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In exile, 7 years away from my father and my homeland, I record our phone conversations. He tells me about the country, his loneliness. My screen unites and separates us, my only window. My memories fade, my life severed, my country inaccessible.

Sara Kontar is a Syrian artist, photographer, and filmmaker who has been based in France since 2016. She holds a Master's degree in animation cinema from L’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris (ENSAD). Her work spans documentary and artistic photography, with international exhibitions and recognition, including the Inge Morath Award. "3350 KM" is her first experimental documentary, following earlier experimental video works showcased at venues like Centre Pompidou and Palais de Tokyo. Kontar's work explores her roots and the experience of exile, expressing human emotions from a personal and intimate perspective. She is also the founder of "Al-Ayoun," a space for visual storytellers in Syria and the diaspora.

Une ode à la danse, à la fête et à la joie. Des ami.e.s se retrouvent et cherchent d’où vient ce son qui semble provenir d’une fête au loin. Des fragments de mots retiennent notre attention mais c’est le son du synthétiseur qui constitue la véritable voix narratrice de NOZA CASSANDRA. NOZA CASSANDRA, zone où la fête éclôt, faisant danser nos désirs et dans nos désirs germent notre révolution. Que la fête soit et qu’elle n’en finisse pas. Danser et faire la fête deviennent alors des actes militants pour ancrer des communautés, les rendre visibles et les faire exister. Faire la fête c’est exister et tordre sous toutes ses formes notre rapport au réel et à l’imaginaire, épuiser nos perceptions comme pour trouver la faille dans la matrice du réel.

Sarah Konté est une artiste queer interdisciplinaire travaillant la vidéo, la photographie, la performance et les installations sonores, au prisme d’enregistrements et de compositions au synthétiseur modulaire. Diplômée de l’EHESS en Arts et Langages en 2020, des Beaux-Arts de Paris en 2022 et de CalArts à Los Angeles en 2022 également, son travail s’articule autour de la mémoire, de la perception et de ce que l’on voit lorsque l’on ferme les yeux. Elle décline l’idée du griot, conteur traditionnel d’Afrique de l’Ouest, en proposant une histoire qui n’est plus contée par le griot mais par l’audience elle-même qui peut composer le fil narratif comme bon lui semble. Tous les sens de lecture sont possibles. Son travail a été exposé à la Monnaie de Paris, à la galerie Greatorex St à Londres, au MOCA à Los Angeles, à la galerie Campeche à Mexico, à la galerie SALA à Los Angeles, à l’espace Aimé Césaire de Gennevilliers et aux Grandes Serres de Pantin. Elle a récemment reçu le prix Marguerite et Méthode Keskar de la Fondation de France, en 2023.

FOR YOUR LOVE est le voyage d’une quête identitaire qui s’éprouve par des souvenirs reconstitués, entremêlés qui peu à peu deviennent de vagues images répétitives dans lesquelles le chant d’un espoir d’une histoire commune jaillira. Bercés par la bande sonore originale lancinante, les personnages luttent pour asseoir leur position et leur regard dans le jeu des représentations qui domine notre société.

Sarah Konté est une artiste pluridisciplinaire queer. Après avoir étudié la philosophie et la linguistique à l’EHESS, elle entre aux Beaux Arts de Paris en 2018. À la rentrée 2019, elle a été sélectionnée pour intégrer la nouvelle Filière Artistes et Métiers de l'Exposition aux Beaux-Arts de Paris en partenariat avec le Palais de Tokyo, et a réalisé, en tant que commissaire d’exposition, avec quatre autres élèves de la Filière et Jean de Loisy, l'exposition Cabaret du Néant au Château de Rentilly/Frac Île-de-France qui a ouvert ses portes le 8 mars 2020. En septembre 2020, elle a réalisé une résidence à l'Abbaye de Royaumont, à l'Académie Voix nouvelles, en tant que chercheuse à l'EHESS et en tant que plasticienne auprès de jeunes compositeurs encadrés par Francesco Filidei. Elle a ainsi pu intégrer la nouvelle Chaire supersonique des Beaux-Arts de Paris, ce qui lui a permis de collaborer avec deux jeunes compositeur.rice.s de l'Ircam. De janvier 2021 à juin 2022, elle a intégré un programme d'échange avec CalArts à Los Angeles, au sein du département Film et Vidéo, sous la direction de Betzy Bromberg. Elle a obtenu son DNSAP aux Beaux Arts de Paris en juin 2022 et MFA à CalArts la même année. Depuis, elle développe une pratique de l’Installation comme Film Performance à travers le prisme de la vidéo, de l’enregistrement sonore, la peinture, la danse et la photographie à Los Angeles. Elle a notamment présenté une performance au MOCA, chorégraphie par Dimitri Chamblas, Slow show. Elle présente dans son travail une variation du griot, un conteur traditionnel d’Afrique de l’Ouest, qui propose une histoire mais qui cette fois-ci la laisse être composée par l’audience. Elle a écrit et réalisé plusieurs films qui font partie intégrante de son travail d’installation vidéos. Pour ses films, elle utilise aussi bien le 16mm que le digital. Elle compose à chaque fois la musique originale de ses films grâce à son synthétiseur modulaire et avec ses enregistrements de voix et de ses poèmes écrits qu’elle demande ensuite à ses amix de réciter. Ses films parlent de la mémoire identitaire, de la tension qui en ressort et de l’itinérance de la fête comme expression de nos désirs en vue de faire germer une communauté Militante et révolutionnaire. Son travail a été exposé aux Grandes Serres de Pantin, à L’espace Aimé Césaire de Gennevilliers, à SALA Los Angeles, à la CalArts et aux Beaux Arts de Paris, à la galerie à Campeche, Mexico dans le cadre de l’exposition AIRE FRESCO en el VERANO del AMOR à Campeche, Mexico. En janvier 2024, elle a présenté une installation composée de ses films, sculptures et pièce sonore dans la galerie Greatorex Street à Londres. Elle a réalisé la résidence de la Villa Dufraine sous la direction de Jean-Michel Othoniel, le nouveau programme de résidence de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts au sein de l’Institut de France qui a abouti à l’exposition de la fin de la résidence en novembre à la Monnaie de Paris. En décembre 2024, son film For your love, a été projeté à la galerie Grand Opening Gallery à Miami, durant Miami Art Basel week. Le même mois, elle a présenté sa pièce RADATHON au sein du Group show at Strouk Gallery Paris, invitée par Milana Gabriel pour sa pièce NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, curatée par Alain Berland. En avril 2025 elle a présenté ONO, One Night Only, une performance narrative en live, à la GALLERY SADE à Los Angeles. Il s'agissait d'un solo show avec ses films, ses peintures, une performance de danse et de live painting, le tout sur un son qu'elle a composé pour l'occasion. Lauréat.e mention spéciale Sarr Price - 2021 Lauréat.e Hatvany Price avec le collectif La Marge - 2021 Lauréat.e Prix Fondation de France - Marguerite et Méthode Keskar - 2023 Son travail fait partie de la Collection Sarr, d’une collectionneuse particulière à Paris et de la bibliothèque des Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin.

In the experimental documentary Play Curacao (2015) contemporary games, social rituals and leisure typical for the Caribbean island of Curacao are thoroughly investigated through a mix of observations, discussions and performative acts. During a four month residency at the Instituto Buena Bista artists/filmmakers Kasper Jacobs and Frank Koolen followed a wide variety of sub-cultures and singletons in their free-time routines resulting in a personal taxonomy of the Caribbean ‘Homo Ludens’. Play Curacao offers a dynamic, absurd and playful insight in the versatile everyday society and culture of Curacao.

Kasper Jacobs and Frank koolen, both visual artists working in the field of film and photography, met in 2007 and since then have been assisting each other frequently in a range of individual projects. Through these collaborations they created a mutual frame of preference and understanding. Their shared interest in subcultures and the structures they create to frame their own reality form the fundament of `Play Curacao` and future projects. Kasper Jacobs (1981, Bergen, NL) studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Frank Koolen (1978, Maastricht, NL) studied at the HKU in Utrecht, De Ateliers and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.

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Born 1970 in Frankfurt/Main, lives in Paris and Berlin 1992-1994 : studies philosophy at Paris IV, la Sorbonne. 1996 : graduates from Ecole Nat. Sup. des Beaux Arts, Paris.

Title: NS-12 Authors: Kristjan Loðmfjorð (is) / Konrad Korabiewski (dk/pl/is) Form 1: Audio Visual installation for 8 channels, 1 subwoofer and 1 HD projector Form 2: DCP master with 5.1 audio for cinema/festival screening, 52 min. NS-12 (2014-2018) is audiovisual collaboration between the filmmaker Kristjan Loðmfjorð and the composer Konrad Korabiewski. Using the means of sound and image, NS-12 poetically portrays the fishing trawler Gullver NS-12 based in Seyðisfjorður, East Iceland. The trawler is a self-contained world; a space which functions both as workplace and as collective living arrangement, which is also personally and physically affective. For the people working on board the ship might be seen as a tool, but artistically it is perceived as a living organism, as a musical instrument triggering the senses, and as a visual landscape impressing with textures and colors. The constant sensation of motion from the heaviness and roughness of the rolling trawler conveys a state of confusion or reverie, like that triggered by seasickness. The ship itself is always in the foreground, with the life on board as the background. Thus NS-12 captures the moment of an everyday situation applying an expressionistic approach for an experimental outcome. It communicates the human spirit, essential for the experience of the trawler at sea with the ceaseless sound and vibrations of the engine. The original soundscape for the work is realized as a contemporary composition where all the sonic material is sourced from reality, whereas the imagery is mainly based of still-life recordings where visual perception shines above realism. Together the two mediums explore the complete body of the trawler as a visually intriguing labyrinth, where each room has its own way of carrying the sound from the engine. The complete work including sound and image is purely field recorded, accompanied with voiceover recordings performed by the Seyðisfjorður Church Choir and the fourth (and Europe`s first female) president of Iceland, Mrs. Vigdis Finnbogadottir. Recordings on board Gullver NS-12 took place during the period of September 2012 - December 2013. Methodology: In the research process, the artists went out on three tours on the trawler to capture sound and image in various seasons and weather conditions. The machinery and the captain’s diaries were also examined, extracting relevant texts. These transcripts were integrated into the final piece as subtitled and as read text, as they are very evocative and give an irrational sense of the trawler`s path: such as the ship`s state examination while in the dockyard, weather reports from out on open sea, injuries on board, and mechanical breakdowns. 8 channel installation: A sound and video installation preferably presented by itself in a separate exhibition room. This 8 channel installation configuration,referring to the 8 cylinders of the trawler´s engine aims at conveying the physical presence of the trawler´space. Presentation history: 14.10.15 QC-Montréal,Festival Nouveau Cinéma, screening 11.10.15 QC-Montréal, North American premiere Festival Nouveau Cinéma, screening 26.10.2014-31.01.2015 DE-Marl, Marl Media Art Awards 2014, installation and award nomination 04.12.2014 CL- Valparaiso / South American premiere: Tsonami Sound Art Festival, installation 27.06.2014 PL-Gdańsk / Polish premiere: Soundplay Festival, installation 17.06.2014 IS-Seyðisfjorður, Icelandic premiere: Skaftfell – Center for Visual Art , installation 17.05.2014 DE-Berlin DAADgalerie, installation & artists talk 15.05.2014 DE-Karlsruhe, German / European premiere: ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe / Institute for Music and Acoustics, Sound Dome installation Credit list: Phonography and composition by Konrad Korabiewski Manuscript and cinematography by Kristjan Loðmfjorð Sound engineered at Institute for Music and Acoustics ZKM - Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe by Konrad Korabiewski with Anton Kossjanenko Voiceovers by: Mrs. Vigdis Finnbogadottir The Seyðisfjorður Church Choir The work is supported by: Cultural Council of East Iceland Visual Art Council Iceland Danish Composers Society Danish Arts Foundation ZKM - Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe Detailed work description is available as pdf here: http://www.korabiewski.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/NS-12.pdf

KONRAD KORABIEWSKI composer/sound/media artist http://korabiewski.com konrad@korabiewski.com Danish | Polish | Icelandic Konrad Korabiewski (1978) is an award-winning experimental composer, sound and media artist working worldwide and currently residing in Seyðisfjörður, East Iceland and California. Characterized by a marked tendency to transgress various genres and media, his sound art, film music, installations, radio, video and multi-media art works have a strong site- specific element. Konrad Korabiewski’s musical atmosphere is sombre and intense, demonstrating a precise attention to musical space; at times with a meditative character, where distortion expresses an emotional depth that demands and attracts attention in minimalistic scenarios of sound. Among many international prizes and grants in 2014 Konrad Korabiewski was awarded the prestige Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD academic award & working grant and nominated for 2 Media Art Awards: European Sound Art Award (formerly known as Deutsche Klangkunst-Preis) and Marler Videokunst-Preis in Germany. He holds a Master in Electronic Music Composition from The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Denmark. Konrad Korabiewski is founder and currently the director of Skálar | Sound Art | Experimental Music, Seyðisfjörður, East Iceland. He is an independent curator and Research Associate at Film and Digital Media Department of University of California, Santa Cruz. Also a key member of Danish Composers ́Society since 2004. Awards | nominations: 2014, NS-12, nomination for the Marl Video Art Award, Germany, 2014, The Art Book Orchestra, finalist in European Sound Art Award competition, Germany (formerly known as der Deutsche Klangkunst Preis) 2014, The Institute for Music and Acoustics – Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, awarded scholarship and residency 2013, Berliner Künstlerprogramm of the DAAD- Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst awarded academic award, residency and working grant for 2014 2011, Skeyti, winning the international sound-art competition Europe A Sound Panorama 2011, Affected As Only A Human Been Can Be (interactive art book with integrated sound scape), nominated for Best Book-craft /art book of the Year, Denmark 2010, Affected As Only A Human Been Can Be (interactive art book with integrated sound scape) nominated for the Young Illustrators Award, Illustrative, Berlin, Germany 2005, Slowloop (animation video with sound scape ), winning first price at the film festi- val KRAKFFA, Cracow, Poland 2003, Lay Down (electro-acustic composition), finalist in Luigi Russolo Electro- acoustic Competition, Italy. Main education: 2012, Master degree in Electronic Music Composition, The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Denmark.

I work with personal archives and video diaries to explore how private memory intersects with historical trauma. This film is built around two interconnected collections: a vast family video archive from my childhood in 1990s Russia — including fragments of a contradictory family story — and a new video diary I began after emigrating from Russia to Germany following the invasion of Ukraine. At the center of the original archive is a VHS tape labeled "Chechnya 1995," filmed by one of my father’s colleagues during a military deployment to Grozny. Trained as a communications officer, my father was drawn into direct combat — an experience that later led to serious health and mental issues, which deeply shaped our family. Years later, I began filming again — first the final years of my father’s lives, and later the everyday life of my new community in exile. The film is a short exercise in juxtaposition, placing these two archives side by side to examine how war and peace coexist in daily life, and how larger political events become inscribed into personal biography. It explores the interplay between memory and history, loss and resistance, asking how we might reconstruct meaning through the act of looking again.

Konstantin Koryagin. Independent researcher, author and filmmaker. Graduated from the Master's program in Social and Political Philosophy at the European University in St. Petersburg and the directing lab at the Moscow School of New Cinema. He was also a student at the Art and Media program at the Berlin University of the Arts. As filmmaker he creates video-essays and research-based films, usually working with found and original footage, creating paradoxical connections between them. Since 2018 he is an editor of syg.ma – independent media on philosophy, society and contemporary art. Currently based in Berlin.

Two boys and a girl prepare for nightclubbing in the heart of Athens. Arriving, they face a deserted club, where music plays blaring but there is no one to listen. There, one by one falls asleep as they surrender themselves in a collective dream.

Born with dual Greek/German nationality, Efthimis Kosemund Sanidis studied Informatics Engineering, and then Contemporary Arts at Le Fresnoy - Studio National in France. His films have won acclaim at festivals around the world. His debut short film, “ II ” (2014, 16’), won the Pack & Pitch award at Sarajevo while in development, followed by a world premiere in the Pardi di Domani section of the Locarno Film Festival. He shot his next two films, “ Odette ” (2015, 16’) and “ Unbuilt Light ” (2017, 29’), while in residency at Le Fresnoy, with the latter opening in competition in Sarajevo. “ Astrometal ” (2017, 15’) was nominated for a Golden Lion in the Orizzonti section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival.

"What happens when someone dies is that we, the living, contain their memory within us ... They will live on in us, and we will celebrate them. And dance like there is no tomorrow". Diane Torr A dance dedicated to artist, drag king and gender activist Diane Torr who passed away in May 2017. A year to the day, I dance in a black room : a single shot fusing male and female as ode to life and death. Traditional urban zeybekiko dance of Rebetiko, exclusively danced by men -in the past- is danced by my hybrid manifestation - blended aspects of my identity. In silence, I hear Diane's words: "Take space with all your being. Own the space". I lift my arms and dance like there is no tomorrow as the camera follows. No edits or retakes : the aim is not to please or excite but to offer myself as site for collective unburdening.

Fenia Kotsopoulou is a Greek cross-disciplinary, award-winning artist (performance (art), dance, video, photography), based in Lincoln (UK), holding a MFA in Choreographing Live Art from the University of Lincoln (UK), a BA Honours in Dance from the National Dance Academy of Rome (Italy), and a BA in Italian Language and Literature from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). Over the course of the last 10 years, video making and photography became a dominant and persistent component of her artistic practice. Pivotal topics of recent projects include the body as gathering place of emotions and site of transformation, personal and collective memory, fragmentation, (de)construction of female identity, unbecoming, shame, hairiness and other issues. In the past few years, as (dance) performer, producer and visual practitioner, her works and the work of close-collaborator digital artist, Daz Disley, have been shown at a wide array of festivals and art platforms, encompassing the fields of dance, experimental performance, live-art and video-art, and receiving several prizes/awards. Alongside her practice, she is lecturer at the Master of Performance Practices at the university of ArtEZ (Netherlands) and, since 2016, she is artist-in-residence at x-church in Gainsborough (UK).

In a hinterland within the “elsewhere” a lone character meanders in search of meaning and understanding. Hither and dither doth he wander reflecting upon all things that came before and all things hereafter. The work is a companion piece to “ttingâ” latest feature film LEK AND THE DOGS and was shot in the Atacama desert in Chile. Produced to run on a loop in a gallery “space” or as a single screen the film exemplifies “ttings ability to take an idea and run with it until it spills over into the expanded cinematic “elsewhere”. With the beguiling presence of French performance artist Xavier Tchili and sublime cinematography by Nick Gordon-Smith the work is designed to be experienced within the pitch black and the sound up high.

Andrew ‘tting was born between the mountains and the sea in Elmstead Woods in 1959. After some early forays into market trading and scrap-metal dealing he travelled to Scandinavia to become a Lumberjack. He returned home in the 80’s to study for a BA Honours Degree in Fine Art at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design and then graduated with a Masters Degree from The Slade, London. He currently lives and works between Hastings in England and Fougax-et-Barrineuf in the French Pyrenees. He teaches part-time at the University for the Creative Arts where he is Professor of Time Based Media. He has made numerous experimental short films, which were awarded prizes at international film festivals. Gallivant (1996), was his first feature film, a road/home movie about his four-month journey around the coast of Britain, with his grandmother Gladys and his daughter Eden, which won the Channel 4 Prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival for Best Director and the Golden Ribbon Award in Rimini (Italy). The film went on in 2011 to be voted number 49 as Best British Film of all time by the UK publication Time Out. In 2001 he directed the first of his Earthworks Trilogy; This Filthy Earth, in 2009 Ivul, and in 2018 Lek And The Dogs. All three films were released theatrically throughout the UK and France. As well as exhibitions of his work in the UK he has also presented retrospectives of his work in Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland and Switzerland. His twenty-eight year oeuvre to date has moved from early live-art inflected, often absurdist pieces, through darkly comic shorts teasing out the melancholy surrealism at the heart of contemporary Englishness to eight resolutely independent feature films that take biography, landscape and journeys as springboards into the making of visually striking and structurally inventive enquiries into identity, belonging, history and notions of the folkloric.

"THE LEOPARD SHALL LIE DOWN WITH THE GOAT THE WOLVES SHALL LIVE WITH THE LAMBS AND THE YOUNG BOY WILL LEAD THEM" 12+1 KIDS AND THE CARCASS OF A WHALE WASHED ASHORE

Konstantina Kotzamani is a graduate student of Film Department of Fine Arts of Thessaloniki. Her short movies have participated in major International Festivals and have received several awards. Her film Washingtonia premiered in Berlinale 2014 and was nominated for the Golden Bear. Washingtonia participated in more than 120 International Film Festivals and in 2014 was awarded by the Greek Film Academy as the best Short Film. One year later Washingtonia received the EFA (European Film Academy) nomination for the best European Short. Konstantina Kotzamani was chosen to take part and present her work in Future Frames at the 50th Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2015 and at the same year, her short film Yellow Fieber premiered in Locarno Film Festival 2015 in international competition Pardi di Domani. Her last short film Limbo co- produced between Greek Film Centre and French CNC, premiered in Cannes , Semaine de la Critique 2016 and after that gained awards in many other International festival such as Palm Springs ( future filmmaker award) , Vila do Conde ( Best Fiction ) , Rio de Janeiro ( Best Short Film , Best director) ect.. Limbo was also nominated for the European Academy Awards 2016 as best European Short.

Washingtonia starts when the giraffes heart can no longer be heard. Washingtonia is an alternative name for Athens, a place where people, like animals, fall into summertime sadness because of the heat. Washingtonia is the only palm tree which heart is not devoured by the red beetle. Because its heart is small and dry and no one likes small and dry hearts.

Konstantina Kotzamani was born in Komotini in 1983. She has studied Pharmacy and then Cinema at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Department of Fine Arts. She has participated at Berlin and Sarajevo Talent Campus as a director. Her short movies have been selected in several International Festivals and have gained many awards.

In a village in Chechnya a mother and a daughter speak about the return of an acquaintance.

Zaur Kourazov (1994) graduated from KASK in 2019 magna cum laude with his work, TIME IS (2020). His work dwells on themes such as memory, (cultural) identity and friendships which stem from intercultural aspects. Feeling connected to his ethnic culture and the assimilated culture, his work resides in a unique position by exploring 'in betweenness,' a very intriguing space of understanding both worlds yet not fitting in either of them.

This film explores the facets of a young man alienated from his feelings. Kickboxing, muscular bodies, nighttime, dreams and unspoken feelings slowly blend into abstraction.

Zaur Kourazov (1994) graduated from KASK with his work, 'TIME IS' (2019). Dwelling on themes of memory, identity and bonds from intercultural aspects, exploring the 'in betweenness'. A space of understanding worlds yet not fitting in them.

The daily life of migrants (Syrian, Kurdish, Pakistani, Afghani and other) in the camp of Idomeni, in Greece. People waiting in queues for food, tea and doctors; waiting to cross the border. One day, Europe closes the West Balkan Route for them once and for all. The «residents» of Idomeni decide, in their turn, to occupy the train tracks, blocking the trains that carry goods across the border.

Niki Giannari: Greek writer, born in 1968. Maria Kourkouta : Greek filmmaker born in 1982. She lives between France and Greece. Since 2008, she made several films, mostly on 16mm at different artist-run labs in France (such as L’Etna and L’Abominable) where she is still active as a member. Most of her films are distributed by Light Cone (Paris).

Within the haunting cycle of coffin mass production, human labor contrasts with the never-ending factory stock of coffins. In light of computer-aided manufacturing and the excessive overexploitation of natural resources, Unsold Copies longs for a moment of rest from the assembly line, while mankind continually buries itself in the remnants of a material world.

Stefan Koutzev is a Bulgarian filmmaker working and living in Cologne. His work focuses on narrative storytelling born between screenwriting and documentary practices, as well as the production of experimental films and sound design. His short films including RESTBESTAND (2025), HAUSPAUSEN (2024) or SCHWÄRMEN (2020), have been screened at DOK Leipzig, Odense International Film Festival, Beijing International Short Film Festival, Stockholm International Film Festival or Rencontres Internationales Paris/ Berlin. In 2026, he's about to present the world premier of his feature debut WHY HASN’T EVERYTHING DISAPPEARED YET, a hybrid, multilingual exploration of belonging, origin and migration.

The truth will always out. Back in the day the truth was easier to hide, but today the world has become nearly transparent: lies are exposed sooner than ever, they look awkward and ridiculous, yet they are told shamelessly and insolently as never before. The worst is when a lie grows so big it turns into a war. Even if it’s a war against myths, lying is a heavy weapon. A few days before the war, lies started to materialize in an extremely tangible fashion. It was then that I learned from news presenter that my country does not exist, that it emerged, a century ago, as a fruit of one man’s fantasy, and that today it is a refuge for Nazis and drug addicts. I know the taste of this kind of lie and would recognize it anywhere, but I cannot accept the fact that this malady has afflicted millions of submissive supporters of a regime that has for generations treated people like idiots and kept them in the grip of fear. For former residents of the Soviet Union, mendacious state propaganda is associated with the music of the Swan Lake ballet, which has for decades served as a means of concealing the truth: every significant news that needed to be kept secret, be it the Chernobyl explosion or the death of another secretary general, was replaced by this ballet on TV screens. During the August coup, Swan Lake was broadcast for three days. My performance is set to the music of the notorious ballet, but I also called it Swan Song, foreshadowing a quick end to a regime that has gotten carried away in its bad game. When lying goes so far in its foul play, it inevitably devours itself.

Lena Kovach (1982, Lutsk, Ukraine), visual artist. Since 2002, I have been mainly working on my own long-term projects, combining photography with other visual media. I am interested in interdisciplinary forms of photography at its intersection with theater and performance and fascinated by the subject matter of memory, trauma, and deprivation, which requires working with vernacular and archival material.

East of Paradise is the last film of the "Wild Wild East" trilogy by the filmmaker Lech Kowalski. Produced after "The Boot Factory" and "On Hitler`s Highway", his new documentary is far the most personal. In the first part of "East of Paradise", he gives the voice to Maria Werla Kowalsi, his mother, who evokes her life during the war. With an unseen precision and a natural sense of language, she relates her deportation from Cracovie to the Soviet gulags, at the beginning of the Second World War. Mrs Kowalski is convicted that whoever has not lived this drama, can not really apprehend this dark period of history. As if defied by the tragedy of such depth and significance that his mother lived, Kowalski plunges into his own eventful past. Using of images from earlier works ("Gringo", "Walter and Cutie", "D.O.A.") whose quality strongly contrasts with the sharpness of his mother's images, he presents the porn and drugs social ghettos. In these images, Lech evokes a marginal freely chosen existence, whereas her mother's story is an homage to the human desire for survival. Lech's narration can not be really compared with his mother's oppressive story. Nevertheless, this impassible gap changes the juxtaposition of two very different world into two portrayals as contentious as surprising . "East of Paradise" has been awarded, in 2005, by the Best Alternative Film Prize at the Mostra - Venice Festival.

Lech Kowalski comes from a Polish family. Born in London, he grew in the USA. When he was 18 years old, he went to New York where he discovered Punk Music, drug and porn. From a cinematographic point of view, Kowalski is tributary to Shirley Clarke. His films are produced by instable film-making, associative linkings and lines of story mixed together. Among Kowalski's earlier documentaries, we could name "Sex Stars" (1977), "Death On Arrival" (1978), "Gringo ? Story of a Junkie" (1985), "Rock Soup" (1991), "Born to Lose" (1999), "Hey is Dee Dee Home" (2002), "Camera Gun" (2003) and "Charlie Chaplin in Kabul" (2003).

Part of the In Art Dreams Come True series, this piece was conceived as a pop music video cover of Gwen Stefani?s What Are You Waiting For? Playing which clichés of femininity and masculinity, this time Kozyra takes on the role not of an opera diva but of a pop-rock star playing a cheerleader in a music video set in a men?s locker room. Engaging in the kind of dancing and acrobatics (choreographed by Anna Godowska) customarily performed by cheerleaders, Kozyra, waving pom-poms and wearing a white miniskirt, tries to draw the attention of male athletes changing in the locker room after practice. Backup singers include members of the Zachêta?s curatorial staff and management. In this brief music video telling a rebellious story, Kozyra incorporates numerous references to her previous works.

Katarzyna Kozyra born in Warsaw (Poland) in 1963. Studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Warsaw (1988-1993) Deals with performance, video, and videoinstallation. In 1999 received a honorable mention at 48. International Biennale of Visual Art, Venice In 2003 scholarschip in the Berlin artists program (DAAD) Lives in Warsaw, Trento and in Berlin.

Uta Kögelsberger’s 4-channel video installation that brings together Clearance and Woddworks is part of new body of work Forest Complex that observes the complex social, political, and ecological entanglements surrounding the pressures Alpine forests have come under in the wake of the climate emergency. The work visualises into the relentless cycle of destruction that humanity has set up with the environment we occupy. This is juxtaposed with the astonishing drive to ‘fix’ the destruction we have caused. More specifically Clearance follows the two-month Sisyphean task of clearing up after the devastation in the 145-metre-deep Haselbach Gorge. The sides of the gorge are so steep that the fallen trees had to be plucked from the mountainside by helicopter. Too costly to be carried away in this manner, the trees were dropped to the bottom of the gorge, creating a a flood risk. A two-tonne cable had to be stretched across the gorge by helicopter to rope the trees out of the gorge one by one. The piles of tree trunks accumulating in the riverbed were so precarious that it was too dangerous to work with large crews. Dwarfed by the scale of the task, we see a man working on his own as he proceeds to clear out one log at a time. Juxtaposed with that sits the single channel work Woodworks. Woodworks follows the next stage of the trees as they arrives at one of the largest wood-manufacturing conglomerate in Europe. We see the trees as they are first collected by a machine with oversized claws that effortlessly picks up twenty to thirty logs at a time, removes the bark and drops them on a conveyor belt endlessly churns out one log after the other. Each region in Austria has an allowance of cubic metres of wood that can be cut per year. For the area surrounding Haselbach the annual allowance was exceeded by 80% due to the storms. The abundance of wood that has flooded the market as a result of this triggered a price drop of 25–35% per cubic metre of wood, with devastating financial outcomes for the small hold farmers. Woodworks visualises the machine that forest owners small and large are compelled to feed continually.

Uta Kögelsberger is a London based visual artist whose work articulates and engages with social and political concerns through the languages of photography, video, sculpture and sound. Her work has awarded the prestigious Royal Academy Wollaston Award, been awarded the Stanley Picker Fellowship, the Berwick Gymnasium Fellowship, the EAA Award for Art in Architecture and the SPD silver medal for editorial photography. Her photographic essays have been published in Wired, Esquire, GQ, and American Photography. It has been exhibited, at MOMus, Thessaloniki, the Vincent Price Museum, Los Angeles, Art Night, London, in collaboration with Whitechapel Art Galleries, Brighton Photo Biennial, Les Rencontres, Arles, at SPG, London, the Architectural Association London, the Barbican, London, and Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC, and the Glassell Project Space MFAH, Houston amongst others. Her work is held in public and private collections including the MFAH, Houston and LACMA, Los Angeles.

In 2023, climate-related extreme weather events devastated an estimated 2,000 hectares of forest and leaving millions of cubic meters of damaged wood in its trail. The three-channel video installation Clearance follows the Sisyphean task of post-storm recovery. Fallen timber had to be removed quickly to prevent the spread of beetle infestations and mitigate the risk of avalanches, mudslides, and flooding. Filmed over two months and edited down from hundreds of hours of footage, the work traces the relentless, almost ritualistic process of labour that follows environmental disaster. What begins as a logistical operation unfolds into a visual study of ecological disruption and human intervention; a meticulous observation of the incredible human drive to repair the damages done, as a single man as clears the wood away one log at a time.

Uta Kögelsberger, (born Brussels, Belgium) is a German/British artist based across London and California. Her predominantly lens-based practice engages with complex relationships between human and ecological systems in a time of environmental change. It has been recognised through exhibitions in leading national and international arts institutions including LACMA, Los Angeles, the Royal Academy, London, GR, Vincent Price Museum, Los Angeles, Les Rencontres, France, the Art Night programme in collaboration with Whitechapel and Hayward Art Galleries, London amongst others. It is held in public and private collections including the MFAH and LACMA. She has been awarded the Royal Academy Wollaston Award, the Stanley Picker Fellowship, and the EAA Award for Art in Architecture. Her photographic essays have been featured in Wired, Esquire, GQ, and American Photography. She is Professor of Practice, Fine Art at Newcastle University.