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In the middle of Lisbon between Avenue Liberdade and the Natural History Museum lays a little gem of a garden, The Jardim Botânico da Universidade de Lisboa. It was inaugurated in 1873. The garden’s crown jewel is its subtropical collections which has a unique microclimate that enables unique tropical plants to survive. STEM is a film about the migration of plants and the beginning of botanical gardens decay. Years of neglects of the Lisbon University Garden have created a romantic environment where the garden is growing wild. The film investigates the displacement in migration and morphology of plants. And investigates some of the post-colonial environmental ramifications of transfer into new subjectivities of the"other." The film came together as is a collaboration between the filmmaker and the German sound artist Max Schneider. Together they traveled Brazil to sound record 17 unique plants. The film features an interview with professor James Clifford, author of "The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art" (1988), "Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century" (1997), and Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty First Century" (2013).

Lasse Lau, born in Denmark in 1974, is a filmmaker, a video artist, and the winner of the Nordic:Dox Award 2018 for his film Lykkelænder. He studied at the Media Art Department at Funen Art Academy in Denmark, at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, and at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York. His films deal with socio-economic issues, the negotiation of conflicts and the notion of space through the language of film. Lau seeks to utilize aesthetics as a framework that can open dialogical paths. The artist’s work was completed by Max Schneider, sound art teacher at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig, and founding member of the sound design agency Aconica. As a freelance sound designer, Schneider works for contemporary artists and experimental filmmakers, festival producer and curator. His work today focuses on sound design methodology at the heart of applied functional sound design production. Lasse Lau has exhibited in a wide range of museums and galleries including Westfälischer Kunstverein (Münster, Germany), Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin, Germany), Aarhus Art Museum (Aarhus, Denmark), Brandts Klædefabrik (Odense, Denmark), Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb, Croatia), the Turin Biennial of Contemporary Art (Turin, Italy), Contemporary Museum (Baltimore, USA) and MoMA PS1 (New York, USA). Co-founder of Kran Film Collective and member of the Editorial Selection Board at the Danish Film Institute Video Workshop 2001-02, he also works with New York based artist group Camel Collective.

The protagonists in the film move through spaces like the desert, the city and the gallery space. All are production spaces of the film and combining different layers of time and contexts with each other. The Film follows the history of the gaze. The focus is on the phenomenon of the afterimage. This so-called phi-effect makes film sequences following a strong color stimulus appear in a complementary color. The effect is based on the fact that the retina continues to briefly perceive an image after the light stimulus and merges it with the following image. The sound sometimes refers to the previously perceived film still in some instances, letting the words speak at a different position. The brain requires a moment to connect what is heard with what is seen. Furthermore, the afterimage links different levels of time, the past with the present moment, which in the next instant is already the past again.

Daniel Laufer is an artist, filmmaker and curator, lives and works in Berlin. He has studied at the HBK-Braunschweig. Laufer is a recipient of the grant of the Arthur Boskamp Foundation for Space concepts, Stiftung Kunstfonds and the Berlin Senat among other awards.His exhibitions include: Artists Space, NYC; KM Gallery, Berlin; Galerie Kamm, Berlin, Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg; Schaufenster, Kunstverein f. d. Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Fridericianum, Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Jewish Museum Berlin, Kunstmuseum, Bonn; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

A quadruplet raised on a collie farm explores human-dog behaviors through queer “puppy play,” leading to nuanced discoveries of how people treat people “like animals.”

Lax’s films and video installations have screened and been exhibited at venues including Viennale (Austria), IHME Contemporary (Helsinki), MIX New York and MIX Brasil (São Paulo), table (Chicago), Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG), Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), REDCAT, Film Forum, Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, The Drawing Center (New York), and CROSSROADS (San Francisco), among others. Lax’s organizational projects include those held at Anthology Film Archives (NY), Fellows of Contemporary Art (LA), and Human Resources LA. Lax’s writing has appeared in print and online publications including MARCH Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), ArtPractical, and Texte Zur Kunst), as well a catalogue contribution with the Lawndale Art Center (Houston, TX) and a limited edition zine with Inga Books (Chicago).

A silent essay considers several key details of the production and legacy of Robert Flaherty`s seminal 1922 documentary, "Nanook of the North" (also known as, "A Story Of Life and Love In the Actual Arctic"). Critiquing notions around documentary and realism, the gaze, anthropology and institution, an image by an Inuk artist is discovered “missing” from the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) collection.

Matthew Lax (b. Baltimore, Maryland, USA) is an artist, filmmaker and writer based in Los Angeles. His film and video work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in film festivals and art spaces including the Viennale (Austria), IHME Contemporary (Helsinki), MIX Brasil (São Paulo) and MIX New York, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA) and the Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY). He has organized curatorial projects with venues including Human Resources (LA), the Echo Park Film Center, Anthology Film Archives (New York, NY), etc. in addition to numerous pop-up exhibitions with various alternative spaces. His writing has appeared in various printed catalogs and publications including the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (CARLA), ArtPractical (San Francisco), and Art Observed (New York).

THE TRUMPET SOUNDS, NOW I SEE ANOTHER FACE In this piece, a combination of melancholy and dense sorrow, like a cloudy day, Oliver Laxe once again confronts the ?Other? and demonstrates that, deep down, we can be foreign in Galicia, as well as in Morocco or Paris. Without any predetermined scripted aims, Laxe films with the simplicity of looking. Narrative is unnecessary as any form of structure would vanish the subtlety of the everyday. With a certain degree of lyrical quietude, of exotic nostalgia, Laxe portrays along ephemeral sequences a group of construction workers at the site of one of the stadiums, planned for what was supposed to be Morocco?s 2010 Football World Cup. In the background we get to see a green landscape, under gray clouds and littered with the stadium?s cement structures. Some men are in groups, and others walk on their own. Yet they all seem to want to isolate themselves from their circumstances. The cuts in the film, quiet, brute and crude, barely edited, provide the noise, the ambiguity, the tension. They inspire contemplation. A car escape, the bare skeletons of buildings on both sides of the road, the Rif mountains... A market falls victim to the Sharki, the much dreaded northeast wind; an exceptional phenomenon of nature that makes everything disappear. The apparent estrangement between the author and his blurry characters is formally resolved into a gentle dissolution of the individuals into their environment. Laxe?s handcrafted and straightforward gaze does not just portray and observe everyday aspects of life, it also dares to capture the passing of time itself. How? By providing his images with a personal and intimate affect that makes us transcend that which is being shown to us, a myriad nuances impossible to capture in an objective documentary or conventional audiovisual product.

Oliver Laxe was born in Paris in 1982. He lived in La Corogne until the age of 18 and studied audio-visual communications at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is a member of the platform for experimental cinema "No.w.here" of London, where he has resided for a year. His final thesis "Chimneys have decided to Escape," directed with Enrique Aguilar, was selected for exhibition at the Gijon Film Festival, won a prize at the Grenade Film Festival, and was selected for Injuvre's Visual Arts Sampling. The Bureau of Culture of Galicia has financed his film "Paris #1." He participates in a film workshop along a group of socially excluded children, in collaboration with the Cinémathèque de Tanger. In Tanger he also filmed "The Trumpet Plays," included in the film "A Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevitch" in honor of Tarkovsky.

Aimé is ninety-one years old when he finally decides to take the big trip to Morocco he had been planning for forty years. His grandson, a director and photographer, accompanies him. A tender and bitter trip, full of fleeting happiness, regrets, and wasted occasions. As life is.

Georgi Lazarevski was born in Brussels in 1968. Having graduated from the school Louis Lumière, he alternated between the practice of photography and that of cinema as head cameraman. He won awards for his photographic works. He directed shorts and mediums - documentary spot films for NGOs: "Guerre et peigne" in 1996, in a Croatian refugee camp; "Visages", filmed in 1997 in Gaza; as well as "L'un pour l'autre", filmed in Mali, Gaza, and Bosnia.

THE BRIEFING CENTER documents the choreography of the political bodies at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm. Inside the security area, enclosed by an fence 8 miles long, the camera observes the movements of members of the press, security guards, service personal and the political decision makers. Beyond criticism of the political targets of the summit, the film offers insights in the staging and the protocol of the massmedia event G8. Supported by Künstlerhaus Lukas Ahrenshoop, keinTV, art goes Heiligendamm, Rostock and netzpolitik.org, Berlin.

Born in Berlin, Julia Lazarus studied at the University of the Arts Berlin and at the California Institut for the Arts, Los Angeles. Her works have been screened at many international filmfestivals aswell as at exhibitions. The 16mm films are in distribution at sixpackfilm, Vienna.

The story of this film begins with Moha's journey eight years ago to Melilla. When I arrived in Melilla to make my first documentary, Moha was 12 years old and was one of the many boys who every night, for months, tried to sneak aboard and reach the Spanish coast in a few hours. By diving into this reality, I got to see the true face of the inhuman European migration policy. This experience deeply marked me and gave birth to two documentaries: 'Mañana, Inshallah' and 'Riski'. The latter focuses on little Mohamed and his life among the rocks in the port of Melilla. Shortly afterwards, we would both leave: me to finish my film and Moha to reach Europe. Once the editing of 'Riski' was finished, I managed to track him down, he was in Spain, to show him the short film. Over the years we kept in touch and in 2019 I decided to visit him at the centre where he was staying, in Sabadell. Meeting him after so many years was very emotional. Somehow the time spent in Melilla had marked us both, had bonded us by creating great mutual esteem and trust. Seeing each other again and developing our friendship outside of this city was a cathartic experience. I have great respect for him and feel very fortunate to be able to tell this story, aware also of the ethical and moral problems that this may entail. Being able to define my roles as director and friend in a subtle and honest way is a major challenge and responsibility.

Otto Lazi?-Reuschel was born in Trieste. In 2011 he moved to Berlin, where he currently lives. His short film "When I dance, the Earth trembles", a one-take film set in Berlin, was presented at the 24th Black Night Film Festival, while his graduation film "Do you get me?" was presented at the 54th Visions Du Reel. He has worked on several film sets as an assistant director, cinematographer and production manager. He speaks five languages fluently: Italian, Croatian, German, Spanish and English.

Recycler / Reprendre / Revoir / Refaire / Réadapter. Prenez un scalpel, coupez ces mots pour ne garder que le préfixe re-. Faites-en votre personnage principal, celui d’un détective. Placez-le parmi des mots macabres, des phrases sombres où la nuit ne cesse de pleuvoir. Une fois l’opération terminée, l’enquête peut commencer.

Maxime Le Moing respire à Metz (France). Depuis 10 ans, il est embauché à temps plein en tant que promeneur écoutant. Affilié à la pratique du maraîchage et de l'écriture sonore, il œuvre dans la radio, la poésie sonore, la performance musicale néo-animiste et le mash-up pour les oreilles. Ses créations sont ponctuées par les saisons: en hiver, il anime auprès du jeune publique des ateliers de poésies lettristes en leur enseignant le beat box; au printemps, il enregistre le son de la photosynthèse des plantes et élabore une thèse intitulée "La nature préfère la harsh-noise que la musique classique"; en été, il vagabonde avec sa trompette et sa mallette de bruiteur pour réanimer les espaces morts de la capitaloscène; en automne, il aménage des ronds-points, friches et petits bois pour remettre au goût la libre errance des rencontres sexuelles.

Echoed in a memory-laden house are daily conversations between a mother and her two sons, all seemingly asleep. This autobiographical short, in a hybrid form, chronicles a personal memory from director Le Ngoc Duy's adolescence, using set design and reenactment to reconstruct his childhood home and featuring his mother’s voice as part of the cast.

LE Ngoc Duy (b. 2000) is a Vietnamese filmmaker and a member of A Sông Collective from Danang City. He was trained in filmmaking workshops by doc cicada and New Asian Filmmakers Collective in Cambodia. His works explore the subjects of family and homeland memories, queerness, and young adulthood, often set against historical backdrops and blending nonfictional and poetic elements within fictional narratives. "The House That Stays", Duy’s debut short film, was an official selection at Kaohsiung Film Festival, ZINEBI International Festival of Documentary and Short Film of Bilbao, Uppsala Short Film Festival, and Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival. Currently, he is organizing and co-programming the Cinema Con Nha Ngheo project in Danang.

The film Yumeji (Pathway to dreams) has been shot during a workshop of the resident artists of the Pavillon, a creation lab for the Tokyo Palace in Japan in May 2004. This is a collective movie which summarizes both the experience of the exhibition in Hiroshima and of the trip. It is an interactive film. Its tree view allows the passage from the collective film to individual dreams imagined by each artist.

Le Pavillon is the laboratory of creation for Tokyo´s Palace in Paris. Students for the year 2003-2004 were Ziad Antar, Louidgi Beltrame, Davide Bertocchi, Sophie Dubosc, Johannes Fricke Waldthausen, Shiho Fukuhara, Agnieszka Kurant, Gerald Petit. During the whole year, headmaster Ange Leccia, Christian Merlhiot (in charge with pedagogy), Jean-Luc Vilmouth (invited artist) and Pascal Beausse (invited art critic) followed them in their reflection.

A l’heure où l’IA connait un développement sans précédent, la technologie des semi-conducteurs est devenue stratégique dans l’échiquier mondial. Sans les semi-conducteurs, le développement des moteurs des intelligences artificielles ne peut avoir lieu. Sans les semi-conducteurs, pas d’armement de pointe, de mémoire numérique, ni même encore de capteur pour nos appareils photo numériques. Cet essai vidéo invite à considérer une autre histoire de la photographie, une histoire où la résolution de nos images monte en gamme à mesure que l’industrie asiatique (Japon, Taïwan, Corée du Sud) miniaturise les semi-conducteurs, gravés sur des plaques de silicium (silicon). Mais cette course en avant dans la technologie ne se comprend réellement qu’en regard de son contexte géopolitique de la zone Pacifique et la guerre économique entre la Chine et les US. Comment alors ne pas entrelacer le récit de l’évolution de nos images avec l’histoire de ces pays - intitulés ici Silicon Islands -, ainsi qu’avec leurs guerres passées et conflits actuels ? Au récit impersonnel des voix générées par IA, y répond celle d’un conteur créole. Ce dernier défie le gigantisme de la mémoire numérique et son flot démesuré d’images. Il la défie avec les outils de la mémoire orale : la poésie et le chant.

Daphné Nan Le Sergent mène un travail artistique et théorique sur les différentes spatialisations du sensible et sur une image comme forme de mémoire sensorielle dans les arts occidentaux et non-occidentaux. Ses projets artistiques explorent l’image photographique vis-à-vis de la chaîne de production de ses matériaux et des équilibres économiques et géopolitiques qui la maintiennent alimentée. En 2021, la vidéo L’image extractive propose une histoire alternative de la photographie argentique en lien avec celle de l’extraction minière de l’argent, de la fluctuation des cours boursiers et de la menace de tarissement du minerai.

A researcher trying to cope with his research, while avoiding narrative. Does he know where he is walking himself into? Will he be able to come out of it? A film so unsuccessful in resisting narrative as it is in finding answers.

Practitioner and teacher. Participates in solo and group exhibitions since 2001. Won in 2005, ex-aequo, the "Pedro Miguel Frade" award, from the Portuguese Centre of Photography, with the work "Night Order’. PhD candidate at the University of South Wales in connection to the European Centre for Documentary Research. Has a degree in Audiovisual Communication Technology at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto, majoring in Photography. Worked in Sao Joao and D.Maria II Portuguese National Theatres, RTP television, ‘Casa da Musica’. Full time assistant professor in theDepartment of Image Arts P.Porto | ESMAD.

An exhibition of HD video, digital print and text by Barcelona based artist Joan Leandre. As the second Gallery exhibition in the artist?s extensive history, In the Name of Kernel ! The Magic Line is the third installment of the In the Name of Kernel series, introducing Leandre?s critical practice of media interpretation and reverse engineering to a new audience. The first two films of the series toured internationally to venues such as Sonar Festival, Barcelona 2008, 3rd Moscow Biennial, Moscow, 2009, and Centre George Pompidou, Paris 2009.

"Media interpreter and member of the OVNI Archives since 1994. From 1994 to 1996 I worked on a series of media interruptions called MAP (Mega Assemble Project), Fundación Zero and Serial Monuments. From 1995-1997 I was involved in the Oigo Rom project, and later in 1998 in Brooklyn I was involved with the President Archives. In 1999, I began working again with mass entertainment software and started the projects retroyou (RC) and retroyou (nostalG), and continue to work on the series retroyou nostalg2 and the Black Boot Project. Other collective projects include Velvet Strike and the Archivos Babilonia.? J.Leandre

?In the Name of Kernel ! The Magic Line? is the third installation of the ?In the Name of Kernel series?, introducing Leandre?s critical practice of media interpretation and reversing engineering to a new audience. ?In the Name of Kernel ! ? gathers his last videos in an open cycle. They offer to the viewer a complex narration in which he can decode the mechanisms of the fascination for technology to which we are usually subjected, such mechanisms, that will then condition our perception of the world. In that sense, the work of Joan Leandre is quite subversive. In this installation, the kernel, which is at the heart of most computer systems, becomes the myth around which a symbolic event coagulates. It combines travel literature, the alchemy tradition, science fiction, terrorism and conspiracy theories, computer programming, mountain climbing, 3-D modeling, satellite mapping, hallucinations and revelations. Joan Leandre explores the troubled imagination of a fundamental principle of computer science, without regard for its potential uses, be they military or dreamlike. The image itself, which is created by manipulating computers, changes its status. Along with the images, the blind power of the Kernel appears, the kernel in whose name all technological usages become possible.

Joan Leandre lives and works in Barcelona. He is media interpreter and member of the OVNI Archives (Observatoire de Vidéos Non Identifiées). since 1994. From 1994 to 1996 he worked on a series of media interruptions called ?MAP? (Mega Assemble Project), ?Fundación Zero? and ?Serial Monuments?. From 1995-1997 he was involved in the Oigo Rom project, and later in 1998 in Brooklyn he was involved with the President Archives. In 1999, he began working again with mass entertainment software and started the projects ?Retroyou (RC) and retroyou (nostalG)?, and continues to work on the series ?Retroyou nostalg2? and the ?Black Boot Project?. Other collective projects include Velvet Strike and the Archivos Babilonia. Since the begining of the 90ies, Joan Leandre is a media interpreter, an Internet archeologist. He make permanent excavations and collects data. He archives numerous datas that have been ?forgotten?, on a corporate site for example, or, contrariwise, data that have very short apparition before becoming confidential or outdated in terms of technologies. Going further than the apparent usability of such or such interface, he tries to create a state of consciousness concerning what the machines are able to make us do because of our ignorance and the power of the ideological conditioning on our understanding of the real today due to the new images. Since 2006, the work of Joan Leandre lies essentially on the analysis and the deconstruction of games, simulation or military training softwares. His work has been shown at the Sonar festival, Barcelona, at Transmediale, Berlin ; at the Whitney Biennial in the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, at the Laboral Centro de Arte Contemporaneo, Gijon, at the Moscow Biennale, at the ZKM, Karlsruhe.

"The Dr Strangelove of computing, Leandre loves the bomb and knows its mechanisms well enough to transform them instantly into the workings of a multi-layered ambiguous narrative, esoteric and seductive at the same time. This is what we can see in his latest project, In the Name of Kernel (2006 - ongoing). The kernel, the heart of every operating system, becomes the myth around which coagulates a symbolic event combining travel literature, the alchemy tradition and science fiction, terrorism and conspiracy theories, programming and mountaineering, 3D modelling and satellite mapping, hallucinations and revelations. A high definition metaphor for those who love the clear air of the high peaks." - Domenico Quaranta

Joan Leandre (b. 1968, lives and works in Barcelona, Spain) Media interpreter, member of the OVNI Archives since 1994. From 1994-1996 I worked on the series of media interruptions MAP (Mega Assemble Project), Fundación Zero and Serial Monuments, in 1995-1997 the Oigo Rom project, later in 1998 in Brooklyn I was involved with the President Archives. In 1999 I worked again with mass entertainment software and started the projects retroyou (RC) and retroyou (nostalG) and the long series still in process, retroyou nostalg2 and the Black Boot Project. Other colective projects I`ve been involved with these years are Velvet Strike (http://www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike/) and the Archivos Babilonia (http://desorg.org/babylon_25-01-2005.php). I`m currently in that floating point of several considerations which bring the name of the iron bird scream in its flight through the automatic dusk, ...In the Name of Kernel!.

The OVNI (Observatoire de la vidéo non identifiée) was founded in 1993 by the artists Joan Leandre, Toni Serra and Rosa Llop in Barcelona. OVNI's archives have an international and thematic character, facilitating a criticism of the contemporary culture using various strategies such as video art, independent documentary, and the archaeology of mass media. The archives gather a constellation of disparate works of which the common denominator is self-expression and thought about fears and the place of individual in collectives, building, and conjugating a multiple view. A thousand little works go into detail and explore our world or announce other possibilities. A discourse of which major values are heterogeneity, plurality, and contradiction, and in which subjectivity accomplishes itself. In this discourse, subjectivity is the only tool of repulsion against cloning and corporate mass media's repetition. During the various editions, the thematic character of this convocation changes through selections of works into a reading, a particular register of our time's dreams and nightmares. Thus, one could verify how the concerns' spectre has been gradually concentrated, taking part in a very developed range at the beginning of OVNI in 1993-1999 (to develop and explore video language's boundaries, recovering its first formal freedom and theme), until that it concentrates itself more and more on specific themes : Identity against Media (1997-98), Community (2000), Globalization (2002), September 11th's Consequences (2003), Resistances (2005), and the Colonial Dream Independent Zones (2006).

The Catalan artist Joan Leandre has been a member of OVNI (Observatoire de la vidéo non identifiée) since 1993. From 1994 to 1996, he worked on the series MAP (Mega Assemble Project), Foundation Zero and Serial Monuments. In 1996 he instigated the project Oigo Romo, financially supported by the Audiovisual University Institute (Instituto Universitario del Audiovisual) which provided a place for the Mega Assembly Project MSN ? Adult Playground 1.0. In 1998, he participated in President Archives in New York. In 1999, he began the project retroyou.org made for the break series of software retroyou RC, retroyou nostal(G), retroyou nostalg2, and the mailing list autoreplicant http://ddtpv-txmx7-bbgj9-wgy8k-b9ghm.org. During the last few years, he has made projects in collaboration with Archivos Babilonia and Velvet Strike.

?Retroyou_nostal(g)? is a software research project whose aim is to transform the original programs into self-running simulation environments. The conditions in four flight simulator programs are modulated in such a way that they can hardly be operated by human pilots any more. Prix Ars Electronica 2006, Honorary Mention Interactive Art

The Catalan artist Joan Leandre has been a member of OVNI (Observatoire de la vidéo non identifiée) since 1993. From 1994 to 1996, he worked on the series MAP (Mega Assemble Project), Foundation Zero and Serial Monuments. In 1996 he instigated the project Oigo Romo, financially supported by the Audiovisual University Institute (Instituto Universitario del Audiovisual) which provided a place for the Mega Assembly Project MSN ? Adult Playground 1.0. In 1998, he participated in President Archives in New York. In 1999, he began the project retroyou.org made for the break series of software retroyou RC, retroyou nostal(G), retroyou nostalg2, and the mailing list autoreplicant http://ddtpv-txmx7-bbgj9-wgy8k-b9ghm.org. During the last few years, he has made projects in collaboration with Archivos Babilonia and Velvet Strike.

After a painful breakup in February 2022, the protagonist moves into a rented apartment. As he tries not to go crazy, he films his everyday life and the world outside his window while strange things are happening around him.

Gennady Lebedev graduated from the general directing lab at the Moscow School of New Cinema.

‘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).

Earthwork’s screen is positioned flat on the floor, facing upwards. The visitor, looking down, gets a bird’s-eye view of a suburban landscape in which there are destroyed buildings, damaged roads, fences, and gardens. The image suggests a world that has undergone massive disruption. It is unclear whether accident, entropic forces, or warfare has caused this result. Superimposed upon Earthwork’s devastated landscape is another smaller image that presents the viewer with an alternative framing the site. We see diagrams: symbols of what might be location coordinates, suggesting an ongoing search for boundaries, and an intention. The two images appear to be attempting to “ line-up ”, but this is never achieved. The title, Earthwork, references the American Land Art movement of the 1960s; Leber and Chesworth’s videowork further explores Robert Smithson’s concept of the “ non-site ”. A non-site is an artwork situated in a gallery that metaphorically represents a remote actual site. As Smithson suggests “ the site is evading you all the while its directing you to it ”.

Sonia Leber and David Chesworth are known for their distinctive installation artworks, using video, sound, architecture, and public participation. Developed through expansive research in places undergoing social change, Leber and Chesworth’s works are speculative and archaeological, responding to architectural, social, and technological settings.

CIVIC is a short film that follows Booker on his first trip back home to South Central, L.A. after several years of self-imposed exile. Without any clear motive, or even a warning, Booker returns to the place that holds his origins and the people who shaped him. Framed almost exclusively inside of his car, CIVIC tracks Booker’s fleeting and fragmented encounters around his old streets. Booker spends most of his time with his childhood best friend, Tee. They ride around to liquor stores and lingering in parking lots after closing time. Closeness and distance ebbs and flows between them as they talk about their lives, old and new. The repaved ground between them allows Booker to dive deep into the past, seemingly letting go of the tension in the present. However, we soon realize Booker is avoiding his responsibility to his family members across this trip. Just as he plans his disembark from L.A., he has an unexpected encounter that helps to reframe his perspective in the world. CIVIC is an introspective film, giving life to the wordless exchanges, the mundane and the familiar shorthand of unfettered Black life.

Dwayne LeBlanc is a Los Angeles based, first generation, Caribbean-American artist and filmmaker. Primarily self taught, his practice focuses on themes of migration, visibility and dual identities. His debut narrative short film, Civic (2022), an introspective short film about homecoming, was awarded a production grant from Ghetto Film School and Netflix while simultaneously developed at Berlinale Talents 'Short Form Station.' Civic has been screened and awarded at international film festivals around the world, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Clermont-Ferrand, New Orleans Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival and Indie Memphis. LeBlanc was also named as part of the "future of cinema" at the 2023 New Directors / New Films festival in NY where Civic was screened at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. LeBlanc is a MacDowell fellow and a member of the Writers Guild of America.