Catalogue 2024

In Spark From a Falling Star, an odd, unseen alien presence arrives, one that, beyond the usual fondness for abduction, transforms people into objects, public spaces to private real estate. At home in a world of windows and reflections, it floats unmoored through the real and virtual alike. While the world is devoured in its never-ending thirst for conquest, every zone becomes imprinted by the arrival. Where, finally, are you going to run?

Ross Meckfessel is an artist and filmmaker who works primarily in Super 8 and 16mm film. His films often emphasize materiality and poetic structures while depicting the condition of modern life through an exploration of apocalyptic obsession, contemporary ennui, and the technological landscape. His work has screened internationally and throughout the United States including in Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque’s CROSSROADS Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, and Curtas Vila Do Conde among others.

"Sinrise" (2023) is an experimental video by Danish artist Kim Richard Adler Mejdahl. Mejdahl stayed alone in BonBon-Land from sunset to sunrise to explore what happens when darkness descends in the old Danish theme park known for its grotesque characters. In the black interval we go on a cosmic rollercoaster ride among the stars while the cartoony inhabitants of the park seem to welcome the sun. "Sinrise" was recorded in infrared timelapse creating a haunted mood. The video suggests a way of portraying the sorrows of childhood nostalgia, and the eternal cycle of life and death.

Kim Richard Adler Mejdahl (b. 1989) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2019. Slaptstick humour and gothic horror meet up in Mejdahl's multifaceted work that often has its starting point in the artist's personal life story. Be it music album releases, film productions or large solo exhibition projects, Mejdahl's practice explore the topics of trauma-healing, climate crisis, spirituality, and gender identity. His video works have reached international audiences with screenings in France, Germany, Iceland, Norway, and South Korea. In 2018 Mejdahl received the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition Solo Award,, and in 2022 he was awarded a spot at The Danish Art Foundation's talent programme The Young Artistic Elite. In 2021 he recieved the Elna & C.T. Hollesen's Foundation Grant. Mejdahl's work is part of Denmark's National Gallery's collection.

Au Bénin, les gens de l'eau, qui autrefois ont lutté contre la Colonisation, font face à la jacinthe d'eau, une plante colonisante qui se reproduit à une vitesse vertigineuse en étouffant le lac. Réalisme et imaginaire se mêlent alors, comme si l’un n’était compréhensible ou tolérable qu’en raison de l’autre.

Italienne et diplômée en Économie de l’Art à l’Université Bocconi, Marina Russo Villani s’est formée en cinéma et en scénario en France, à la Sorbonne Nouvelle et à Paris Nanterre. Scénariste et réalisatrice de fiction et de documentaire, elle co-signe avec "À qui le monde" une fable politique fantastique qui dresse un portrait fantasmé et ironique de la manière dont fonctionne le monde. En parallèle de son travail d'auteure, elle fonde en 2023 sa société de production, Filibusta. Le travail de Victor Missud s’intéresse de manière poétique à des personnes marginalisées d’un territoire et de la société, qui deviennent acteurs et actrices non-professionnel·le·s de ses œuvres. Mêlant documentaire, fiction et cinéma de genre, ses travaux ont été présentés et primés en France et à l’étranger - Visions du Réel, IFF Rotterdam, Hors Pistes - Centre Pompidou, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Etats Généraux du Documentaire de Lussas. En 2024, il intègre le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains.

Six millennials meet renowned writer Noel Riccardi at a former workers' holiday settlement in the Italian Alps. Intrigued by the younger generation, Noel invites them for an evening of food, drinks, and debate. But as political disagreements arise, a generational clash ensues, leading Noel to respond with a cowardly act of violence. The following morning, another friend of the group arrives and joins Maria, who has developed an affinity for the aging intellectual. Together, they pay him a visit.

Magdalena Mitterhofer (1994, Italy) is a director and artist living in Berlin. In her site-specific, narrative works, she explores the relationships between surrounding architectural, socio-political structures and their inhabitants. Magdalena received a Master's degree in Fine Arts from the class of Hito Steyerl at the University of the Arts Berlin and studied New Media at Tama University in Tokyo. 2021 she co-founded the nomadic performance project "lament.tv". Her work was shown, amongst others, at Volksbühne Berlin, Julia Stoschek Foundation, KW Institute for contemporary art Berlin, Tanzquartier Vienna.

Relying on oral and fragmentary histories, ‘I Am Also Part of the Three Turns’ traces the effects of a destructive earthquake in Bucharest and a concurrent flood it caused in a small town in Buzau, during a period of nationalistic urbanization in Communist Romania. In the capital, the destruction was seized as an opportunity by the authoritarian government to further raze large swaths of the city, invoking the earthquake as a mythological force in order to strategically replace rubble with new Soviet-bloc housing projects. Employing allegory as narrator, the film sketches a series of political congruences throughout a patchwork of intertwined landscapes, teasing out a temporally irresolute past that defies the linear cause-and-effect of both environmental disaster and authoritarian political repression.

monica maria moraru is a visual artist and filmmaker working between moving-image, sculpture, installation, and sound. Her multimedia work searches for cinematic referent across a wide range of materials. Across mediums, her work seeks to tease out entangled personal and political histories, searching for sensorial and cinematic resonances across a patchwork of temporal, relational and political histories.

The reports by civilian victims of the Russian and Belarusian occupation in Ukraine contain descriptions of torture and repression that appear to be systematic in nature. Taking those reports as a basis, a filmmaker born in Belarus investigates that systematic procedure on the streets of his Berlin neighbourhood. He also confronts the question of what this war of annihilation has to do with him and what responsibility he himself bears.

Born in Minsk, Belarus in 1987, he grew up in and around Berlin from the age of ten. From 2009 to 2012, he studied philosophy and economics at the University of Bayreuth. In 2015, he took up a film directing degree with a focus on documentary at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. His short documentary Handbook, about the protests in Belarus in August 2020, won numerous awards, including Best Short Film at the IDFA in 2021. Mozhar’s most recent work is a short documentary Unwanted Kinship about the Russian war of extermination in Ukraine.

Written upon testimonies, rumors and fake news, this film questions the architectures of energy shaping the Algerian territory from its colonial history to the rise of Chinese extractivism, underlining the multiplicity of reality in a post-truth era. Since 2006, thousands of Chinese workers have been arriving daily in Algeria to build new cities across the country. Refusal of taking care of the dead by construction companies led to rumors about the disappearance of worker’s bodies, therefore questioning the collective memory of these workers expunged from history. Memories of an Unborn Sun aims to articulate a metaphysical query around light as a form of memory, blending archives from French nuclear tests in the Sahara, viral footage of an artificial sun rising in the sky and verses from Tuareg poet Hawad. As this nightless world embodies the capitalist utopia of infinite growth, how to remember those made invisible? Exiled workers and ghosts of an energetical quest.

Marcel Mrejen (FR/DZ) born in 1994 (Paris, FR) is a visual artist and filmmaker exploring the articulation of technology within living and economic metabolisms. The form of his work spans various time-based media — installations, filmmaking, sound, and machine-learning. He graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2018, before being a resident of Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains. His work has been exhibited in various cultural institutions, including the Stedelijk Museum, Laurel Project Space, De Brakke Grond, or the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Parallel to his artistic practice, he co-curated the first edition of REFRESH: Future-Proof. In collaboration with Eliott Déchamboux, his book: L’Europe c’est Deutshland quand tu rate laba tu est foutue mon frère, le reste c’est du fouma-fouma, was published by Jungle Books in 2019. His debut film Memories of an Unborn Sun was awarded the Jury Prize at Visions du Réel in 2024.

A speculative and poetic exploration of the entanglements and overlaps of historical events in the Atacama Desert (Chile), the film, told from the perspective of the wind, takes us on a visual journey, floating freely through the many sites and histories of the Atacama. Exploring some of the largest lithium mines in the world; hovering above the remnants of colonial labour camps reactivated under the Pinochet regime, and slipping inside the international observatory of the ALMA large array facility; Ferreira da Silva and Neuman’s camera uncovers material trajectories whose planetary scope and historical depths remain invisible to the many. By pointing at how these trajectories mutated and expanded into aspects of modern geopolitical issues, Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims, exposes pillars of western thought that sustain colonial legacies of inequality, racial exclusion and human extractivism while simultaneously proposing another worldview, one that is carried and echoed by the wind.

Arjuna Neuman is an artist, filmmaker, and writer and he is the co-founder of archiveofbelonging.org – a resource database for migrants and refugees. Neuman works with the essay as a guiding, multi-perspectival and inherently future-oriented form that underpins his experimental research and creative approach. As a writer he has published essays in Relief Press, The Journal for New Writing, VIA Magazine, Concord, Art Voices, Flaunt, LEAP, Hearings Journal, and e- flux. He studied at California Institute of the Arts. Denise Ferreira da Silva is an artist and philosopher. She currently is the Samuel Rudin Professor in the Humanities at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures, at NYU. Her artistic and academic work reflect and speculate on questions crucial to contemporary philosophy, political theory, black thought, feminist thought, and historical materialism. She is the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race (2007), Unpayable Debt (2022) amongst many other titles. Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva’s collaboration includes the film Serpent Rain (2016), 4 Waters-Deep Implicancy (2018), Soot Breath//Corpus Infinitum (2020), Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims (2023). Their films have been exhibited at major art venues such as MACBA (Barcelona); Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), the Pompidou Center (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery (London), The 56th Venice Biennale, The Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt (Berlin), Centre for Contemporary Art (Glasgow), and more. In Februrary 2024, they opened a retrospective of their work at the Munch Museum in Oslo; in May 2024 the Kunsthal Extra City in Antwerp opened a solo exhibition of their work. They have a forthcoming monograph published by Archive Books.

Nhà Sàn Collective presents a new moving image work filmed at the residence of Mr. Manh Duc, a home in close proximity to the collective and their community of artist friends for many years. In this playground, a mystical world emerges; a cinema is reenacted. As the film unfolds, a river, a garden, spirits, wooden structures, people and objects appear, dissolve and reappear, as if they were characters morphing into one another. The film draws attention to cinematic transformation of physical and immaterial beings as a process of experiencing diverse forms of archives.

Nhà Sàn Collective (NSC) began operating as an independent artist collective in Hanoi in 2013, when a group of friends set up their publicly accessible space. With or without a physical base, NSC has worked with fellow companions and collaborators to organise exhibitions, workshops, film screenings, talks and other activities as a supporting platform for artists in the community. An initiative for exchanges, expansions and connections. A place that’s also open toward works-in- progress and the unexpected, a just-do-it attitude which doesn’t always yield answers. Some of the Collective's main projects, which have been held on numerous occasions, are Skylines With Flying People, IN:ACT Performance Art Festival, Queer Forever!, Emerging Artists programme, amongst others. The collective board consists of Tr??ng Qu? Chi, Nguy?n Ph??ng Linh, Nguy?n Qu?c Thành, V? ??c Toàn, and Tu?n Mami. In 2022, they participated in Documenta 15 curated by Ruangrupa with their invited artist friends. The name ‘Nhà Sàn’ signifies the Collective’s foundation which is rooted in the spirit of Nhà Sàn Studio, an artist-run space founded in 1998 in Hanoi. The original Nhà Sàn, a house on stilts, was taken apart in 2020. In the Ng?c Th?y area by the bank of the Red River, the artists imagine this house to become the new Nhà Sàn Collective space, rebuilt, and transformed.

"The Dawn Chorus" is an outbreak of birdsong at the start of a new day, depicted in the film as the inspiration for a dream-like gathering of the artists local queer community in Zagreb. This joyous celebration of queer bodies pays homage to the kingdom of birds through voguing, dancing, drag and costumes. It is a transposition that imagines the potential in the intersection between our own identities and the inclusive spaces that are open for other species. Filmed without the predictable popular electronic beats typically associated with ballroom, the film solely features the sounds of bodies in motion, the rhythmic impact of dancing, resounding percussive noises created by bodies, and chanting. These elements are accompanied by polyphonic sounds of birdsong onomatopoeias, sourced from ornithological manuals and sung by ”Le Zbor” a lesbian-antifascist choir from Zagreb accompanied by subtle gravity-like pedal tones played on Organ.

Damir Ocko (b. 1977, Zagreb) Graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, O?ko has exhibited on solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Krems, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Jeu de Paume, Paris, National Gallery in Prague, Museum of contemporary Art Bordeaux, Museo Amparo, Mexico, DAZIBAO, Montreal, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Yvon Lambert Gallery in Paris, Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst und Medien in Graz, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios in Dublin, Kunstverein Leipzig among other places. He participated in numerous group exhibitions internationally with institutions such as, OFF Biennale Budapest, MUDAM in Luxembourg, FRAC le Plateau, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Kunsthalle Vienna, Louis Vuitton foundation among others. Damir O?ko represented Croatia in the 56th Venice Biennale with a solo exhibition "Studies on Shivering / The Third Degree. His works are included in many public and private collections such as FRAC le Plateau, Foundation Louis Vuitton, CNAP – Centre national des arts plastiques in Paris, MUDAM in Luxembourg and Museum of contemporary Art in Zagreb, among others.

While the shade of a tree is being stolen away, bodiless organs sit in the enormous gaps of the drained earth. Under the constant noise of unseen machines, disjointed body parts touch the drying soil and breaths are only audible to insects. In this quiet, distorted world, old songs of goodwill are sung: “Future times of vain sorrow do not disturb our gentle sleep...” While we are waiting for the miracle to come the sand continues to fly.

SENEM GÖKCE OGULTEKIN work spans the disciplines of choreography, performance, vocal work and film. In 2019, "Dun/Home" was chosen for Artist´s Film International, an international event initiated by Whitechapel Gallery in London and was shown at various museums and galleries of the world. In 2020, Senem Gökce Ogultekin was awarded the Allbau Foundation Culture Prize and was appointed to the Young College by the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2021. LEVENT DURAN is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. They studied sociology at Istanbul University and film at the Fine Arts University of Hamburg, where they obtained their master's degree. Their writings have been published in major magazines and newspapers in Turkey, and their visual creations (video, painting, sculpture, installation) have been exhibited internationally. Their film project "Murmuring Draft Dodgers" received the Courageous Citizen Award from the European Cultural Foundation.

This is a poetic contemplation on the state of the world, as well as a reflection of the times in the authors' homeland, when under the influence of censorship they are forced to seek an alternative language to discuss significant issues. In this work, diverse realms intertwine: the game setting, ancient Greek tragedy, social utopia, and our contemporary era. It is a shared universe, enriched by the voices of many authors.

Yana Osman, Anton Khamchishkin (Afghanistan, Russia) Filmmakers and audiovisual artists. Their artistic practice, including video, photography, sound, performance, and poetry, delves into how personal, social, and political documentary contexts become anentry point to the fantasy worlds we live. Their works have been exhibited at festivals, museums, and contemporary art spaces in Armenia, China, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Russia, Turkey, and even Antarctica, as well as in France, supported and showcased by CNC, Cité Internationale des Arts – Paris, Usage du Monde au 21ème siècle, Maison Européenne de la Photographie – Paris, Institut Français, Théâtre Nouvelle Génération (TNG) – Lyon, among other.

The video performance Las Hermosas Invisibles proposes a post-mortem connection between Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau and her/their recently deceased trans sister, Aérea Negrot. For many years, Aérea had been collaborating with Simon(e)’s artistic works with versatile sound creations. In Las Hermosas Invisibles, Simon(e) gathers and assembles all of these sounds present in previous collaborations, and responds to them in a new video-performance piece shot in the territory of the tum xula7xw of the sn??ay?ckstx people. The performance invokes Aérea’s spirit, memories, and the impact she had on Simon(e)’s life and work. Aérea’s artistic and emotional legacy continues to exist and communicate with Simon(e) through sound, music, and memory. The title ‘Las Hermosas Invisibles,’ directly references the term “hermosos invisibles” (beautiful invisibles) coined by Wayuu poet Vito Apüshana. This term represents the human and non-human entities that make up the living and thinking territory of the Wayuu people, with whom Simon(e) became acquainted through their collaboration with Wayuu artist Elizabeth Pirela. While the piece is dedicated to the memory of Aérea Negrot, it also encompasses a broader exploration of the legacy of other trans-ancestors spanning from Tibira do Maranhão to Sylvia Rivera.

Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau is a German-Colombian interdisciplinary artist whose work spans video art, installations, experimental cinema, and performance, with a focus on decolonial themes and queer cultures. In recent years, Simon(e) has focused on inventing myths and utopias inspired by rural and urban cultures in Latin America, challenging hegemonic discourses. In this way, they have created interdisciplinary works and collaborations with racialized artists and historically marginalized communities, especially Emberá & Wayúu, non-binary sexual dissident bodies (including themselves), and rebellious LatinX trans women. Simon(e) studied Media Art at KHM Cologne and Film at EICTV Cuba. Their films and videos have premiered and won awards at prestigious festivals and exhibitions like documenta14, Cannes Directors Fortnight, New Directors/New Films MoMa & Lincoln Center, Berlin Biennale 11, BFI London, and the New York Film Festival. Notable awards and recognitions include the Emerging Talent Award at International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2022, the Norman Award at Stuttgarter Filmwinter 2023, the Best Director Award at the Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival Colombia (FICCI) 2018, and a nomination for the Queer Palm at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight 2022. Simon(e) has presented their performances and video installations at renowned venues such as the Wexner Center of the Arts, HKW, Martin Gropius Bau, Kasseler Kunstverein, nGbK, Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Shedhalle Zurich, HAU, the Sharjah Art Foundation, and the Cinemateca de Bogotá. In 2023, Simon(e) held their first solo exhibition at the IBB Video Space of the Berlinische Galerie—Museum of Modern Art. The National Museum of Colombia recently acquired several of their works for its permanent collection. Since 2024, Simon(e) is co-founder and artistic director of the transnational German-Colombian experimental artistic laboratory, Atelier Lapaetau.

Un fils revisite son vieux foyer, un endroit qu'il a connu autrefois, à la recherche d'un homard. Une exploration de la complexité de la masculinité et une lettre à mon père.

Née à Montréal, au Québec, Daniela Paglione est une artiste expérimentale et une étudiante de premier cycle en communication à l'Université Concordia. Elle a été captivée par la réalisation de films dès son plus jeune âge et a poursuivi cette passion dans le cadre de ses études. Ses films « The Earth was Formless and Void » et « Where Old Voices Go » ont été présentés dans le cadre du Vernissage 2023 du cinéma et des médias de Concordia (Montréal, Québec). Son nouveau film, Sinking Line, a récemment été projeté au Moving Images Alliance Collective, ainsi que dans le cadre de la 33e édition de Vidéo de Femmes dans le parc à Montréal. Elle travaille actuellement au Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV), un centre de distribution géré par des artistes qui se consacre à la promotion d'œuvres réalisées par des femmes. Daniela crée des courts métrages de manière indépendante depuis 2019. Son travail est expérimental et se concentre sur les thèmes du soi, de la mort et de l'inconscient.

Renversant statues et symboles, construisant de nouveaux souvenirs, encadrant le paysage détruit, écrivant des lettres pour l'avenir, inversant les dynamiques de pouvoir : BIG BANG HENDA est un documentaire-poésie-manifeste sur le travail de l'artiste angolais Kiluanji Kia Henda. Il nous emmène dans un voyage à travers ses créations et réflexions, qui sont à l'avant-garde de la pensée anticoloniale, nous exhortant à réfléchir sur la manière dont les générations qui ont grandi pendant ou à la suite de la guerre réinterprètent cet événement.

Fernanda is a screenwriter and director, living between Brazil and Portugal. She has been working in the intersections between Brazil, Portugual and the African Portuguese speaking countries and former colonies of Portugal for decades. Her first feature as a writer, Mosquito, was the opening film at the Rotterdam FF (2020) and won the Critics Prize at the São Paulo International FF (2020) besides touring dozens of festivals. Her second feature, The Last Summer, is currently in production after being selected for the Script Station at Berlinale 2023 and RACCONTI. She has been developing, writing, and directing for TV, streaming and cinema, and some of her works have received awards and nominations at the Brazilian Cinema Academy, New York TV&Film Festival, Hollywood Woman’s FF, among others. She is part of the Torino Film Lab 2023. She is a co-founder of MUTIM, a woman in film association in Portugal.

The young Swiss economist Hans travels to Thailand with his mum to visit his grandmother in “Vita Bona”, a care home for European seniors. The facility has changed its name and is hard to find at first. When they finally arrive, it is completely different from what they expected: a perfectly styled wellness retreat for young people. While Hans indulges in the beauty of the place, Daniela wanders through the labyrinthine complex in search of her mother and observes strange occurrences. Where are the senior citizens? What is the manager Mrs. Vasall hiding behind her charming smile? This conceptual VR film is a dystopian parable about the outsourcing of care work, as produced by our neo-colonialist globalized economic system. “Vivo Vision” refers to a way of seeing that Ms. Vasall, the manager of the resort, has invented. Wellness retreat and retirement home are present in the same place, but without interfering with each other. While the young people practice yoga poses by the pool, the seniors and workers have been relocated to another, invisible level. “Vivo Vision” is a view of the world in which everything that is considered unproductive in a capitalist logic has become invisible.

MARLIES POESCHL is an artist, filmmaker, curator and educator. She is currently based in Vienna (AT), where she teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, but has previously worked in France, Iran, Thailand and China. Shifting between artistic, curatorial and educational approaches, Pöschl is interested in art as a form of knowledge production. She understands filmmaking as social practice and often collaborates with actors from outside the art world in search for polyphonic narrations and open-ended dramaturgies. Since 2018 Pöschl has focused on ways in which societies of the global north respond to the ‘care crisis’. Pöschl has received various prizes for her work: in 2022 she was granted the state scholarship for media art, in 2021 the Young Artist’s Award (City of Vienna). Her films and installations have been shown in several solo presentations, a.o. Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, DE (2022), Salzburger Kunstverein, AT (2021), CAC Brétigny, (2018) and MUSA, Vienna, AT (2016). She has participated in biennales and film festivals such as the Vienna Biennale for Change (AT), Antimatter media art festival (CA), Edinburgh International Film Festival (GB), Cinema Verité (IR), Diagonale (AT) and others. Her work is distributed by VTape and The Golden Pixel Cooperative.

Combining low resolution footage, 16mm film and satellite imagery, Efforts of Nature considers the passage of time, processes of change and dissolution from two distant perspectives: the existential level of the body and the planetary level of shifting geological conditions.

Morgan Quaintance is a London-based artist and writer. His moving image work has been shown and exhibited widely at festivals and institutions including: MOMA, New York; Mcevoy Foundaton for the Arts, San Francisco; Konsthall C, Sweden; David Dale, Glasgow; European Media Art Festival, Germany; Alchemy Film and Arts Festival, Scotland; Images Festival, Toronto; International Film Festival Rotterdam; and Third Horizon Film Festival, Miami. His practice remains open and responsive to contemporary experience and so largely eschews the rehearsal of set themes. However, interests in the human condition, the cultic milieu, counterculture, ethnography, Afro-Caribbean, East Asian and British histories, and the built environment are all mainstays. He is a 2024 MacDowell Fellow. He was the 2023 IFFR Short Film Nominee for the European Film Awards; the recipient of the 2022 ARTE Award at Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg; in 2021, the Best Documentary Short Film Award at Tacoma Film Festival, USA; the Explora Award at Curtocircuito International Film Festival, Santiago de Compostela; the UK Short Film Award at Open City Documentary Film Festival, London, the Jean Vigo Prize for Best Director at Punto de Vista, Spain, and the Best Experimental Film Award at Curtas Vila do Conde, Portugal; in 2020, the New Vision Award at CPH:DOX, Denmark and the Best Experimental Film award at Curtas Vila Do Conde, Portugal . Over the past fourteen years, his critically incisive writings on contemporary art, aesthetics and their socio-political contexts have featured in publications including Art Monthly, the Wire, and the Guardian, and helped shape and influence the UK’s new landscape of progressive cultural discourse and debate. A key reference here is his 2017 text The New Conservatism: Complicity and the UK Art World’s Performance of Progression, available here. From 2012 – 2023 he was the producer and presenter of Studio Visit, an interview-based, broadcast radio programme for London’s Resonance 104.4FM. The post-broadcast archive of over 100 interviews can be found here, and includes in depth conversations with Carolee Schneemann, Kevin Jerome Everson, Jimmie Durham, Susan Hiller, Jean Fisher, Andrea Fraser, Kathleen Daniel and Billy Woodberry.

SUNSTROKES is a method-driven and improvisation based film project produced and directed by Julian Rabus. Twenty-year-old Rachel moves from New York to Los Angeles in order to reinvent herself. Still attached to classical role models at first, she increasingly comes into conflict with them in her new environment and, in conversations with her new friends, begins to redefine her expectations of life and discover other sides to herself. This film was created in close collaboration between the director and the actors over a period of two years and a total of 32 days of shooting in Los Angeles and the surrounding area. The work consists of several chapters, of which this one focuses on the relationship between Rachel and Kevin.

Julian Rabus, born and raised in Berlin, Germany, was an assistant cameraman and assistant director in film and television before beginning a degree in fine arts / media art under Prof. Julian Rosefeldt at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, which he received with honours in 2021. Since then he has been studying at the Berlin University of the Arts in Prof. Thomas Arslan’s class on narrative film. In between, he also attended the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design under Prof. Serpil Turhan and the California Institute of Arts under Prof. James Benning.

"Civilians. Invasion", created in 2023. The film documents the experiences of Ukrainians during the Russian aggression against Ukraine. This invasion led to extensive documentation by civilians, soldiers, and journalists, resulting in a wealth of photo and video materials that made their way onto social media platforms. While some of this content went viral through Telegram channels and other social networks, many photos and videos remained relatively unknown with minimal views. The film is structured around a specific storyline, starting from the initial days of the invasion and unfolding the events related to how people navigate a new reality: how to live and survive, the risks faced by civilians during the conflict, episodes of housing destruction, and stories of those who have lost their loved ones. In 2024 "Civilians. Invasion" represents Ukraine at the 60th Venice Biennale.

Andrii Rachynskyi and Daniil Revkovskyi are the Kharkiv (Ukraine) artists who are fusing different formats of artistic practices (installations, reenactment, video, archives), researching the contexts and landscapes of the industrial regions of Ukraine. They graduated from the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Art with a degree in graphic design. Nominated for the PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2018, 2020 and 2022, the winners of the 2020 PinchukArtCentre Prize Audience Award for the project “Hooligans.” Allegro Prize 2022 winners. In 2024, Andrii Rachinskyi and Daniil Revkovskyi represent Ukraine at the 60th Venice Biennale. https://revkovskyirachynskyi.com

The game follows ideas such as design by subtraction. A world devoid of time and space where the great dichotomies of human thought no longer cast a shadow. A post-anthropocentric world with a non-hierarchical structure. Here we cannot orient ourselves, which defies our understanding in a refreshing way and makes us forget - at least for a few moments - who we are; where we come from; and that we believe we are of particular importance. Forced Amnesia follows a simple instruction pattern: explore and you will find. As it is devoid of language all we have to do is follow our instinct. What we learned in games that we played before. The idea for Forced Amnesia started 2023 as an art exhibition, which led to the development of a video game. Forced Amnesia is a game with focus on quiet moments, inspired by the concept of design by subtraction, philosophy introduced by Fumito Ueda. The game gives the player lots of space to navigate through. Forced Amnesia’s aesthetics moves through a stage of comforting uncertainty, the player does not know if they are above or under water, swinging or flying. This state, fused with a calm soothing musical score creates a space for relaxation and calm. Places that nowadays are getting increasingly harder to find. Forced Amnesia aims at an older generation of gamers. Gen X and Gen Y will be the first generation to grow old playing video games. As we slowly age, our lifestyle and perception changes, Forced Amnesia is there to accompany us.

Mary-Audrey Ramirez studied under Thomas Zipp at the University of the Arts in Berlin Germany from 2010 to 2016. In 2019 she was the recipient of the prestigious Edward Steichen Award in Luxembourg for her textile-based sculptural and pictorial works. Early 2025 Ramirez’s Qrst percent for art work will be Qnalized in Berlin Spandau. Her works have been shown in both solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as Casino Luxembourg, forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg; Kunsthalle Gießen, Gießen; Dortmunder Kunstverein, Dortmund; TRAUMA BAR UND KINO, Berlin; Kai 10 Arthena Foundation, D sseldorf; Haus Mödrath, Kerpen; Margot Samel Gallery, New York City; Polansky Gallery, Prague and MARTINETZ, Cologne. She was also part of Esch2022+ARS ELECTRONICA, Luxembourg/Linz. “Ramirez creates a dense image of a world with her figurative representations in pictures, objects and games, It is a world devoid of time and space where the great dichotomies of human thought no longer play a role. A post-anthropocentric world that is not organised hierarchically. A world in which we cannot orientate ourselves, which defies our understanding in a refreshing way and makes us forget, at least for a few moments, who we are, where we come from and that we believe we are of particular importance” - (Annekathrin Kohout)