Sikelela Tapes" (2020), was selected for the prestigious International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). His work revolves around creating captivating worlds through a powerful audiovisual atmosphere, exploring fragmented memory, space, and the emotional impact of societal shifts. Matthijs' practice has been recognized with a 'Starting Artist' stipend from the Dutch Mondriaan Fonds and gained Netherlands Film Fund support for his recent virtual reality project, "With the Whole World Crumbling, We Pick this Time to Fall in Love". Currently, he is actively engaged in various cultural initiatives in Johannesburg and Amsterdam.

The Tirana Time Capsules are a series of three virtual environments, accessible via web browser, that act as time capsules for three different neighbourhoods of Tirana in 2021. The chosen areas - 21 Dhjetori, Kombinat, and the Teatri i Gjelbërimit, an area of the Tirana Great Park - each embody different aspects of Tirana’s urban development over the past 100 years. Particularly since the early 2000s, this has been characterised by the gradual disappearance of public space as the building sector has increasingly become controlled by private interests. Drawing on the metaphor of the time capsule and employing so-called high-fidelity recording techniques such as photogrammetry and field recording, the work re-appropriates and re-constitutes these different areas of the city as virtual environments as a way of exploring the intersection of personal memory and community heritage. In addition, the work seeks to question the promises made by such recording technologies that claim to render and preserve reality as a high-fidelity digital copy: in short, what exactly is being preserved when we use these techniques of digital preservation?

Alexander Walmsley (b. 1992) is a media artist with a particular interest in the landscapes of the real and the virtual. In his practice, he investigates how our understanding of these landscapes is shifting, mediated by the new technological, environmental and social realities of the 21st century. His work is situated primarily between 3D, photography, animation, and XR. His recent work has been shown at the Daejeon Biennale of Arts and Sciences, Tirana Art Lab, Sharjah Art Foundation, The Photographers' Gallery, and VRHam! Festival. He was a commissioned artist for the Albanian pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale and has taken part in residencies at the Tirana Art Lab, Albania, and Moskosel Creative Lab, Sweden, among others. Previously, he studied Anthropology and Archaeology at the Universities of Cambridge (UK) and Geneva (CH).

A meditation on the image and the bullet. Entrance Wounds considers the modern challenge of trying to unsee an image. The film sifts through moments of the everyday, imagining a world where afterimages of disaster drift near transparency over the present.

Calum Walter is an artist working in sound and moving image. His recent work has focused on human and machine error, collective anxieties, and the cultural moment as it is shaped by emerging and consumer technologies. His films have screened at the Berlinale, Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, FIC Valdivia, Images Festival, Slamdance and the Hong Kong Arts Centre. He is a 2018 MacDowell Fellow and has received awards from the Harpo Foundation and the Illinois Arts Council. He lives in the Los Angeles area and teaches in the Film/Video program at CalArts.

Bin et Yuan sont frère et sœur. Ils partagent un appartement marseillais qu’ils occupent hors des heures de travail. C’est leur espace de repos, de calme. D’ici leur lien à l’extérieur est permanent à travers leurs téléphones, connectés à toute heure du jour et de la nuit avec leur pays d’origine, la Chine, où Yuan planifie son retour.

Née en Chine, WANG Yu est une réalisatrice basée en France depuis 2018. Suite à ses précédentes études de cinéma à Pékin et Taipei, elle développe actuellement son travail entre France et Chine.

Working with a redacted audio recording and transcript of an interview, The Whole Nine Yards explores the cool economy, loneliness and deep exposure of an anonymised New York drug dealer during his incarceration. However, his testimony, far from being police statement or court confession, is gleaned verbatim from a casting audition from a feature film (Good Time, Ben & Josh Safdie 2016) migrated into the project. He is now deceased. The recollections peak during a haunting attempted murder, nine dudes going 'the whole nine yards'. One of two new companion pieces to Intimate Distances (2020), it forms a new body of work that relates to the uneasy rapport between film-making and crime-making. This functions in a space where casting interview and crime testimonial become indiscernible, and can be received as either discarded testimony or audition as witness.

Phillip Warnell is an artist-filmmaker and writer from London, a first generation university graduate from a working class background. He produces cinematic and art works exploring a range of philosophical, poetic and sensorial thematics: ideas on human-animal relations, the political and cinematic imagination, the presence of those with prescient or extraordinary attributes and the poetics of bodily and life-world circumstances. His work is often performative, establishing elements for a film shoot as (part) event, resulting in an interplay between scripted, documented and (sometimes) precarious filming circumstances. Phillip Warnell is an academic, and has undertaken visiting professorships, fellowships and held posts at Harvard University (Film Study Center, 2017-18), Warwick University (UK) Art & History of Medicine, George Mason University (USA), University of Lincoln (UK) and Beijing Normal University (China) amongst others.

TRANSITION III Scientific and technological breakthroughs are constantly shaping humanity’s understanding of its own existence. With their poetic and atmospheric short film, Synnøve Sizou G. Wetten explores the existential questions which emerge when the borders between biology and technology are blurred.  The urgent need for feminist algorithms is put forth as an essential premise to facilitate and develop new and equitable systems in a digital reality. How will gender and sexuality evolve in a biotechnological future? What is consciousness? Could it be that we find ourselves in a computer- simulated reality? The film emphasizes empathy, touch, and presence as radical political tools.  Mirroring is a consistent theme of the film. Mirror neurons in the brain are essential neurological players which awaken and stimulate empathy. Essentially, the mirror neurons react to actions which we observe from others. These nerve cells exhibit the same behavior as when we reproduce the same action ourselves. Simulated mirrors are used in augmented reality (AR) technology. The futuristic characters in my film can be perceived as members and players in a growing community; an expanding neural network, displayed in their interplay and mirroring of one another. 

Synnøve Sizou G. Wetten is a visual artist, residing and working in Oslo, Norway. They studied at Konsthögskolan in Malmö and Akademie fur Bildende Kunst in Vienna. Their works have been shown at the Sydney Biennial, The National Museum of Art in Norway, Human Resources Los Angeles, KODE art museum, Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Kunsthall Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus, Public Art Screens- i/o/lab - Senter for Fremtidskunst, Sørlandets Art Museum and Haugar Art Museum among others. 

Winkler collected image material from the archive of the Rhenish Missionary Society in Wuppertal, primarily private pictures taken by missionaries that have been active in Namibia, Tanzania, and many other countries, predating or accompanying colonization. These layers find an additional expression in a literary form, where actual dialogues accompany her filmed and photographed tracings.

Katrin Winkler (*1983) is an artist and filmmaker. She lives and works in Berlin. Her artistic work moves between expanded cinema, intensive research, video and photography.

VANITAS refers to baroque still life paintings where the things around us are staged to symbolize both impermanence and vanity. The film VANITAS will take you into a dark and dreamy world of queer bodies and symbols ruled by change. Here you will meet the precariousness of finding intimacy and meaning in landscapes dictated by binaries. Flowers wither, fruit rot and glass break. Nothing is forever. VANITAS is performed by professional dancers, performers and singers to a poetic sound collage of popmusic. The film is filled with ambivalence and everything is in a constant state of transformation.

William Andreas Wivel is a Danish born filmmaker, working in several countries, based in Copenhagen. He received his MA in Film Science from the University of Copenhagen in 2014 with a part productional, part academic thesis on the subject; queer-feministic film aesthetics. After finishing university Wivel entered The National Film School of Denmark where he graduated as Director (Documentary) in 2019. Wivel is specialised in auteur-driven documentary film and his work has an essayistic approach to storytelling and combining strong visuals with an in-depth character study. His latest film "Say?nara" was a Tiger Short Nominee at International Film Festival Rotterdam and selected for European Media Arts Festival, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin and Rencontres Internationales Du Documentaire De Montréal amongst others. He is now working on his debut feature length hybrid documentary “Atlas”. Jules Fischer is educated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2017 and has also studied Dance and Choreography at The National School of Performing Arts as well as in Art and Social Practice in Portland State University. Fischer has in collaborations with professional dancers and performers shown works at various art galleries and institutions, such as Kunsthal Charottenborg, Overgaden, Tranen and Glyptoteket. In 2023 they will have their first solo-show outside Denmark at UKS in Oslo. They have been chosen as part of the program “The young artistic elite 2022-23” and received work grants by Statens Kunstfond from 2017-2022, Agnete Jørgensens Billedhuggerlegat in 2017 as well as Bikubenfondens artist in residency grant in 2019-2020.

In one place, a replica of the Democracy Monument is being built. Meanwhile, the actual Democracy Monument on Ratchadamnoen road was rioting with protests demanding the reform of the monarchy.

Suwaporn Worrasit (b.1987, Bangkok) is a cinematographer and a documentary filmmaker in Thailand. He utilizes the observation methods to create his works.

Everyday Vrealities is a virtual reality documentary about different kinds of families, homes and ways of life. The viewer can, using their VR-headset, walk freely around from home to home, and witness everyday scenes happening in front of them. The film consist of nine homes, each linked to another. The viewer can witness a father playing games with his daughter, a couple doing yoga, a mother helping her son do his homework, an elderly mother teaching her daughter how to make pottery, a kid doing somersaults, a family with their newborn etc. The viewer can also re-enter some of the rooms to see new scenes. In the film there are no interviews or backstories. It is not a film of big emotions, but more of reflections and observation. It is in a sense “slow tv”, with seemingly nothing much happening. We can using the free movement in the space to quietly observe an everyday event unfolding, and even revisit it later if we want. The combined length of all clips is around 50 minutes.

Timo Wright is a media artist based in Helsinki, Finland. Noteworthy exhibitions include e.g. Nakanojo Biennale, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Kunsthall Charlottenborg, Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie, Galerie Anhava, Helsinki Art Museum, Helsinki Design Museum, Amos Anderson Art Museum, Kunsthalle Helsinki as well as festivals such as IDFA, Slamdance, Nordisk Panorama and International Film Festival Rotterdam. His films have been shown at over 80 festivals and exhibitions worldwide.

The film depicts a world in constant motion that opens up when we slumber. Cavernous darkness is a habitat of transit, between worlds and the axis of time . In the heart of this motion, memories, knowledge, sadness and joy will leave their residues without completely disappearing: perhaps they have fallen into another place, another turning of time.

NGUYEN Hai Yen (Red) is a Vietnamese video artist and independent dance producer whose practice focuses on the multidisciplinary approaches which contribute to rethinking about ‘dance’ in Vietnam, creating (safe) spaces for performance practices that don’t fit in any existing system, encouraging artists to explore other possibilities of performance thinking and making. She has been producing various projects supported by the British Council, Goethe Institut, Japan Foundation, Asia Cultural Council, Yayasan Kelola, Dance Nucleus Studio, Mekong Cultural Hub, Prince Claus Fund,... including "X-Project" (2020); "A self self shall" (2021); "1936" (2021); "Human Learning" (2021); "Vinabiennale" (2022 - 2024);... Since 2020, together with choreographer Ngo Thanh Phuong, she co-directed MORUA, an active member of the Southeast Asia Choreographer Network, a dance collective and [performance-maker] in residence program aiming to encourage the next-generation of dance practitioners to research, exchange and experiment with new frameworks of performance, to broaden the dialogue about performance-making in Vietnam. Alongside with MORUA, she’s working as a seasonal producer of H2Q Art - an emerging independent dance company focusing on creating international co-production performances. Red was participating in Asia Connection: Producer’s Camp 2021, under the mentorship of Farooq Chaudhry (co-founder & producer of Akram Khan Dance Company), organized by Taiwan’s National Theater & Concert Hall. Recently, she participated in the Producers' Academy 2023 organized by Cifas and Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Belgium. Her latest producing project - multimedia performance “Vinabiennale” was supported by and will have its work-in-progress presented at Taiwan’s National Theater & Concert Hall in 9/2023. As an artist, Red aims to use choreography/theatrical thinking to visualize personal landscapes and archive spiritual memories. Her dance films and video works were featured at White Chapell Gallery, SeaShorts Film Festival, OFF. Focus, TANZAHOi International Festival for Dance, Fifth Wall Fest,... Red was a Prince Claus Seed Awardee in 2022.

The collision and fusion between civilizations, the transformation of the geological landscape, the conflicts between human beings and natural forces – after thousands of years, they have been molded into specimens of human ambition in different times and displayed on the timeless wilderness. However, the heavy significance of their conflicts in their own time has been dissolved by the endless wilderness and become a simple landscape beaming their messages to the timeless vast. When the shadow of modern the signal tower passes over the beacon tower built two thousand years ago, the significance of conflicts in different times collapses at the same time. Indigenous ecological knowledge and modern civilization representing advanced productive forces coexist in the gaps of collapse. The sublime will to strive for arete blocked by giant building fortifications echoes over the desert as permanently and incoherently as the signal sent by the towers. The passion and ambition for conflict have not diminished but have become more and more intense. The exploration of the deep sea and space, obsession and fear of artificial intelligence, everyone’s determination to fight against everyone, trade war, economic war, energy war, technology war, information war, cold war thinking, clash of civilization, identity politic. Human society seems to be in an eternal state of conflict, a stasis. This series of images are three longitudinal slices of this stasis.

Bian Yunxiang, creative designer/media artist who does visuals in digital space, self-taught in visual communication, trained in postdigital storytelling, specialising in the vast in-between, working as a design technologist in luxury, practicing media art and critical design around the topic of digital geopolitics, lecturing at the Royal College of Art and China Academy of Art, exhibited works in London, Eindhoven, Athens, Dublin, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Bejing, Kaohsiung, completed commercial art commissions from Burberry, Harrods, Nike, BMW, and Arcteryx through the years. Currently based in Shanghai, previously in Hong Kong and London. In my practice, I use media technology to express concern about geopolitical-related topics and create poetic moving images in the context of post-colonialism and global civil war through the construction of digital geo-landscapes. This allows me to document and depict the diverse and complex ways in which people engage with extreme environments from a political philosophy perspective.

REVOLVER is an archive of pareidolia (a situation in which someone sees a pattern or image of something that does not exist) narrated by a descendent of Exodusters. Nicodemus (Kansas, USA) was deemed a refuge for Exodusters––Black people from the southern United States who fled violence and inequities following the Civil War. Two contradicting narratives about Nicodemus are difficult to hold at once: the lure of a potential utopia while also being exiled in one’s own land. Guided by memory, history, and rumor of a fabled Black utopia, REVOLVER pairs abstraction and perceptual inquiry with psychic conjuring. Sonic transitions forge this experimental documentary, a perpetual chronicle of witnessing and wayfinding.

Crystal Z Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer of Black, Filipinx, and Chinese descent. Campbell finds complexity in public secrets — fragments of information known by many but undertold or unspoken. Campbell’s works use underloved archival material to consider historical gaps and the optics of historical transmission –– questions of immortality and medical ethics with Henrietta Lacks' “immortal” cell line to gentrification and cultural preservation via a 35mm film relic salvaged from a demolished Black activist theater in Brooklyn. Campbell’s creative practice spans painting, sculpture, performance, film, writing, and installations that are often site-responsive. Campbell was the recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts and a a 2022 Creative Capital award. Other honors include a Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Award, MAP Fund, MacDowell, Skowhegan, Rijksakademie, Whitney ISP, and Franklin Furnace Award. Exhibitions and screenings include MOMA, Artists Space, Bemis, SFMOMA, Drawing Center, ICA-Philadelphia, REDCAT, MAG Rochester, SculptureCenter, MIT List Center, Block Museum, Walker Art Center, EMPAC, BAM, and DocLisboa. Campbell was a featured filmmaker at the 67th Flaherty Film Seminar. Their latest film, REVOLVER, received the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival and was featured in the 2023 Berlinale Expanded Film Forum. Campbell’s artwork and films are held by MIT List Center, Duke University, MAG Rochester, Harvard Film Archive, and other collections in the U.S. and abroad. Campbell’s writing is featured in two artist books published by Visual Studies Workshop Press, World Literature Today, Monday Journal, GARAGE, and Hyperallergic. Campbell is a Visiting Associate Professor of Art and Media Study at the University at Buffalo and lives between New York and Oklahoma. Campbell will be in residence at Washington University in St. Louis this Fall as the 2023-2024 Freund Fellow and the fellowship will conclude with a solo exhibition at St. Louis Art Museum in 2024.

An image of the sea set on fire triggered a 3D dream with photographs of my father found in an oil plant in Patagonia. In that space, I begin a journey in relation to absences, marks on the body and the construction of masculinity of oil and gas workers.

Buenos Aires, 1993. Filmmaker, editor and 3D designer. He works in documentary and experimental cinema and researches about immersive narratives. Graduated as Image and Sound Designer from FADU-UBA. He directed the interactive experience "a_virus" (2019) and the short film "Fire in the sea" (Visions du Réel 2022) with which he has participated in more than 35 festivals such as FICIC (best international short film), Vienna shorts, Camden IFF, MIDBO, among others. He worked as editor on the film "Shady River" (2020), by Tatiana Mazú (Prix Georges de Beauregard FID Marseille 2020). He participated in Talents Buenos Aires 2021, La Bienal Arte Joven 2022 and ABC BAFICI. He is currently developing his feature film "Brick smoke" with the film collective Antes Muerto Cine.

A Vocal Landscape is a hyperrealistic VR experience that explores the strange anatomy of a conversation between two people. In a dreamlike journey, the spectator travels through an ever-changing room depicting their associations and unspoken interactions.

Omid Zarei is a French-Iranian artist and XR producer on the quest to explore alternative ways of storytelling. He creates projects that blur the boundaries of different platforms, creating a space for collaboration between artists from a diverse range of disciplines. In 2015 he developed VR filmmaking workshop in Helsinki, one of the first VR focused workshops in Europe. He is the creator of the project Songs of Future Past, a re-imagined VR take on Opera. Anne Jeppesen is a Copenhagen-based producer with a focus on audio documentaries. She has produced audio productions for national radio, as well as immersive audio experiences for museums and theatre. With a background in classical music and musicology, Anne is driven by a never fading fascination for the richness of the human voice and is constantly seeking out new ways to work with vocal expressions. Their latest joint project “A Vocal Landscape” won an EPIC MegaGrants and a special prize in Vancouver International Film Festival for a collaboration with Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture Studio.