Programme Berlin 2022

We follow a man of advanced age walking along a misty mountain path in China. In one shot he carries a bag; in others he carries sacks of rice, or timber, or large buckets of water. He’s filmed in the morning, in the evening, and at night. The seasons change as we walk with him, through the bleakness of the winter, or on a fresh spring morning. The low-key atmosphere, the subdued gray-green hues of the surroundings, and the absence of dialogue and music all lend this film a refreshingly understated feel. A space is opened up in which the viewer can listen to the sound of the wind, the man’s footsteps, the birds. There is time to wonder who the man is that we are following, where he is going, and what his life is like. Only at the end of his journey do we find out a little more about him.

Born in 1989, Luoyang, Henan Province, Jin Jiang started to earn his living after dropping out of high school. In his spare time, he devoted himself to contemporary arts. In 2013, his first personal exhibition "In the Field of Hope" was held in his hometown. One year later, he came to Beijing and ventured into cinematography and film industry.

In August 2016, one of the largest dalit anti-caste protest-rally happened in recent history of India. The 10-day rally marched from Ahmedabad to Una in solidarity with four people who had been flogged in Una in an act of caste-related violence. Chalo Una is an intimate look at the remains of this rally. Shot three years to the date of the original rally, the film retraces its path, going to various sites of village meetings, protests, and so on. The film is an invitation to the audience to revisit and to be with the rally. The high-speed shots of these sites of protest are not only acts of memory but also are a trigger for another temporality, one that is disconnected from when it was shot. Retellings and memories of various people involved with the rally are layered with the images to further evoke the ghosts of this protest.

ujjwal kanishka utkarsh is a Phd-in-Practice candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. He has been trying to develop a form that emerges out of the observational cinema tradition and he continues to do that through his PhD project. For ujjwal, this has resonances with John Cage's ideas of beauty and he has explored that through various forms and themes. He has looked at ideas of nothingness, of being in transit and also at labour practices, specifically at peculiar farming practices. In his current ongoing work, he is trying to see if and how through this form he can look at and reflect upon political activity. In the current political situation, where the space for voice of dissent is rapidly diminishing, truth is either viewed very simplistically and reality as objective or the post modern perspective renders all truth relative and all reality socially constructed. In this context, this is also an exploration to see if such ideas of observational form could create a space that avoids pitfalls of both these seemingly untenable theoretical extremes.

In the life-sized video work IMAGES FOR MARS II Karl Van Welden investigates the effect of a disaster on the human body. People in a state of carelessness until a dark ash rain falls upon them, turning their idyll into a catastrophe. Or how a blissful moment becomes a scene of charred bodies on a patch of scorched earth. The choreography and movements are inspired by archaeological finds from Pompeii and Herculaneum, which literally show the positions of bodies at the moment of a catastrophe. After the eruption of the Vesuvius volcano, its victims were enclosed by ashes. In time, the bodies disintegrated while the ash surrounding them solidified, creating cavities. Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli filled these cavities with plaster, creating a very precise image of the victims of this natural disaster. They remind us of the marble figures on medieval tombs. Sleeping beauties and tormented bodies, which reflect the Eros and the Thanatos of our relationship with the end.

More than ten years ago Karl Van Welden initiated United Planets, a cycle of visual and performative work based on terrestrial or human presence in the universe. How does humankind relate to the immensity of the universe? Using the planets in our solar system as anchor points, he searches for artistic answers to this fundamental question. The work comprises performances as MARS, PLUTO, MERCURY or SATURN, but also video, installations, interventions, drawings, paintings and three-dimensional works, which can act as reflections, preliminary studies, but could just as easily exist autonomously or be combined into one work. Whether sound or image with these works the artist explores multilayeredness, balancing between autonomous poetics and subtle references to social or political themes. His work has been shown in a variety of contexts such as Kaaitheater, Beursschouwburg, Vooruit, M HKA, KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Festival of Flanders, Concertgebouw Bruges, Marion de Cannière, Frascati (NL), Brakke Grond (NL), Metropolis (DK), Pact Zollverein (DE), Østfold Kulturutvikling (NO), le CENTQUATRE-PARIS (FR), Marseille Provence 2013 (FR), Le Vivat (FR), Uzès Danse (FR), Arsenal (FR), Naves Matadero (ES), Tokyo Wonder Site - TOKAS (JP), Gessnerallee Zürich (CH), Sonica (UK), Venice Art Biennale (IT) and Art Basel Hong Kong (HK).

The romantic landscape paintings often portrayed weather condition, topography of national landscape, religious themes, spirituality of nature and hunting scenes. Obsidian Blue Pearl is a minimalistic road movie mirroring the emotions of the driver through the landscapes (s)he has chosen to look at.

Jussi Eerola (b.1969) has worked as a cinematographer on many internationally rewarded short films, documentaries and tv-features since 1992. He has collaborated with many visual artist’s e.g. Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Mika Taanila, IC-98, Elena Näsänen and Anu Pennanen. His directional debut was a documentary about electro-hypersensitive people titled Refugees of Technocracy (2009). Documentary film The Return of the Atom written & directed together with Mika Taanila premiered at Toronto IFF 2015 and was given the NORDIC:DOX award at CPH:DOX in 2015. In 2014 he started a production company Testifilmi Oy together with Mika Taanila and visual artist duo IC-98 (Patrik Söderlund and Visa Suonpää) and has produced several of company's films. Eerola's first short film Blue Honda Civic (2020) premiered at IFF Rotterdam and was awarded three times at international film festivals.

Dawns takes us to a time when sleep is disrupted and insomnia becomes a collective condition. Captured before sunrise, with non-actors in a variety of outdoor environments, the multi-channel work consists of a series of continuous shots and long takes. The slow cinematographic images are reminiscent of tableau vivants where people, in groups or alone, find themselves in an urban environment or the transformed wasteland of a former industrial area. Exhaustion is conveyed by the bodies’ postures and their near immobility, composing at the same time an atmospheric landscape of fragility and endurance at the limit of the perceptible. While the videos look still images, they allow us to see the slow, luminous transition of night into day.

Jessica Arseneau (originally from Tilley Road, Canada) obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Université de Moncton in 2011 and a Master’s Degree in New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig in 2020, both completed with distinction. She received a grant from the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in 2017 and a scholarship from Saas-Fee Summer Institute of the Arts in 2021.?? Her solo exhibitions include Surrounding Uncaring Skies as part of the Festival International du Cinéma Francophone en Acadie, Moncton, Dawns, a storefront exhibition organized by Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, Mülheim an der Ruhr, The Screen Under My Eyelids at Helmut, Leipzig, Nothing but a Constant Glow at Spinnerei Archiv Massiv, Leipzig, and Lost Idyll, at Galerie d’art Louise-and-Reuben-Cohen, Moncton. ??Other public presentations of her work occurred at Galerie Sans Nom, Moncton, Struts Gallery, Sackville, Darling Foundry, Montreal, Maison de la Culture du Plateau-Mont-Royal, Montreal, BronxArtSpace, New York, Agora Collective, Berlin, Traverse Vidéo, Toulouse, Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille, D21 Kunstraum, Leipzig, and a&o Kunsthalle, Leipzig.

This film is about the nature of existence and memory. Seventy years ago, on a night, a musician was shot dead on stage in a nightclub in Shanghai, a story found by a Frenchman on an old newspaper today. Although the musician was long forgotten in the history,this French gentleman makes his way to Shanghai in the hope of finding the traces of the musician's existence. In a shabby old apartment, he reads aloud the novel written by Patrick Modiano, calling the spirits that used to live here.His voice evokes the response of the Shanghai musician. All of a sudden, it seems to him as if they share the same memories, details and breath. As Modiano puts it: "there was nothing to set us apart from the others, those Sundays in August.”

Zhou Hongbo graduated from Beijing Film Academy, with a master’s degree in 1999. His graduation film, A Fish Who Wants to Fly, was selected for Cannes Film Festival 2000, Cinefondation. Since then Zhou has made several features and documentaries which were screened at various international film festival.

Joanna is a singer who performs in a bar six nights a week, inside a hotel where she lives a few floors below. Her voice guides us through her work routine and the circular route between her room and the stage, all while the video continuously interrupts itself, disrupting the linearity of her story. 'B Plots' looks into the connection between images and physical spaces and how they mirror and affect each other. The mechanic movements of the camera are not hidden, but amplified, directing ones attention towards the camera as a medium and the materiality of the video.

Freja Sofie Kirk works within video, photography and installation, often in connection with one another. Through her ongoing work with two-dimensional representations, Kirk’s practice investigates how images generate meaning in contemporary society. Her work takes the form of a continuous study of spatial and medial constructions, the violence they perform and the architecture they manifest. By utilizing the camera, Kirk attempts to renegotiate the power relations inherent in both architecture and image production.

Nazarbazi [the play of glances] is a film about love and desire in Iranian cinema where depictions of intimacy and touch between women and men are prohibited.

Maryam Tafakory is an artist filmmaker based between London and Shiraz. Her work has been exhibited internationally including MoMA Doc Fortnight; IFF Rotterdam; Edinburgh EIFF; Melbourne MIFF; True/False festival; Zurich Film Festival; Whitechapel Gallery; Pergamon Museum; M HKA; and Anthology Film Archives amongst others. She has received several awards including, the Ammodo Tiger Short at 51st IFFR, the First Jury Prize at DocumentaMadrid, the Best Short Film at Festival de Cine Lima Independiente, and she was the 2019 Flaherty/Colgate Distinguished Global Filmmaker in Residence, NY. Her work has appeared at Criterion's The Daily, the Sight&Sound magazine, Filmmaker Magazine, and Senses of Cinema.

“Stretching and blurring the boundaries of video essay, experimental film and home movie, traces of a 1950s homemade melodrama by amateur filmmaker Joan Thurber Baldwin intermingle with a mournful homage to the author’s grandmother and her vacated home. A powerful mélange of cinematic and domestic spaces, past and present.”

Carl Elsaesser (1988, USA) graduated from Hampshire college and University of Iowa. He lives and works between midcoast and interior Maine and Brooklyn, NY. He has made several short films which have screened at festivals in New York, Berlin, Michigan, Amsterdam, Korea among others. In his work, Elsaesser mixes genres and materials to produce work that “critically investigates the overarching presence of the historical without losing sight of individual experiences of human connection.”

The black-and-white 8mm film of the abandoned facilities of Turku County Prison (1835–2007), documents the layers of messages drawn, scratched and burned on the cell walls. The markings are passages to the shadow of an individual’s psyche, and expose an underbelly which a society simultaneously both generates and hides. The film becomes a codex of a collapsed civilization and evidence of a forbidden zone in the centre of the city. On top of the inmates’ messages, a second layer of graffiti by building squatters, trespassers and other participators has emerged, turning the walls into thickets of obscure visual information and indecipherable communication. The flow of images is punctuated by John Cage’s (1912–1992) composition “Perilous Night” (1964), described as a journey to the nocturnal side of the soul.

Saara Ekström works in film, photography, text and installation. Chronotopes where time and place densify, time that nurtures and erodes, the ambivalent desire to both remember and forget are at the core of her art. Ekström’s work has been shown extensively in various museums and festivals in Europe, the Americas and Asia. She received the Finnish media art prize AVEK-award in 2018 and the prizes of SW Finland in 2017, Finnish Art Society in 1995 and the Aboa prize in 1994. She has been the Helsinki Festival Artist in 2005 and was nominated for both Ars Fennica and Carnegie Art Award prizes in 2010.

The story is about a young couple, they go for a walk in an old church where their parents used to go. Here, they shared about their identity, their past, and their doubts about their fate. They finally overcame their doubts and moved on to a new stage in life.

Huynh Cong Nho, born 1991, Viet Nam, Nho experienced of short courses of writing scripts, montages, director, Project presentation of the Autumn Meetings with the director Phan Dang Di, artist Julie Beziers, director Tran Anh Hung. He is an indie filmmaker in vietnam.

In her videos, Schulz provides a candid approach to her subjects through careful camerawork, ever- oscillating between proximity and distance. These slow observations demand significant concentration on the subject matter, for instance in her 'Home Series', in which she portrays men in their apartments. Here Schulz asks strangers if they would be open to develop a relationship in which the camera functions as the main instrument of communication. By doing so, she breaks the tension of subject/object relations, race and gender. As time goes by, we see these men in their apartments pondering over their lives, while further intimacy is being developed with the artist.

Jana Schulz (*1984 in Berlin) received her MFA in 2018 from the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. Recent exhibitions, film screenings, residencies and prizes include Galerie Eigen+Art Leipzig (2022), KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin (2021), Videoart at Midnight Berlin (2021), Center for Contemporary Photography Melbourne (2020), Kunsthalle Bremerhaven (2020), Eigen+Art Lab Berlin (2020), Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin (2020), Anca Poterasu Gallery Bucharest (2019), Galerie Eigen+Art Leipzig (2019), Kunsthalle Wien (2018), Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig (2018), BPA// Berlin Program for Artists (2020 – 2021), International Studio & Curatorial Program New York (2019), Marion Ermer Preis (2018) and Villa Aurora grant (2018) awarded by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.

A boy longing to become part of a motorcycling group leads us into a silver horizon, where through an array of moving images of dust, remote landscapes, and boys dressed in fragrant leather, we witness visual portrayals of what it means to feel ‘foreign’.

Vukan Žarkovic (1997, Serbia) is an up-and-coming filmmaker based in Amsterdam (Netherlands), Nicosia (Cyprus), and Belgrade (Serbia). He was born in Belgrade but grew up in Cyprus, where his inspiration and storytelling come from. He graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam with a B.F.A. in Audiovisual Arts. During his studies, he spent one semester in Jerusalem at the School of Visual Theatre. In 2022, he made the short film Aromana.

“Whoever You Are” is a cinematic adaptation of Walt Whitman's seminal poem, “Whoever You Are Holding Me Now In Hand” directed by Javier De Frutos and produced by Whoever You Are Productions. Following a lifelong scholarship and appreciation of American literature, De Frutos adapted Walt Whitman's poem into a screenplay for the film. Within “Whoever You Are”, De Frutos utilizes several different mediums of execution including dance and vocals, which he combines using his unique directorial and choreographic style blended with dexterous editing.

Shocking, sensual, raw, radical – these are words synonymous with work by Olivier award-winning director and choreographer Javier De Frutos. Renowned for creating brutal yet beautiful film and stage work, De Frutos has consistently stunned audiences with his ability to make work that not only is violently challenging, but also sears the stage and screen with its intelligence and wit. Prompted by the pandemic to expand their film-making practice, producers Paul Chantry and Rae Piper of Whoever You Are Productions, invited De Frutos to collaborate with them in creating a new short film. This collaboration sought to build on a fruitful prior relationship which Chantry had enjoyed with De Frutos, that had involved working together on several productions, two of which had been filmed for the BBC ("Eternal Damnation to Sancho & Sanchez" and "The Most Incredible Thing"). Chantry and Piper had enjoyed a longstanding relationship of 7 years collaborating with award-winning company Evenlode Films and Productions, who were additionally invited to join the project.

A young woman and her friends join a car repair shop as “Belia”(colloquial Egyptian for apprentices) to learn the craft from the Ustas (craft headmasters). They explore what this relationship creates as it merges labor with everyday life rhythms to open up a new space for movement.

Eman received her BA degree in acting and directing for theatre from Helwan University in 2017.From 2013- 2014 She joined NAS independent school for street theatre arts. From 2016 till 2019, She studied at MAAT|Contemporary Dance School, (3-Year Full-Time Professional Training Program). Different Martial Arts styles are a source of inspiration for the quality of her movement, like Taijiquan, and Shaolin Kung Fu which she has through her education at MAAT|Contemporary Dance School and later on at Meshkah Martial Art School.

One Buenos Aires afternoon in the dominican hairdresser saloon, in which characters from different origins reunite around the musical feeling of the place. From dancers to performers and actors, clients and reggaeton singers.

MA in Documentary Cinema and Profesor Assistant at Universidad del Cine, Buenos Aires. PhD Candidate at University NOVA, Lisboa. Currently working on my first feature film. I'm interested in the notions of displacement, ritual and longing. In color, rhythm, body and mixing genres in a surrealist way.

An uncanny narrator searches for the meaning and form of a mysterious cultural performance speculated to have started after the second world war, in Northern Uganda. As the search unfolds, the film sonically and anecdotally questions notions of cultural legacy, kinship, individual and collective memory.

Ayo is a Ugandan born visual artist and filmmaker currently based in The Netherlands. Her practice is based on a desire to seek out counter narratives, and to explore both pleasurable as well as uncomfortable ways of re-telling histories. Recent projects investigate intangible forms of cultural heritage and informal knowledge production held by unofficial bodies. Ayo holds an MA in Fine Art (cum laude) from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.

Inside the Outset: Evoking a Space of Passage is a project by artist and filmmaker Rosa Barba following an invitation by Point Centre for Contemporary Art in Nicosia and curator Mirjam Varadinis to propose and realize a project in Cyprus. The work proposed by the artist in 2013, started in 2014 and consists of two parts: a film and a long-term open-air cinema installation. The project was then presented to the Italian Council and received the first prize at the international competition (Third Edition) in 2018, and was awarded a grant from DGAAP (Directorate General for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Peripheries), Italy. Barba’s film is exclusively shot in Cyprus, including underwater shots of the Mazotos shipwreck, as well as aerial shots from archaeological sites. It is an investigation into the loaded, transforming topography that is already palpable in the landscape, before we actually understand what language it creates for our society. In that, the film follows Barba’s artistic approach to examine liminal states which manifest in between contested spaces, both mentally and geographically, in order to allow for a new perspective. The inaugural screening took place in Autumn 2021 at the open-air cinema installation in the Buffer Zone.

Rosa Barba (b. 1972 in Italy) lives and works in Berlin. Rosa Barba studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Barba’s work is represented in numerous international collections such as Collezione MAXXI Arte, Rome, Italy; Collezione FRAC Piemonte, Vercelli, Italy; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Lemaître Collection, London; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto; Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Kunsthaus Zürich, MACBA Barcelona, Mambo Bologna, Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Germany and Jumex, Mexico City. She has participated in group shows amongst others at MASS MoCA, USA; Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz; La Cinémathèque Française, Paris; WIELS, Brussels; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Swiss Institute, New York; 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art International Triennial of New Media Art 2014, Beijing, China; 19th Biennale of Sydney; International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia; 2010 Liverpool Biennial; 52nd and 53rd Venice Biennale; 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art; Biennial of Moving Images, Geneva.

Le pipeline géant Keystone transporte chaque jour plus de 700 000 barils de résidus impurs depuis les exploitations à ciel ouvert de la forêt Boréale à travers les Grandes Plaines des Sioux, souillant les terres et les réserves d'eau. Dans une plongée au coeur des ténèbres, l'histoire contemporaine retrouve le temps prophétique des commencements :"lorsqu’il n’y avait ni lune ni étoile”, le lieu des spectres, du surgissement et de la disparition.

Cécile Hartmann is a french artist and filmmaker based in Paris. Born in Colmar, she studies Art at the National Fine Arts Academy of Paris (2000) and Art History in Human Sciences at the University of Strasbourg. Inspired by documentary aesthetics and Minimalism, her work questionnes the divisions between a constructed world and a natural world. Using different mediums and image regimes she fuses video, photography and performative gestures to create effects of instability and sublimity in her representations. Close to the terrestrial surface, in search for hidden layers and collective mythologies, her cinematic language plays on the indecisive nature of perception, between the visible and invisible, the organic and non-organic, past and futur. Main exhibitions included : Le Serpent Noir, MABA, Nogent-sur-Marne, Achrone, MOCA, Hiroshima, Et voici la lumière, Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, The family of the invisibles, SEMA Séoul Museum of Art, AGITATIONISM, Eva Internationale Bienniale, Limerick, De la Casa a la Fabrica, Palau la Virreina, Barcelone, French Edges, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Paysages de la conscience, MAMBO, Bogotà, Microclimat, CCC, Tours.

L'air des infortunés reconstitue le procès de Karl Wilhelm Naundorff, horloger controversé pour avoir usurpé l’identité de Louis XVII, Dauphin de France, et propose une narration fantasmée se nourrissant des zones de flou de l’Histoire. 

Diplômé en 2009 de l’École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux où il s’est spécialisé en photographie et vidéo, Nino Laisné s’est également formé aux musiques traditionnelles sud-américaines auprès du guitariste Miguel Garau. C’est durant cette période qu’émerge l’envie d’allier cinéma, musique et art contemporain. Il s’intéresse aux identités marginales qui évoluent dans l’ombre de l’Histoire officielle mais aussi aux traditions orales lorsqu’elles sont exposées au déracinement et au métissage. Dès 2010, avec Os convidados, ses images deviennent sonores et évoquent des chants traditionnels. En 2013, son film En présence (piedad silenciosa) cristallise l’équilibre entre une écriture visuelle et une écriture musicale, autour de réminiscences religieuses dans le folklore vénézuélien. Cette réalisation signe aussi le début d’une collaboration fructueuse avec les musiciens Daniel et Pablo Zapico qu’il retrouvera régulièrement autour de partitions anciennes. Avec Folk Songs (2014) et Esas lágrimas son pocas (2015) il aborde des formes proches du documentaire autour des traditions musicales dans les phénomènes de migrations. Ses projets l’ont amené à exposer dans de nombreux pays tel le Portugal, l’Allemagne, la Suisse, l’Egypte, la Chine ou encore l’Argentine. Il est régulièrement invité à produire de nouvelles pièces lors de résidences de création (Casa de Velázquez – Académie de France à Madrid, FRAC Franche-Comté, Park in Progress à Chypre et en Espagne, Pollen à Monflanquin). Ses réalisations vidéo sont également présentées dans des salles de cinéma et festivals, dont le FID Marseille, la FIAC Paris, le Papay Gyro Nights Festival de Hong Kong, le Festival Internacional de Cinema de Toluca et le Festival Periferias de Huesca. Nino Laisné collabore également avec de nombreux artistes issus du spectacle vivant dont le chorégraphe et danseur de flamenco Israel Galván (El Amor Brujo), ou le marionnettiste Renaud Herbin (Open the Owl). En 2017, il crée le spectacle Romances inciertos, un autre Orlando, fruit de sa rencontre avec François Chaignaud, qu’ils présentent notamment au 72ème Festival d’Avignon. Après une centaine de représentations depuis sa création, la pièce poursuit sa tournée en 20/21 en France et à l’international (Australie, Japon, Chili). En 2018, le tandem tourne Mourn, O Nature!, un film court pour une exposition au Grand Palais, inspiré par l’opéra Werther de Massenet. En octobre 2019, pour sa nouvelle exposition monographique au Frac Franche-Comté, Nino Laisné présente L’air des infortunés, un film qui revisite une imposture historique avec Cédric Eeckhout et Marc Mauillon. En 2020, Nino Laisné crée avec Daniel Zapico un nouveau label discographique Alborada. Leur première publication Au monde, trouve sa source dans le précieux manuscrit de Vaudry de Saizenay (1699) dont les deux artistes proposent d’en poursuivre l’écriture. Cet album a reçu de nombreuses distinctions dont le prestigieux Diapason d’or, 4 Clé Télérama et 5 Etoiles Pizzicato. En décembre 2021 à Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy, le duo Laisné-Zapico crée Arca ostinata, un opéra miniature qui réinvente l’approche du théorbe à travers l’histoire foisonnante des cordes pincées au sein d’une scénographie qui se métamorphose. Au printemps 2022 paraîtra la seconde publication du label Alborada : le disque du spectacle Romances inciertos, un autre Orlando, enregistré à l’Arsenal de Metz dans des conditions de studio. Nino Laisné est artiste associé aux 2 Scènes, Scène nationale de Besançon.

'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.

SOAP, 2020-ongoing, imagines what it would take to create a soap opera with which to infiltrate, and influence, the conspiratorial far right in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. A group of idealistic left-wing intellectuals join forces to play a populist system at its own game. Through the initial five episodes, the heroes struggle to chart a course through their own ideas and ideologies by way of quotidian dramas and veiled intrigues. But how can this small group of artists, writers and activists overcome the struggle of principles, their internal bickering and the absurdities of their own privilege to create something that resonates and has real impact with their target audience? IN Episode 5, ‘MOSES AND MONOTHEISM’, concepts clash ferociously, hand puppets scream and pray, renowned Genocide Scholars are accosted and conspiracies bleed across borders. Meanwhile, as the left-wing infiltrators struggle to make sense of their own intentions, entertaining the idea of creating a YouTube series aimed at the evangelic Brazilians, the Querdenkers (a movement that fuses protesters against Covid measures with the far-right scene thriving on a sense of crisis and apocalypse) move through plague-time Berlin like a danse macabre.

Tamar Guimarães (b. Belo Horizonte, BR, lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin) is a visual artist working with film and other forms of time based media. She often works with actors alongside non- actors in semi-fictional films. Recent solo exhibitions include Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Jeu de Paume Satellite, Paris; Gasworks, London and the IMA Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. Guimarães’ works have been included at the 33rd, 31st and the 29th São Paulo Biennial; the Belgian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennial; the International Exhibition at the 55th Venice Biennial; at the LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art (USA); Baltimore Museum of Art (USA); the 11th Sharjah Biennial (UAE); the Banff Centre, Alberta (CA); Malmö Museum (SE); the Guggenheim Museum, NY (USA); the SculptureCenter (NY/USA); the 7th Gwangju Biennial (SK); the 3rd Guanghzhou Triennial (CN); the Jumex museum, Mexico (MX); Frac/Le Plateau, Paris (FR); CAC Synagogue de Delme (FR) and at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (DE). Her work has been screened at the Berlinale Forum Expanded (2019); Blackout, International Film Festival Rotterdam (2019); VIDEONALE, Bonn (2018); Anthology Film Archive, New York (2016); CPH:DOX (2013 and 2007); Images Film Festival and Experimental Media Congress, Toronto, Canada (2010); Architektur-Visionen # 1-6, Metropolis Kino, Hamburg (2015); Les Rencontres Internationales, Paris and Berlin (2014); TRAMWAY art film biennial, Glasgow (2012); Viennale Film Festival, Vienna (2011); and Oberhausen Film Festival (2009) among others. Guimarães’ work is represented in the collections of the Tate Modern (UK); the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, N.Y. (USA); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (ES); Kadist Foundation (SF); Inhotim (BR); Frac Lorraine (FR); Guandong Museum (CN) and Cisneros Fontan- als Art Foundation (USA). She was awarded the 2018 Faena Prize for the Arts, Faena Art, Buenos Aires, Argentina; the 2014 Edstrandska Foundation Prize, Malmö, Sweden; the 2012 Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Grants and Commissions Prize, Miami, USA; was the receiver of a three-year work grant from the Danish Arts Council and was nominated for the 2018 Prize The Future of Europe, Leipzig, Germany.

Euro Hamlet is the latest project of theatrical creation directed by Filip Markiewicz in August 2021 in the immense Hall of the Telux site in Weisswasser in Germany, in collaboration with playwright Katrin Michaels, Working from the original text of Hamlet, Shakespeare's most popular and disturbing play, Filip Markiewicz creates a sort of concept with Euro Hamlet. He subverts the established rules of classic theatre and combines them with different artistic forms. The result proves to be a veritable performance, both in terms of the artists appropriating the original text and the visual and audio presentation of its content in space. In this contemporary tableau, Filip Markiewicz reflects certain references from the history of art and uses the concept of the «Play Within the Play» to engage with issues in the social and political realities of today's Europe, It raises the question: how to communicate the truths of everydav life in a context that is subject to codes of appearance? The preparation for the staging of Euro Hamlet included a shooting in July 2021 with the actors Leila Lallali, Marie Jung, Luc Feit and Joran Yonis in the region of East Germany and in Zgorzelec in Poland. A "mise en abyme" of Shakespeare's text in an organic setting that bears witness to European history, where the artist adresses the notion of territory beyond the experimental nature of this reading.

Filip Markiewicz (born in 1980, Esch / Alzette, Luxembourg) is a visual artist who expresses himself through various media such as drawing, painting, music, video and installation. Filip Markiewicz represented Luxembourg at the 56th Venice Biennale 2015 with the Paradiso Lussemburgo project. His long-term project Celebration Factory on contemporary Europe began in 2016 at the NN Contemporary Art Northampton and at the Theater Basel before it was continued in 2018 at the Casino Luxembourg - Forum d'Art Contemporain and in 2019 at the Center for Contemporary Art Derry-Londonderry and the Kunsthalle Osnabrück. In 2017 Markiewicz staged his performance Fake Fiction with diary texts by Oskar Schlemmer (publication Hyde Éditions) at Theater Basel for the official Art Basel program. Markiewicz received the Art Prize Bourse Bert-Theis in 2019 for his art music project Ultrasocial Pop. In 2020 Markiewicz shows his monographic exhibition Ultraplastik Rhapsody at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest. For the Lausitz Festival 2020, Markiewicz directed, created the scenography and composed the music for the play ANTIGONE NEUROPA (Sophocles) in collaboration with the Staatstheater Cottbus. In february 2021 Filip Markiewicz presented the performance Ultrasocial Pop in the frame of the Rencontres Internationales Paris / Berlin. In August 2021 Markiewicz directed, created the scenography and composed the music for the installation and theater performance Euro Hamlet at the Lausitz Festival. Filip Markiewicz has been composing music for film, theater and installation under the name RAFTSIDE since 1999, with which he has also appeared in several international festivals.