Programme Paris 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).

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.

"Night Life" provides a glimpse into the behavior of wildlife after dark and serves as a reminder of the unwitting persistence of nature. For this piece a trail camera was moved periodically to capture various angles and shots at night throughout the seasons. The animals (mostly deer) were then framed within circles against a black background and choreographed into compositions that follow their relationships with one another while creating new interactions by compressing a year’s worth of footage into fourteen minutes. "Night Life" is a meditative portal through which a nocturnal world parallel to ours reveals the resolve of its inhabitants within an everchanging environment. In the process, our relationship to the rhythms of nature is linked to personal associations, memories and metaphors.

Matthew Garrison was born in Albany, NY, and grew up in Chicago. After living and working in New York City for eleven years, he moved to Pennsylvania to teach art and technology at Albright College. His work is exhibited and screened internationally including New York City, Korea, India, Panama, Brazil and Singapore. Garrison's art explores a dialog among intimate space, landscape and the environment.

In an unknown near future and past, a filmmaker is trying to retrace the steps of Silvia. “Who is Silvia? What is Silvia?” Silvia has gone missing. In this filmic reconstruction, Silvia drifts with the forest, attempting to attune with its temporalities. In a quest for co-existence, Silvia bridges the supposedly opposing world-views of ‘Sequency and Simultaneity’, presence and duration. At the borders of not only the forest but also of science, the destructive powers of a proprietarian society only obey the laws of succession. Here, the socialists plans of the post war era are being demolished and cleared for new and profitable housing. But in Silvia’s archive, city infrastructure and forest root systems are being integrated. Silvia’s recordings are cut in intervals where time itself becomes unstable. Through a numbering system of repeating patterns, progression is broken. Silvia has abandoned the society of ‘means to an end’. In this movement lays the path to un-build the walls that have infiltrated all aspects of this world. In the film there are excerpts by: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Author of the Acacia Seeds' and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics and The Dispossessed, 1974. Walter Benjamin, Painting, or Signs and Marks, 1917. Una Canger, What the Eye Sees, 1986. Prints, photographs, drawings and architectural plans by among others: Florence Henri, Lotte Stam-Beese, Alma Buscher and Silvia.

In recent years, Pia Rönicke has been investigating different botanical collections that show traces of colonial and geopolitical conditions. She is in her work concerned with problems of space and spatial transformations. She is interested in the connection between workspace and filmic space, and how we conceive historical matters in relationship to our daily activities. Rönicke often works with archives and the practice of collecting is a recurring theme in her practice. She works with film, prints, sculptures and objects, which together builds narratives. CURRICULUM VITAE Pia Rönicke Born: Denmark, Roskilde. 1974 Education 1995-1999 The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art 1999-2001 California Institute of the Arts. Solo Exhibitions (selected): 2022: Drifting Woods, Munkeruphus, Denmark 2021: Drifting Woods, Deserted Forest, Gävle Konstcentrum, Sweden 2020 Astrid, Lotte og Florence, Astrid Noacks Atelier, Copenhagen 2019: one artist / 2 films / one week, gb agency, Paris 2018: Word for Forest, Parallel Oaxaca, Mexico 2017: the Cloud Document, Overgaden. Institute of Contemporary Art 2015: The Pages of Day and Night, gb agency. 2012: Aurora, Museo Tamayo, M?xico City. Dream and action find equal support in it, gb agency, Paris 2011: Dream and action find equal support in it, Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen 2010: Scanning Through Landscapes, WALDEN AFFAIRS, Den Haag 2009: Facing, CENTRO CULTURAL MONTEHERMOSO KULTURENEA, Vitoria, Spain. 2008: A Usual Story from a Nameless Country, gb Agency, Paris Travel Stories, Casco, Utrecth, Holland. 2007: Rosa’s Letters - Telling a Story, croy nielsen, Berlin. 2006: Rosa’s Letters - Telling a Story, gb Agency, Paris Capitol Punishment, in collaboration with Olga Koumoundouros Glassell School of Arts, Houston. The Plan is Dictator. Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden.* 2005: Hoardings II, public project, Tate Modern. London Without a Name. Gallery Andersen’s, Copenhagen. Land/Documents. Display Gallery, Prague. 2004: Without a Name, Gallery gb Agency, Paris. Landscapes of Resistance,Trafo Gallery, Budapest. Six Architects – An Architectural Rorschach Test, •• A collaporation with Michael Bears. Lunds Kunsthal, Sweden. 2003: Seven Architects – An Architectural Rorschach Test, Schindler residency, The Makey Apartments, Los Angeles ••A collaporation with Michael Bears. 2002: ‘A Place Like Any Other’, Gallery Tommy Lund, Copenhagen, Denmark. Group Exhibitions (selected): 2022: Busan Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan (MoCA Busan) Flowers, MAMAC, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nice 2021: Acts of Listening: A Common Attempt to (Re) Articulate a Feminist Position, Astrid Noacks Atelier, Copenhagen Perspectives #01,Fonds regional d’art contemporain, Alsace The Secret Life of Plants, Casa da Cerca, Almada, Portugal 2020: The City, BEK – Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts, Bergen 2019: Artistic Undressings of the Royal Seaport, Moss exhibitions, Stockholm Drawing Attention, DEN FRIE, Contemporary Artcenter. Kbenhavn I slipped into my metamorphosis so quietly that no one noticed, DEN FRIE This is Not An Apricot, SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen 2018: Case of Emergency, public project, Gävle, Sverige 2018: Word for Forest, Parallel Oaxaca, Mexico 2017: AMIF, LUX Scotland. Tramway, Glasgow. Collaboration with Henriette Heise, Deirdre Humphrys, Mia Edelgart Conversation I: Family, work, art, surroundings, Tom Christoffersen. Pia R?nicke, S?nder Boulevard 88, 3.tv 1720 Copenhagen V. E-mail: piaronicke@gmail.com Mapping with Plants, book work and symposium, Hamborg Art Academy. DFU Kino, screening, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning. 2016: Botany Under Influence, Apexart, New York. But Still Tomorrow Builds into My Face, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai. 2015: A story within a Story G?teborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art.Old News, cneai, Paris. Kvinder frem. Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark. Lokale, Flensborggade 57, Copenhagen 2014: Photography and Architecture. Photographic Center, Copenhagen Human- Space-Machines. Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK), Oslo. Buildering : Misbehaving the City, Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), Cincinnati, Ohio 2013: Reports from New Sweden, Tensta Konsthall. Human- Space-Machines: Stage Experiments At The Bauhaus, Stiftung Bauhaus, Dessau Fokus, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen. 2012: Horizons persistants, Centre d’art le LAIT, Albi Cities of Light: Film Programme curated by Inheritance Projects, Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon, India. Newtopia: The State of Human Rights, exhibition for the City of Mechelen, Belgium VISIT TINGBJERG, Artfestival in Tingbjerg. A Gathering, locus Athens, Athen Envisioning Buildings, MAK, Wien 2011: Ficciones Urbanas, Centro Cultural Koldo Mitxlena, San Sebastian. Community without Propinquity, Milton Keynes Art Gallery, UK Terms of Belonging (gaaafstand collaboration with Nis R?mer) Overgaden. Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen. L'idee de nature, Mulhouse Kunsthalle, Frankrig 2010: hem ljuva hem, Konsthall C, Stockholm. THIS STORY IS NOT READY FOR ITS FOOTNOTES, Ex Elettrofonica, Roma. Danmark 2010 - en vejledning til nationen for 'verdens lykkeligste folk'. (gaaafstand collaboration with Nis R?mer) Overgaden. Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen. Wiels, Rehabilitation, Bruxelles – Brussel Both Before and After, gb agency, Paris Mostra Internacional de Films de Dones de Barcelona, Film festival, Barcelona. Where are yesterday's tomorrow? Film screening, Mus?e d'Art Contemporain de Montreal. Montreal. 2009: Changes in the contemporary city, Sculpture International Rotterdam (SIR), Coolsingel cinema, Rotterdam. The Curve is Ruinous (film screening program), Grazer Kunstverein, Graz. After Architecture, CASM, Barcelona. In May (After October), Gallery TPW Toronto Gets Under the Skin (film screening program), The Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York Os demos, Publik, Copenhagen 2008: Overcoming, Ernst Museum, Budapest After October, Elizabeth Dee gallery, New York Zero Gravity, The Week of Contemporary Art in Plovdiv, Bulgaria U-TURN Quadrennial for Contemporary Art, Copehagen The Map is not the Territory, Esbjeg Artmuseum, Denmark Technically Sweet, Participant Inc, New York Danskjävlar – A Swedish declaration of love, Kunsthal Charlottenborg. Copenhagen. A NEW STANCE FOR TOMORROW, The Gallery Sketch, London 2007: “The Other City”, Hungarian cultural center, New York. “Sue?o de casa propia”, La casa encendida, Madrid “Archaeologies of the Future, Sala Rekalde, Bilboa. ”Building Society”, Contemporary artcenter La Panera, Lleida, Spain. “Imagine Action”, Lisson Gallery, London. “A Number of Worlds Resembling Our Own”, Smart Project Space, Amsterdam. Habitat/Variations, B?timent d'art con temporain, Geneve “Anachronism”, ARGOS, Brussels. "Elephant Cemetary”, Artist Space, New York "Dibujos animados (Cartoons)", Museo Colecciones ICO, Madrid 2006: Exportable Goods, Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna Dreamlands Burn, Mucsarnok / Kunsthalle Budapest Version Animee, Centre pour l'image contemporaine, Geneve. Urban Appearances, video parcour at Rosa-LuxemburgPlatz, Berlin Closely Observed Plans, Transit workshops, Bratislava. Super nova, Pommery#3, Reims, France Esplanaden, The Frie, Exhibition Hall, Copenhagen. 2005: At the Same Time Somewhere Else, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinbourg gb Agency. Paris. Opening exhibition, Andersen’s Gallery, Copenhagen. Urban Cirkulation, public project, Berlin. 2004: Channel _0, CATV Project, Local TV-NETWORK, AIAV, Japan Non Standard Cities, Stadtkunstverein, Berlin. Cycle Tracks Will Abound In Utopia, ACCA, Melbourne Architectual Adventures, Overgaden, Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen. Monument, an exhibition in the city of Copenhagen. 2003: Abcity, Trafo, Budapest. Plunder, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, Scotland. Feu de bois, Frac des Pays de la Loire, Nantes, France. Rent a Bench, Trapholt Moderne Museum of Art, Kolding, Denmark. Coup de Coeur- a sentimental choice, CRAC Alsace, Altkirch, France. Video festival, Creating New Spaces, Kunstverein Langenhagen, Germany. Venice biennale, Utopia Station, Venice. gb agency, Present Perfect, Paris. GNS, Palais de Tokyo, Paris Nomadic Structures, Cubiitt Gallery, London. Mursollaici, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris. 2002: Home Scenes: 8 days of revision. The Schindler House, Los Angeles. Site-seeing: disneyfication of cities? Ku?nstlerhaus, Vienna. The Fall Exhibition, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark. ••A collaporation with Johan Tiren. Rent-a-bench, in the street on bus benches, Los Angeles. Culture meets culture, Busan Biannale, Korea. Urbane Sequenzen, Kunsthalle Erfurt/Museum Schloss Hardenberg Manifesta 4, European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main, Germany* ’Concrete Garden’, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford 2001: ‘Dedalic Convention’, MAK – Austrian Museum for Applied Arts, Wien. ‘Blick’, Screening touring Nordic and international venues. ‘Exile Video’, Rum46, Aarhus, Denmark. ‘New Settlements’, Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center, Copenhagen, Denmark. ‘Take Off’, Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus, Denmark 2000:‘Site Geist’, The Porter Troupe Gallery, SanDiego, USA. ‘No swimming’, org. by Heike Ander, Kunstverein Mu?nchen, Germany. ‘Use your illusion/part 3’, Duchamp's Suitcase, Arnolfini, Bristol, England. ‘Momentum’. Nordic Biennale for Contemporary Art, Moss, Norway. ’Taenk om/What if?’, Moderna Museet, Stockholm,Sweden.

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

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

Taking as its starting point the Neolithic figurines found throughout the Danube region from Croatia to the Black Sea through Serbia, Romania, North Macedonia,Bulgaria and Greece Women Minor Speculations is part road trip, part time travel and part speculative fiction using fragments of time, archaeological fragments, sound fragments and imaginary audio files trying to weave a potential whole from many distinct parts. During a period of four years I collected materials in film, images, sounds, and text dealing with remains as evidential material, with landscapes as witnesses, with interwoven biographies of archaeologists, their objects and subjects of research (the figurines, the constellations, cement, gossip and songs) in an exploration of how real and unreal objects of material culture produce gendered interpretations, collisions and hallucinations of public accounts, using technologies of memory, data storage devices to fracture the official historical narrative through minor histories, minor narratives and minor speculations. Shot over a fiveyear period on 35mm, 16mm, digital Bolex, Digital 8, mobile phones and still cameras the film involves a tentative encounter of two female explorers in south eastern Europe meeting through materials and separated by 6000 years.

Nicole Hewitt is a visual artist working in film, video, installation, performance, spoken word and text. Her work has recently been shown at The Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Pogon Centre for Independent Culture, Zagreb; Sonic Acts Academy, Amsterdam, The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka; Invisible Savicenta – Savicenta; international festivals such as Days of Croatian Film, Hiroshima International Festival of Animation, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, Festival of New Film Split, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, International Film Festival Rotterdam, EMAF, New Media Festival Seoul, Mumbai International Film Festival, Montreal International Festival of New Cinema and New Media, etc. Retrospectives of her film, video and animation work were parts of Holland International Animation Film Festival Utrecht (2007) and ANIMATEKA (2006), Nicole Hewitt, Museums Quartier Vienna, 2004; Nicole Hewitt, Galerija Nova, Zagreb, 2004; UrbanFestival, Zagreb, 2011; Spaport Biennial 2009/2010, Banja Luka; Women With Vision, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, 2008, Insert, Retrospective of Croatian Video Art, MSU, Zagreb, 2006; Here Tomorrow, MSU Zagreb, 2002., etc.). Hewitt is cofounder of the artist run collective Studio Pangolin , is part of the sound collective Soundspiels and teaches at The Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb. Hewitt lives and works in Zagreb and London.

‘Where Lakes Once Had Water contemplates how the Earth is experienced and understood through different ontologies – ways of being, seeing, sensing, listening and thinking – that reverberate across art, Indigenous thought, science, ancient and modern cultures, and the non-human.’ Sonia Leber and David Chesworth travelled with a team of Earth and environmental scientists who are investigating changes in the climate, landscape and ecology over 130,000 years. Their journey took them to Australia’s Northern Territory, to spectacular yet challenging environments, from locations of long-term aridity to lush, green waterways. Where Lakes Once Had Water channels the experience, where Indigenous rangers, Elders and community members collaborate with scientists. Working across the ancient shorelines, everyone is receptive to the signs, signals and rhythms of the land. Meanwhile, non-human cohabitants continue their struggles for survival. Leber and Chesworth deploy video as a tool, scanning tree lines, erosions, termite mounds, and the effects of water, sun and fire. Their disquieting sound design encompasses natural and human-made sounds, and the hidden signals and energies that exist beyond human hearing. The project is a journey across audio-visual realms, scientific endeavour and Indigenous knowledge – a coalescence of efforts to understand the ancient land. "Where Lakes Once Had Water" was commissioned by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) in association with Bundanon. It was filmed on the lands and waters of the Mudburra, Marlinja, Jingili, Elliot, Jawoyn and Larrakia communities in Northern Territory, with additional filming and editing on Barkandji, Dharawal, Djabugay, Yidinji and Wurundjeri Country. University of Wollongong Art Collection, Australia.

Australian artists Sonia Leber and David Chesworth are known for their distinctive video, sound and architecture-based installations that are audible as much as visible. Leber and Chesworth’s works are speculative and archaeological, often involving communities and elaborated from research in places undergoing social, technological or local geological transformation. Their works emerge from the real but exist significantly in the realm of the imaginary, hinting at unseen forces and non-human perspectives. Leber and Chesworth’s artworks have been shown in the central exhibitions of the 56th Venice Biennale: All The World’s Futures (2015) and the 19th Biennale of Sydney: You Imagine What You Desire (2014). Solo exhibitions include What Listening Knows, Messums Wiltshire, UK (2021) and the survey exhibition Architecture Makes Us: Cinematic Visions of Sonia Leber & David Chesworth, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Australia (2018) touring to Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane (2019) and UNSW Galleries, Sydney (2019).

The work is composed of two separate films followed by each other. Both films explore transcendental issues through archaeological and illegal excavations of tombs. "After Life" consists of a sequence of meditative short scenes picturing the ruins of a small Faliscan necropolis Cavone di Monte Li Santi in Italy and its surrounding natural elements. The rock-cut chamber tombs of the necropolis had been illegally excavated before they were archaeologically discovered in 2015 – a phenomenon still faced by many rural archaeological sites. At the center of "Red Impasto Jar" is a looted archaeological tomb object. In antiquity, the funeral was a significant ceremony where entombing of the body was just one component in the complex sequence of events. This ancient Faliscan tomb item dating back to the 6th century BCE was passed on to the archaeological museum (Mazzano Romano, Italy). The jar is radically altered and damaged by being cemented into the structures of a house as a decorative element. The film portrays the state of the pottery focusing on the detailed choreography and documentation of the object with a slow 360º rotation on a robust industrial motor against a monochromatic background.

Sound, perception and imagination are essential ingredients in the research and practice of Jonna Kina (b. 1984). Her work reveals the value of fictional viewpoints in non-fictional investigations. Kina’s works have been shown in the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum; Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome; Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg; Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg; Espoo Modern Art Museum EMMA; Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn and in Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, among others. Kina has recently been awarded the Finnish Art Prize “Below Zero” (2018) and her film Arr. for a Scene was awarded as the “Best Nordic Short Film” at Nordisk Panorama Film Festival in Malmö (2017). She was also shortlisted for the VISIO Young Talent Acquisition Prize in Florence (2017).

“Water & Coltan” transports its viewer directly to the places of the struggle of women in artisanal coltan mining camps in South Kivu in Democratic Republic of Congo. Superimposed with a posthuman near-future scenario of the former coal mining Ruhr area in Germany the 360° documentary immersive experience combines two local sides of one and the same violent global phenomenon: the extractivist relation to natural and human resources with its long-term consequences for the environment and society.

Daniel Kötter (Germany, 1975) is a documentary filmmaker and theater director. His research based works alternate between media and institutional contexts. They have been shown worldwide at film festivals, in galleries and theaters. Since 2007 visual research on urbanization and political landscapes leads him to the African continent and the Middle East. His major works include the film and performance series “state-theatre” about urban conditions of performativity in the cities of Lagos, Tehran, Berlin, Detroit, Beirut, Mönchengladbach (2009-2014), the research, exhibition and film project “CHINAFRIKA” (2013-2019) and the film trilogy “Hashti Tehran” (2017, Special Award of the German Short Film Award), “Desert View” (2018) and “Rift Finfinnee” (2020, DEFA Award DOK Leipzig) about urban peripheries in Tehran, Cairo and Addis Ababa. Since 2019 Daniel Kötter was working on the series of spatial performances and 360° films “landscapes and bodies” on the consequences of extractivism in Germany, West Papua and Democratic Republic of Congo. His 360° film “Water & Coltan” (2021) is premiered at IDFA DocLab Competition.

‘The physical coastline becomes a metaphor for a ruptured piece of skin barely holding together a volatile state of being ready to explode.’ – Sohrab Hura The most recent film The Coast was filmed in the dark of the night during religious festivities in a sea side village in South India where millions of people throng to participate in religious festivities to celebrate Kali, the mytholoigical Goddess of death and destruction, for a week every year. These devotees transform into mythical creatures, celestial beings and even characters from every day life and enter a frenzied state of trance in that celebration after which they are carried to the sea in a state of exhaustion to wash off those masquerades. This film stretches the end of the book and the photographic installation also titled The Coast (Large Gallery I). The margin between land and water becomes a point of release beyond which characters experience fear, surprise, anger, sadness, trust, anticipation, excitement, contempt but also rapture. In this sequel to The Head & The Bird (Large Gallery I), Hura uses the metaphor of the washing away of the masquerade as a hope for the removal of the different masks that society wears to commit and justify their actions. Many of his later works have looked at the mask as a metaphor to make social and political comments. Here he looks at the masks worn by society where as in Snow (Bel étage) the mask is his own - the mask of denial. In this film we begin with seeing groups of people going into the sea almost as if to conquer the waves that crash upon them. At the same time frenzied rituals are at play on land. A drone like hypnotic sound oscillates between the ears of the audience. During the festivities Hura had met a musician playing the Urumi – a traditional percussion drum in Tamil Nadu – whose skin heads are made of buffalo skin. To be able to listen to the sound of skin, the artist had asked if he could record the musician rubbing the drum stick against the taut skin instead of beating it. The tense fight with the sea eventually gives way to a more gentle embracing of the sea. In the film the sea holds hope of a more optimistic future – one that is led not by male protagonists. The continuous crashing of the waves on land makes the edges and tipping points more blurry making visible that the overlaps of land and water and other intersectionalities are always in flux. The sea asks for a different kind of osmosis and transformation, the sea asks for embracing and not colliding.

Sohrab Hura (b.1981) is a photographer and filmmaker. His work lies at the intersection of Film, Photographs, Sound and Text. By constantly experimenting with form and using a journal like approach, many of his works attempt to question a constantly shifting world and his own place within it. Some of his recent solo and group exhibitions include Spill (Huis Marseille voor Fotografie, 2021)The Coast (Liverpool Biennial 2021), Videonale (Kunstmuseum Bonn 2021, 2019), Spill (Experimenter, India 2020), Companion Pieces: New Photography (The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2020), Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan (Kettle’s Yard, 2019), The Levee: A photographer in the American South (Cincinnati Art Museum, 2019). His films have been widely shown in international film festivals. The Coast (2020) premiered at Berlinale 2021 while Bittersweet (2019) was awarded the Principal Prize of the International Jury at the 66th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2020. The Lost Head & The Bird (2017) had previously won the NRW Award at the 64th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2018. Sohrab Hura has self-published five books under the imprint UGLY DOG. His book The Coast (2019) won The Aperture - Paris Photo PhotoBook of the Year Award 2019 and Look It’s Getting Sunny Outside!!! was shortlisted for the same award in 2018. The exhibition Growing Like A Tree (2021) opened in January 2021 at Ishara Art Foundation marking his inaugural curatorial project. The second iteration of this curated exhibition titled Static In The Air opened at Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai over six slow transformations in September 2021. In 2022 Hura will be the focus of a profile at Oberhausen International Short Film Festival for his films that lie at the intersection of the still and moving images. His work can be found in the permanent collections of MoMA (New York), Ishara Art Foundation, Cincinnati Art Museum and other private and public collections. Hura lives and works in New Delhi, India.

Frankston is a study of the place I grew up, a satellite of Melbourne with affordable housing, nature-strips and beach views. The downright ordinary nature of the opportunities and festivities afforded by Frankston, and the ambivalence one can feel going back there, nonetheless give rise to a new aesthetic: the suburban symphony. In this case the symphony is rendered in strange hues and luminescences as though affirming Robin Boyd’s depiction of ‘the Australian ugliness’ in 1960, where he claims that “taste has become so dulled and calloused that anything which can startle a response on jaded retinas is deemed successful.”

Patrick Tarrant (Melbourne, 1969) is an Associate Professor in filmmaking at London South Bank University who has written on feature-length portrait films such as Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?, Two Years At Sea and Manakamana. Patrick has made video portraits and observational city films, while developing a hybrid filmmaking method that brings digital video and a 16mm film projector together (in The Take-Up, The Trembling Giant & Another Self Portrait ). Patrick has had films screened at the Hong Kong, Cork and Melbourne International Film Festivals, and was nominated for Best Short Film at the 2016 London Film Festival.

Kristina Savutsina détaille avec finesse les chorégraphies quotidiennes auxquelles s’adonnent ou se soumettent les habitant.e.s d’une bourgade biélorusse. En choisissant le plan fixe et un montage associatif, Khan’s Flesh porte ainsi un regard distancié et teinté d’ironie sur une société corsetée par d’intangibles relations de pouvoir.

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

The age-old dispute between the open and the closed kitchen solution have reached a dramatic climax where “The Separatists” face the “The Open Kitchen Radicals” in one final heated battle. From there the film also debates the existential properties of the bar, as in opposition to the conservative breakfast table, and attempt to explain differences in psychological temperament through people’s preferences of kitchen worktop. The End of Kitchen Politics is the second film of the umbrella project Ad Nauseam, a series of essayistic videoss portraying a society where doubt no longer exists. In this day and age, neurologists have discovered the center of consciousness, the open kitchen solution has been ruled mandatory by law, and every new parent follows the hand book How To Raise a Child obediently. While Christianity and Neo-atheism have merged to form The Faitheist Church, a universal understanding of all the rules of football have been reached. And yet, this society is permeated by a chaos so disruptive that it’s hard for people even to breathe. Through hyper stylized 3D animations and what they call “clear-cut narration”, video artist duo Tor-Finn Malum Fitje and Thomas Anthony Hill comment on the current paradigm of truth, and attempt to challenge the post-modern notion that all ways of looking at the world can be equally true.

Tor-Finn Malum Fitje (1989) was born in Porsgrunn and grew up in Bergen, Norway, where he first studied Film Production, specialising with a Bachelor’s degree in Directing. He went on to do a BFA at Konstfack, before earning his Master of Fine Arts at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, graduating in 2016. Currently based in Oslo, Malum Fitjes work comprises essayistic video and audio installations, as well as text-based art. He has screened his films at the Modern Museum in Stockholm, the Gallery of Photography in Oslo and is currently working on three new films called Ad Nauseam: National Treasures Explained, that will be exhibited at the opening of the new National Museum in Oslo. Thomas Anthony Hill (1989) born in Coffs Harbor, Australia, grew up in Bergen, Norway and has lived in Oslo since 2017. In 2014 he graduated with a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature at the University of Bergen and has since then worked as a film critic and translator. Together with Malum Fitje he has created the works Hyphenic (2018) and Ad Nauseam (2020), the latter currently being exhibited at Galleri Golsa in Oslo.

a.o.k is about the experience of making pop videos and pop music. Using only behind the scenes and B-roll footage altered with animations, it is a painting of the emotional experience behind and in front of the camera. It is as much about the content as it is about the making of it. The project revolves around a series of music videos created to original tracks but the end results are neither seen nor heard; what remains visible, however, are the sensations of the contributors during the production. It is a journey that cramps with discomfort at the beginning but opens up, softens and releases into something tender and compassionate. The result is relentless and unforgiving but it is an ode to the loving images we create of ourselves.

Christopher Tym (UK) is a Visual Artist based in Amsterdam. His practice includes Film-making, Animation and Audio-Visual Installations. He creates liminal spaces in moving image using unreliable framing, affective editing and by exploring the relationship between the camera and the body. He graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2012 and the Royal College of Art UK in 2017. He teaches Animation and tutors at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam.

In this speculative fiction, all the world’s photographs have suddenly turned into the objects they represent. The video “White Shadow” depicts a vertiginous architecture, so devastating that it created new uncontrollable borders and isolated people. Piles of selfies, cats, and meals are scattered everywhere. Text messages evoke a new society living with limitations and suffering from media saturation, sensory overload, and crushing ecological impact. A world where images have taken over, invading and transforming space. They become the only reality that is still visible, as the whole world is turning inwards.

The collectif_fact comprised Annelore Schneider and Claude Piguet. They live and work between London and Geneva. Their work investigates how narrative and cinematic codes can expand our relation to space and objects. Their research considers storytelling, editing and filming as a tool to speculate and critically reflect on the habits that condition our perception of reality. Their film frequently uses the spectator’s ability to construct stories from ruptured narrative fragments and their desire to be gripped and even deceived by images and stories. collectif_fact’s films have been shown internationally in art festivals and exhibitions, including Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris, Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva Centre Culturel Suisse Paris, Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art, Lianzhou Foto Festival, Metropolis Art Center, Beijing, Fotomuseum Winterthur. They received numerous awards such as the Swiss Art Award and recently Grand Prix Culturel Migros, Swiss Art Council Pro Helvetia Production Grant and residency Art + Tech Space Studios, London.

What happens when you try to perform Shakespeare inside GTA Online, a game space notorious for its aggression and gratuitous violence? You might expect the other players in your server to respond with heavy weaponry, perhaps a mini SMG, or a compact grenade launcher. And indeed, this is often what happens. Yet occasionally you may come across someone who responds in an entirely unexpected manner. This work radically subverts and appropriates the notoriously violent world of GTA Online and reimagines it as a meditative space for live performance of Shakespeare. It challenges lazy assumptions about video games (that they are simply mindless entertainment or the nadir of violent youth culture) to reveal their inherent artistry and sophistication, and at the same time opens up the snobbish and elitist world of classical theatre to those who are excluded from it due to disability, financial concerns, geographical proximity or lack of familiarity with the theatrical ecosystem. By harnessing the technological capabilities and networked connectivity offered by contemporary video games, it also interrogates the concept of the audience: what it is, how it can be accessed, and how it can interact with live performance.

Sam Crane is an actor and video artist, critically acclaimed for his performances at the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, in The West End and on Broadway. He has collaborated with many of the most celebrated and influential theatre artists in the world including Mark Rylance, Katie Mitchell and Robert Icke in groundbreaking productions including Farinelli and The King, 1984 and ...some trace of her. In the guise of his alter ego Rustic Mascara, he attracted over 50 thousand views in two weeks to his radical attempts to perform Shakespeare inside GTA online and has had his films shown at contemporary art and film festivals worldwide (including London Short Film Festival, Slamdance and Athens Digital Arts Festival). He is also a prolific screen actor and has appeared in many the most loved and successful television shows of recent years including The Crown (Netflix), The Trial of Christine Keeler (BBC), COBRA (Sky), Poldark (BBC), Endeavour (ITV) and Call The Midwife (BBC). He has recently been selected as one of six emerging artistic researchers for Zurich University of the Arts PEERS programme, and was longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2022

When you question the very nature of your physical reality it becomes much easier to see the cracks in the system. Estuary charts the emotional landscape of a time in flux. Inspired by the proliferation of computer generated social media influencers and the growing desire to document and manipulate every square inch of our external and internal landscapes, the film considers the ramifications of a world where all aspects of life are curated and malleable. As time goes on all lines blur into vector dots.

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, San Francisco Cinematheque’s CROSSROADS Film Festival, Internationales Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, Sheffield Doc/Fest, and Curtas Vila Do Conde among others.

A reconstructed assemblage of the opening title sequence from the feature film The Shining (1980) by Stanley Kubrick, “A View of Above” was shot in reverse perspective at the actual locations used in the feature film. The original viewpoint is now inverted, looking up, and back at the ominous "eye in the sky" which shadows the yellow Volkswagen as it winds its way up the American Rockies to the Overlook Hotel. The framing, movement, and pacing of the original, feature film sequence is replicated shot by shot in duration and in relationship to the sun and weather. The intent is to recreate the original, but from an altogether different perspective: the gaze defiantly flipped, the viewer is no longer a complicit voyeur of the hapless victim.

Michael Paulus is an interdisciplinary artist living in Portland, Oregon. USA Exploring potential connections between often disparate relationships, his video work often attempts to reveal the hidden, censored, or unassumed in culture, cartography, mechanisms and commonplace conventions. Films and videos have screened at the NW film festival, PDX film festival, various domestic and international film festival as well as the Taipai Biennial, Scope Basel, various gallery installations and recently as part of CORE, -the Nagasaki-Hanford project as part of an installation at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA in 2018

Skull Island is an ongoing series of lectures, films and installations that examine a hypothetical image environment as an introspective space that reflects the sociopolitical contexts of its audience. Using the fictional island from King Kong as an analogy, cultural and technological developments define a relative position from which the viewer can view and question their surroundings. Part III is structured around two artefacts found in the visual effects archive of Berlin’s Deutsche Kinemathek Museum of Film and Television. A cast of the skull of the original armature for the stop-motion model of King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933) and a silicone mask constructed for Kevin Bacon’s computer-generated invisible character in Hollow Man (Paul Verhoeven, 2000) create a framework in which to discuss the surfaces and armatures or the skin and bones of moving images. The film examines the inherent hidden material and socio-political properties of moving images, the perpetuation of insidious ideological constructs in cinematic remakes or reboots, and traumas encapsulated in the sites and systems of moving image production.

Graham Kelly is a visual artist and filmmaker. His practice is situated in the interfaces between contemporary forms of images, physical bodies, and environments. By considering these interactions as engulfing and continuous states or effects, his work seeks to expose and dissect power structures that are cast, distorted or enforced within them. His works have been screened and exhibited in a number of international contexts that include: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Kino der Kunst, EYE Filmmuseum, TENT, Transmission, NEST, Recontres Internationales, and LUX. He was a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academy in 2015/16 and at AIR Berlin Alexanderplatz in 2018.

When I immigrated to Finland, I started facing a deep shock regarding the differences between the two cultures. Finding myself on the border between the two helped my practice but distracting for my selfdom, affecting my decisions and creating a fertile ground for confusion and turmoil. When the world slowed down during the pandemic, I decided to turn my lens and start investigating my identity and perspective. I exposed myself to all the possible ways to understand what had indeed gone wrong in the process of figuring out a third self that came to be me. Music was the best path to pursue this exploration, and I made six music videos where I sang and acted as the protagonist. Intermixed from many different songs, where many viewers will recall, the lyrics resonate with the contemplation of my meanings in my life. I work with the themes of identity, power, fear, clichés, slippages, and uncertainties in language by manipulating well-known pop song lyrics once used to express love, hope, and dreams. The rearrangement of these lyrics illustrates a harsh yet honest tool that represents what we hide or are afraid of making known.

Adel Abidin was born in Baghdad (1973) and currently resides between Helsinki and Amman. He received a B.A. in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad (2000) and an M.F.A from the Academy of Fine Arts in Time and Space Art in Helsinki (2005). Since his representation of Finland at the Nordic Pavilion in the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), his work has been the subject of major exhibitions worldwide including: Van- haerents Art Collection, Brussels (2015), 56th Venice Biennale in the Iranian Pavilion (2015), The Glasstress-Goti- ka, 56th Venice Biennale, International Exhibition, Palazzo Franchetti (2015), 5th Guangzhou Triennial, The Guang- dong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2015), The Pera Museum, Istanbul (2015), Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada (2015), Gwangju Museum of Art, South Korea (2014), The Jerusa- lem Show VII, Jerusalem (2014), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (2014), MACRO-Museum of Contempo- rary Art, Rome (2014), Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2013-2012), 54th Venice Biennale, Iraq Pavilion (2011), 10th Sharjah Biennale, UAE (2011), MOCCA, Toronto (2011), Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar (2010), 17th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney (2010), MAP, Mobile Art Production, Stockholm, Sweden (2009), 11th Cairo Bienni- al, Cairo (2008), Screening at MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008), Art Paris, Grand Palais, Paris (2008), Espace Galley of Contemporary Art, Louis Vuitton, Paris (2008), The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, USA (2008) and The 4th Gothenburg Biennale, Sweden (2007). He has been represented in galleries including: Hauser & Wirth Gallery, London (2013), with his well-recognized three channel video installation "Three Love Songs", Lawrie Shabibi Gallery, Dubai (2013), with his suspended light based installation "Al-Warqaa" (Chosen as the image of the rising Arab art scene in Dubai by the New York Times), Anne De Villepoix Gallery, Paris (2011), with his six channel video installation "Their Dreams" and Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul (2011), with his well received video installation "Ping-Pong". Abidin's work continues to be well represented in both Private and public collections including those of the KIASMA- Musuem of Contemporary Art, The National Gal- lery, Helsinki: The National Gallery of Victoria, Mel- bourne, Australia: The Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE: Mathaf- Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar: EMMA- Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finland: Nadour Private Collection: Kamel Lazaar Collection: The Barjeel Art Foundation, UAE: The Heino Art Foundation, Helsinki: Darat al Funun - The Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman: HH Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, UAE: KOC foundation. Abidin has been selected for the Finland Prize for Arts in 2015, Received a Five Years Grant from The Art Council of Finland (2012-2017) and in 2011 He was a nominee for the Ars Fennica Prize in Finland. In (2015) the Artist has taught, gave talks and panel discus- sions, at various venues including the UNESCO- Improving Artistic Freedom In a Digital Age, Helsinki (2016), the Acade- my of Fine Arts in Helsinki: Lasalle- College of the Arts: TAIK- Alto University, Helsinki (2014), The Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver (2013), The Mosaic Rooms, Global Futures Forum, London (2013), Darat al Funun - The Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman (2011), OSU- Oregon State University, USA (2010). Location One Gallery, New York (2010), The Academy of Arts, Baghdad (2001). Abidin has been a Subject in Art documentary about his art Practice in many Tv channels including BBC- culture channel, England (2011) and ARTE- cultural channel, France (2008). also his work was mentioned in major newspapers and magazines around the world including (The NewYork Times- 2011 & 2013), Le Monde, Le Figaro, the National in Dubai, Helsingin Sanomat, the Wallpaper magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Canvas Art Magazine, Art Forum, Art in America, Avek Media Art Magazine, Taide Lehti, ArtAsiaPacific…Etc

Inspirée par le poème féministe italien d’Amelia Rosselli, La Libellula (Panegirico della libertà) (1958), Cercate Ortensia est un film d’archives scientifiques, personnelles et de réseaux sociaux. Entre hommage et vengeance face à son héritage littéraire, le poème de Rosselli se nourrit de l’ambivalence de la figure d’Hortense du poème « H » d’Arthur Rimbaud, entre élan d'ouverture et retrait intime. Cercate Ortensia recrée un mouvement circulaire marquant une bouffée d’air libératrice face au passé et la vieillesse. Le film explore la chute, la disparition, l’oubli, l’évanescence, traçant un lien entre les recherches de pionniers scientifiques, la désorientation liée à la perte de mémoire d'un père vieillissant et malade, jusqu’à l’actualité brûlante de la catastrophe écologique. 

Pauline Julier est artiste et réalisatrice. Elle explore les liens que l'homme crée avec son environnement à travers des histoires, des rituels, des connaissances et des images. Ses films et installations sont composés d'éléments d'origines diverses (documentaire, théorique, fictionnel) pour restituer la complexité de notre rapport au monde. Ses installations et films ont été projetés dans des centres d'art contemporain, des institutions et des festivals du monde entier, notamment au Centre Pompidou (Paris), au Loop (Barcelone), à Visions du Réel (Nyon), au Tokyo Wonder Site (Tokyo), au Musée d'art moderne de Tanzanie, au Geneva Art Center, au Palazzo Grassi (Venise), à New York, Madrid, Berlin, Zagreb, à la Cinémathèque de Toronto et au Pera Museum d'Istanbul. Julier a présenté une exposition personnelle au Centre Culturel Suisse à Paris (CCS) en 2017 et vient de recevoir le Prix fédéral d'art suisse en 2021. Son film « Naturales Historiae » vient d'être diffusé en ligne sur Vdrome.org et son prochain film, « Way Beyond », sélectionné en compétition à Visions du Réel 2021 sera dans les salles suisse à l’automne. Elle présente ce printemps une grande installation à l’institut d’Art Contemporain de Villeurbanne.

“Re-dit-en-un-in-learning” emphasises and concludes the linguistic training. This film has been co-produced with Van Abbemuseum, where echoes of this installation will occur (from 28 November 2020 to 25 April 2021) and is a sequel to Prouvost’s earlier foray into her unconventional lexicon from 2017, entitled DIT LEARN (using the French for speak, thus pronounced ‘de-learn’ in English), produced for Walker Art Centre, in which the viewer was verbally harangued and visually disoriented by a strobing collage of words and images, translations and slippages that destroyed the edifices of meaning, recognition, voicing and seeing. In that work we were urged to remember that a hammer means ‘no’ and a lizard means ‘yes’ – “this shoe means car,” continues Prouvost in her voiceover, “You cannot find the words for the images you see… All becomes one.” Upon leaving the Re-Learning center, the induction is over and the real-world examination begins, with the ideographic effects of the technique now translating object and signs into Prouvost’s language.

Laure Prouvost was born in Lille, France and is currently based in Antwerp. In 2002, she received her BFA from Central St Martins, London and studied towards her MFA at Goldsmiths College, London. She also took part in the LUX Associate Programme. Solo exhibitions have been held at venues including ‘AM-BIG-YOU-US LEGSICON’, M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Belgium (2019) Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); BASS Museum, Miami (2018); They Are Waiting for You, Performance for stage at the McGuire Theatre, Minneapolis (2018); SALT Galata, Istanbul (2017); Kunstmuseum Luzern (2016); Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2016); Museum Für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2016); Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing (2016); Haus Der Kunst, Munich (2015); New Museum, New York (2014); Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City (2014); Max Mara Art Prize for Women, Whitechapel Gallery, London and Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia (2013); and The Hepworth Wakefield (2012). In 2011, Prouvost won the MaxMara Art Prize for Women and was the recipient of the Turner Prize in 2013. Prouvost was selected to represent France at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019.

In meteorology, the aureole is an atmospheric, optical phenomenon; the visible inner disc of a corona, produced by the diffraction of light from the sun or the moon, bright starlight or planet-light. Aureole brings together unused celestial images from Scott’s earlier film, Diviner (2017), with vocoder-readings from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), scored by Chu-Li Shewring’s remix of the House track Brighter Days (1992) by Cajmere featuring Dajae. Aureole is a transition between a ‘lost’ chapter from Diviner and Wendy (2022, forthcoming), a film fan-letter to composer Wendy Carlos, whose many interests include solar eclipse photography. Accelerating to a euphoric end, the film is the duration of the longest total solar eclipse, when the moon completely covers the sun.

Frances Scott (b. 1981) is a London-based artist working with moving image. Her work considers the narratives and histories at the periphery of cinematic production and its apparatus, to produce films composed of their metonymic fragments. Her projects are often made in exchange with other specialists, groups and publics, and developed through research using online and physical archives and collections. She associates and composites diverse materials, analogue and digital film media, to create intricate scenarios that are both scripted and improvised. Her film work, informed by this collaborative and research-led process, takes multiple forms, through exhibitions to installations, screenings, events, broadcasts and publications, including recent presentations at: transmediale x CTM, Berlin; 57th New York Film Festival, Lincoln Center, New York; Edge of Frame & Close Up Film Centre, London; Het Bos, Antwerp; The Bower, London; Tate St Ives, Cornwall; Annely Juda Fine Art & The Russian Club, London; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Yorkshire Sculpture Park & Art Licks; South West Film & Television Archive, Plymouth; and Focal Point Gallery, Southend. Frances Scott was recipient of the Stuart Croft Foundation Moving Image Award (2017), and is currently working on a new film commissioned by TACO!, London for a solo exhibition and publication in 2022.

Full Moon. Inside. Perhaps not alone.

Born in 1974 in Portugal, Sandro Aguilar studied film at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema. In 1998, he founded the production company O Som e a Fúria. His films have won awards at festivals such as La Biennale di Venezia, Locarno FF, Gijón, Oberhausen,Vila do Conde, Indielisboa FF and have been shown in the most relevant film festivals worldwide. Two times nominated for the EFA – Best European Short Film Award. Retrospectives of his work have been programmed at Rotterdam IFF, BAFICI, New York Film Festival, Arsenal-Berlin and Oberhausen FF. In 2013, he was invited into the renowned DAAD Artist Residency, Berlin.

Through episodes that display a high degree of idiosyncrasy, we follow a stranger who creates an imaginary order which serves to stress his inexistence elsewhere. The film is a personal documentary that represents a constellation of past time and suspended time while attempting to explore the Foucauldian phrase 'a placeless place'.

Sibi Sekar was born on April 29th, 1997 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Sibi fell in love with cinema at an early age upon viewing the works of artists such as Luis Buñuel and Sergei Parajanov. Sibi began making experimental films and directed a few short films ("Thoughts Out Of Season", “Night Train Light On Track“, “Teal City” and "Representation") while doing his postgraduation in Humanities and Social Sciences. He launched the SSSW banner during the 2020 pandemic and made a few more short films ("On Floating Bodies", "The Tale of the Entry/Exit", "you are, i am" and "Of Other Spaces") under said banner. They have been screened at over thirty festivals across five continents. He usually works on explorative films that are primarily an ascetic representation of resistance and the thematic dispositions of his films concern the symbolic depiction of being, nothingness and the transcendental space.

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.