Programme Berlin 2024

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

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

A red jaguar, roams the early morning in the jungle of Panama until his footsteps are disturbed by a metallic sound that opens a gap in the earth. He enters the wound, where machines build a Canal and the metallic music gives life to the yellow mosquitoes. The workers blue tearful voices murmur resilience, longing for a rebirth of the jaguar on the scar.

Panamanian multidisciplinary artist in the fields of film and performance. She was artist in residence at Le Fresnoy. She was chosen as Berlinale Talent 2023. She worked on the restoration of part of the Panamanian film archive at the Filmoteca de Catalunya and on the creation of the "Festival de la Memoria", a series of performative installations in urban spaces with political archive images and sound performance. Panquiaco, his first documentary film, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. His latest short film, A Love Song in Spanish, participated in the official competition at the Berlinale and at the MoMA. Her first virtual reality film Mosquito: A Wound Story premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. She is preparing his next solo exhibition and performance with Solar Gallery and Batalha Centro de Cinema de Portugal (2023).

Blind Oedipus, in older age, left Thebes as an exile accompanied by Antigone, who was both his daughter and sister. They sought refuge in Colonus of Athens. What if the tragic hero of Sophocles’ play 'Oedipus at Colonus' was a Romani nomad residing in today’s post-industrial outskirts of western Athens? OTWTC is a ‘docufictional’ VR film cast with Romani amateurs who live at the ghettoised toxic wastelands of Thriasian Plain, where Sophocles’ wandering hero is meant to have passed from. Consisted of a spatial sound design (ambisonics), the film's audio incorporates location sounds recorded inside the dwellings that merge “high” and “low” culture, often carrying with them the “eerie echoes” of dubbed TV series, speaking themselves about “Oedipal conflicts”, ‘absent fathers’, ‘incest’, murder and death.

Loukia Alavanou is a moving image artist and filmmaker. She is representing Greece at the 59th Venice Art Biennale with the exhibition “Oedipus in Search of Colonus. Alavanou holds an MA in Photography from the RCA in London. She was the winner of the 5th Deste Prize. In recent years, after receiving international acclaim, she started to be involved with the production of VR films and founded the first VR production company in Greece. She held a retrospective exhibition at State of Concept, Athens in 2018. For the years 2021 and 2022 Alavanou is a fellow artist at ONX Studio, organised by Onassis USA and the New Museum in NY. Alavanou’s work has been presented by institutions and festivals including KANAL Centre Pompidou, Accelerator, Stockholm, Gucci Garden, Kino Der Kunst, Palais de BOZAR, Palais de Tokyo, Athens Biennale, Moscow Biennale, Fiorucci Art Trust, The Museum of Cycladic Art, Benaki Museum. Her films are part of numerous collections including the Onassis Collection, the Dakis Joannou Collection, The Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe/ ZKM, PCAI/ Polyeco Contemporary Art Initiative.

When spending a lot of time at home in isolation, the walls begin to move. The sense of time fades, the days pass quietly, everything seems to repeat itself endlessly. Spaces, conversations, visual impressions and sounds merge and make everything seem like a long dream.

Nicolas Gebbe was born in London in 1986. He currently lives and works in Frankfurt am Main / Germany as a 3D artist, filmmaker and sound designer. 2018 he receives his art diploma at Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach with a film major. He focuses on experimental 3D animation and hybrid film formats. Since graduation, his animated short films have been screened on a variety of festivals such as Locarno Film Festival, Festival du Nouveau Cinèma Montreal and Ann Arbor Film Festival.

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

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

METAMORPHOSIS is a location based experience in virtual reality. It thematises the state of fear, astonishment and need for human exchange, as well as the the new comprehension and the physical reduction of the world during an ontological rupture such as the Coronavirus pandemic. In History (from the Antique with the first plague to Modern times with the Spanish flu) every kind of epidemic or pandemic has brought significant changes in societies, people had to adapt and reinvent their lives exchanging as they could. The experience refers to this kind of societal metamorphosis that imply on one hand the awareness of a reduced and different environment as well as related to the exchange of different ideas about the future . For METAMORPHOSIS, different nature and urban places (outside and inside) have been scanned and recreated as 3D scenes in a point cloud aesthetic. These eight scenes form a large corridor that brings the visitor slowly through different stories and ideas. From naive, stunned to more elaborate projections about the future of existence.

Since 2013 Karolina Markiewicz (born in 1976 in Luxembourg, lives and works in Luxembourg) and Pascal Piron (born in 1981 in Luxembourg, lives and works in Luxembourg) have been developing a collaborative body of work that stretches across cinema, visual arts and theatre. At its centre lies the individual as part of the human community, torn between resignation and hope. In their poetically charged investigations, the two artists question contemporary myths and construct metaphorical narratives based on past events.

The CONTROL NEGATIVE experience is an exercise in a loss. Using VR technology, author Monika Mas?o? situates the viewer in an emotional state where frustration, helplessness, anger, and sadness are used to reveal basic human assumptions, including the illusory conviction of being fully in control of one's own life. The unreal world of the experience — a negative version of the real world — is a training space where you can better understand yourself and your emotions. The user is guided through seven chapters, which gradually move from physical activity to contemplation.

Dr. Monika Maslon (born 1982) - visual artist and art educator. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in ?ód? and Ph.D. studies at the Film School in ?ód?, where she completed her Ph.D. thesis entitled “Do zobaczenia” (See you), under the supervision of Prof. Józef Robakowski. She is a lecturer at the University of Leipzig and the Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw where she conducts classes with the students of the department of Arts education in fine arts. In 2014 she stayed at an artistic residence in Singapore, where she made an artistic project called “Comfort of Long-Distance Perceiving”. In 2016 she implemented the project “Template - a tool to learn how to use an image”, as a part of a scholarship awarded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The scope of her art activities is manifested mainly through realizations based on audiovisual material. She participated in numerous exhibitions and shows. She is the author of the VR experience - CONTROL NEGATIVE.

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

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

The Bacchanalian Ones, VR Experience for Oculus Quest 2 Inspired by ancient mythology, modern myth, and contemporary celebrity culture, The Bacchanalian Ones compares the historical myth with a satirical mash-up of the powerful self-absorbed who preen and wallow in a banal spectacle of their own creation. In a fantastically opulent setting of unrestrained hedonism, political, religious, and military leaders with ghoulish, bouffonesque appearances are surrounded by social elite sycophants like the devotees of the cults of Bacchus and Dionysus. Solmi’s phantasmagoric world of whirling space, jerking movement, and oscillating facades that strive to overwhelm the viewer’s visual field is pushed to extremes in a new interactive Virtual Reality installation. This work invites the visitor to enter the Bacchanal by donning a VR mask and manipulating two hand-held controllers in order to pick the perspective of one of his historical avatars. Newly empowered, and emboldened, the visitor is able to control the narrative, allowing them to experience the debauchery up close and personal through their embodiment of the avatar.

Federico Solmi was born in Bologna, Italy in 1973. Since 1999 he has lived and worked in New York. Solmi’s work utilizes bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present-day society. His exhibitions often feature articulate installations composed of a variety of media including virtual reality experiences, video installation, painting, drawing, and sculpture. Solmi uses his art as a vehicle to stimulate a robust conversation with his audience, highlighting the contradictions and fallibilities that characterize our time. In 2009, Solmi was awarded by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in the category of Video & Audio. Solmi’s work was included in the 100-year anniversary exhibition of The Phillips Collection, Seeing Differently, and in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s traveling exhibition, Outwin 2019: ‘American Portraiture Today,’ as well as the inaugural exhibition of the Ocean Flower Museum Island in Hainan Province, Danzhou, China. From 2016 to 2019 Federico Solmi was visiting Professor at Yale University School of Art, and Yale School of Drama, New Haven CT. Solmi was appointed guest critic at the Yale University School of Art for 2022.

A queer poem about gender transformations, hallucinogenic desires, and uncanny relationships. It’s past dawn, in an apartment inhabited by several figures. They are frozen in time, frozen in the movements they were making. They look at each other, caress each other, sleep, masturbate with VR helmets on their faces. In one magical moment, they come to life and start a languidly intoxicating party. In Wojciech Pu?’s essayistic 360° film, we follow several people of different genders and ethnic identities as they navigate a path through night, life, desire, and futility. Fragments of their stories are only fleetingly revealed in poetic speeches that resemble a verbal symphony rather than a narrative. The director builds the experience on hallucinogenic light work and uncomfortable camera movements. Will this party ever end, or have we found ourselves trapped with the characters in a labyrinth of existence that has no end?

Wojciech Pu? - filmmaker and artist. They work with moving images and sound. Their films/installations/live acts have been screened / exhibited / shown at Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin), ICA in London, Museé du Louvre in Paris (Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin), Foksal Gallery in Warsaw, Art Museum in Lodz, Urban Glass in New York, A:D: Curatorial in Berlin, Spike Art Magazine / Yvonne Lambert in Berlin and Exchange Gallery in Lodz. Professor at the Cinematography Department in Lodz Film School, Poland.

The work is a parable on Alan Turing’s technological disembodiment, drawing on concepts from Terrence McKenna’s Hyperspace, an undoing of the matter of consciousness and technologies empty promises of liberation and progress. Imagining a future self calls for a dreaming of the kind Terence McKenna evokes in his essay New Maps of Hyperspace (1989) and from which this work formed the research. For McKenna the dream is “zero time” and “outside of history.” It is analogous to the speculative experience of hyperspace, a scifi term given to the space-time continuum in which it is possible to travel faster than light. In both states, time appears to stand still (Einstein’s theory of relativity tells us that the closer an object travels to the speed of light the slower time becomes). Dreaming can quickly turn to nightmare however, and the episodic repetition of history-as-nightmare can, at times, feel like farcical simulation. Finally this work touches on the yawning gaps between our wish for escape, human connection and approval — and our seemingly Sisyphean task of achieving any of it. Hyperspace is a notion from science fiction of a superluminal method of travel. It is typically described as an alternative “sub-region” of space co-existing with our own universe which may be entered using an energy field or otherdevice. In most fiction, hyperspace is described as a physical place that can be entered and exited. Whereas in the VR work the viewer is essentially trapped in blue screen of death, unable to escape. (Text by Thomas Butler)

Doireann O’Malley (born 1981 in Limerick, IE) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin. Their research-led practice unites collaborative methodologies, healing and reparative movement, writing, and theory, with a strong technological emphasis on new media, virtual Reality, 3Dand film installation. O’Malley holds an MFA from University of Ulster in Belfast, UK. From 2021- 2022 held the position of Professor of Gender & Space at Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. They were a research fellow at the Berliner Förderprogramm Künstlerische Forschung (2020-2021) and a participant of the BPA// Berlin programme for artists (2019-2020). They acted as a guest mentor on the The Live Arts MA / AdBK Nuremberg (2001) Their exhibitions, talks and screenings have been presented at IMMA, Dublin, IE; Art Institute, Basel, CH; Biennale Zielona Góra, PL; Goethe-Institut Montreal, CA; Goethe-Institut, NY, USA; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin, DE; National Sculpture Factory/Cork Film Festival, Cork, IE; GöteborgInternational Biennial for Contemporary Art, SE; Rencontres Internationales, Forum des Archives, Paris, FR & HKW, Berlin, DE; Mumok Kino, Vienna, AT; Dublin City Gallery, Dublin, IE; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, DE; Berlin Art Prize, 2018, Berlin, DE; Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg, DE.