Catalogue > List by artist

Inspired by the legacies of real historical events and manufactured myths, American Fables, re-imagines through video vignettes some of the most celebrated moments in American History. I have long been influenced by the comically one-dimensional and inaccurate accounts of history common to most US textbooks, where ethnocentric perspectives create propagandistic narratives of American exceptionalism. Continuously, I find myself fascinated by the subjectivity of history, its vulnerability to partisan ideals and nationalism, rendering historical accounts more akin to folktales than facts. This inspired me to create my own library of counterfeit and re-imagined American History in an effort to submit my own voice into the ever expanding campaign of misinformation entrenched in Western rhetoric.

Federico Solmi (Italy, 1973) currently lives and works 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 video, painting, drawing, and sculpture. Solmi uses his art as a vehicle to stimulate a visceral conversation with his audience, highlighting the contradictions and fallibility that characterize our time. Through his work, Solmi examines unconscious human impulses and desires in order to critique Western society's obsession with individual success and display contemporary relationships between nationalism, colonialism, religion, consumerism. By re-configuring historical narratives across eras, he creates social and political commentary works which disrupt the mythologies that define American society. Scanning his paintings into a game engine, Solmi’s videos confront the audience with his own absurd rewriting of past and present, merging dark humor and sense of the grotesque with new technologies. He creates a carnivalesque virtual reality where our leaders become puppets, animated by computer script and motion capture performance rather than string.

THE BALLROOM With his typical sardonic and irreverent approach, Federico Solmi has orchestrated a masquerade between history’s most feared and beloved leaders in his latest work, ‘The Ballroom’. In the installation, videos display surreal vignettes of a lavish ballroom party that converge multiple narratives of gluttony, gossip, and over the top exuberance. The follies of each overly ambitious leader result in a chaotic festival of drinking, smoking, dancing, and feasting. A vain display of ridiculous costumes, shining with medals and jewelry, promote a visual disorder that coalesces with the indulgent antics of these powerful figures. Rather than reimagining history, the leaders enter into our conceited present-day celebrity culture. They call to fault our own complacency and perpetuation of skewed historical myths and perspectives.

Solmi’s elaborate installations combine 3D animation and video game technology with paintings, drawings, and kinetic sculptures. Bright colors and a satirical aesthetic portray a dystopian vision of our present day society. Through an intricate process in which technology and hand-painting merge into an organic whole, his unique approach renders the most loathed aspects of modern life. With garish imagery and mesmerizing movement, Solmi expresses a harsh criticism toward the system that approves and trusts without questioning the fragile foundation on which our culture and post-modernist society is based. Federico Solmi, (lives and works in New York). In the year 2009, Federico Solmi was awarded with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in the category of Video & Audio by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York. He is currently a visiting Professor at Yale University School of Art, New Haven (CT). Solmi has been featured in solo museum exhibitions at the Haifa Museum of Art, Israel (2016) Museo de Arte Contemporaneo del Zulia, Maracaibo Venezuela (forthcoming), and the Centro Cultural Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile (2015). His work has been included in several international Biennials, including the Frankfurt B3 Biennial of Moving image (2015), the First Shenzhen Animation Biennial in China (2013), the 54th Venice Biennial (2011), and the Site Santa Fe Biennial in New Mexico (2010).

In Chinese Democracy and the Last Day on Earth Federico Solmi aims to lampoon the contemporary society and the self–destructive nature of mankind. In contrast with their playful faux-naïve aesthetics, the videos indict a male dominated, hierarchal world controlled by corrupt, arrogant dictators, politicians, businessmen as forces behind the disintegration of ethical and moral values.

BIOGRAPHY Federico Solmi (Italy, 1973) currently lives and works in New York. His exhibitions, which often combine articulate installations composed of different media such as video, drawings, mechanical sculptures and paintings, use bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present day society. Irreverent, surrealistic, the videos and the works by Federico Solmi are as he is: extravagant, rowdy and ironic. They are satires about the evilness and the vices that affect contemporary society and mankind. The artist uses images culled from the video game industry, pop culture, and the Internet and collages them with a historical influence to produce original artworks about the seemingly disparate subject at hand. The universe that Solmi likes to represent is the exaltation of a present that is crumbling apart. His work is a criticism of a system that approves and trusts without questioning the fragile foundation on which our culture and post-modernist society is based. In the year 2009, Federico Solmi was awarded by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in the category Video & Audio. Solmi`s works has been exhibited in several international Biennials, such as First Shenzhen Animation Biennial in China (2013), the 54th Venice Biennial (2011), and Site Santa Fe Biennial in New Mexico (2010). His works have been exhibited and screened in the following museums and institutions for contemporary art: Centre De Pompidou, Palais De Tokyo, Paris; Drawing Center, New York; Reina Sofia National Museum, CA2M Centro De Arte Dos De Mayo (upcoming), Italian Cultural Institute, Madrid; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Arts, Israel; OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shanghai; Australian Center of Moving Images, Melbourne; Victoria Memorial Museum, Calcutta, India; Palazzo Delle Esposizioni, Rome, Palazzo Delle Belle Arti, Naples, Italy Solmi`s video have been screened in several film and video festivals around the world including the Kassel Documentary film and video festival; Tina B, Prague; Les Rencontres Internationales, Paris, Madrid, Berlin; The London International animation festival; Loop Barcelona and others. Federico Solmi has given lectures on his work in several universities and art schools in the United States and Europe, including Yale University in New Haven, School Of Visual Arts in New York, and Accademia di Belle Arti Brera and Universita` Cattolica in Milan.

"A Song of Tyranny", is the first video episode of the Trilogy entitled Chinese Democracy and The Last Day On Earth, a project by Federico Solmi, which was commissioned by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York after the artist was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for video. In this swarming animation, the artist investigates the self destructive nature of mankind through the examples of political dictatorship and authoritarian behaviors. Beyond the apparent Manichean character of such a vision, the video is articulated as a fictitious portrayal or the hagiography of an imaginary leader of the mid-21st century, idolized by his crowd of subjects. Solmi`s playful aesthetics integrate a series of visual metaphors to present viewers with a comedic-grotesque parabola on power and its excess. This sarcastic and irreverent tone allows Solmi to target the epitome of human folly, greed, and thirst for power, preventing a simple reproduction of the dichotomic good versus evil. A Song of Tyranny, centers on the protagonist in the phase of becoming a dictator while he is permeated with values and models that will influence his successive actions and decisions in the process of rising to power. Solmi?s complex technique combines traditional hand drawn animation with digital models, utilizing computer gaming engines. The result is an absolutely unique hand-made texture within a real-time 3D framework, created in collaboration with Australian based 3D artist, Russell Lowe.

Federico Solmi (Italy in 1973), currently lives and works in New York. His exhibitions, which often combine articulate installations composed of different media such as video, drawings, mechanical sculptures and paintings, use bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present day society. Irreverent, surrealistic, and sexually explicit, the videos and the works by Federico Solmi are as he is: extravagant, rowdy and ironic. They are satires about the evilness and the vices that affect contemporary society and mankind. The artist uses images culled from the video game industry, pop culture, and the Internet and collages them with a historical influence to produce original artworks about the seemingly disparate subject at hand. The universe that Solmi likes to represent is the exaltation of a present that is crumbling apart. His work is a criticism of a system that approves and trusts without questioning the fragile foundation on which our culture and post-modernist society is based. In the year 2009, Federico Solmi was awarded by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in the category Video & Audio. Solmi?s videos were featured in the 54th Venice Biennial, in the exhibition entitled ?Italians do it better?. His work was included in the year 2010 at the Site Santa Fe Biennial, an exhibition curated by Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco. His work has been exhibited in the following museums and Institutions for Contemporary art; Centre Pompidou, Paris, Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid, Drawing Center, New York; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, Australian Center of Moving Images, Melbourne, Victoria Memorial Museum, Calcutta, India, Contemporary Art Center of Rouboix, Palazzo Delle Arti, Naples, Palazzo Delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy. In addition, his video animations have been screened in several film and video festivals, such the Kassel Documentary film and video festival, Tina B, Prague, The London International animation festival, Loop Barcelona, IndieLisboa, Lisbon, Impakt Film and Video festival, Utrecht.

Douche Bag City is a video installation of 24 drawing animated film. It was conceived by the artist to be a satire about the current world economic crisis. The main character ?Dick Richman? is a greedy, dishonest, and selfish Wall Street employee who has been banished to live in Douche Bag City. Douche Bag City is a hopeless place, where the greedy villains of society are imprisoned for their atrocities committed against the community. The video is made of several chapters. In the final version of the installation, 24 videos/episodes will be playing simultaneously; each episode represents a mission for the main character. The ultimate goal of the protagonist ? Dick Richman? is to survive different challenges, but the drawing animated /video games are set by the artist in a way that the main character ?Dick Richman? cannot win. For each video I used a combination hand-made drawings, video game technologies, 3D and 2D animation. The installation was made in collaboration with Russell Lowe, an Australia-based 3D artist and professor at the New South Wales University in Sidney.

Federico Solmi was born in Bologna, Italy in April 1973 and currently lives and works in New York. His exhibitions, which often combine articulate installations composed of different media such as video, drawings, mechanical sculptures and paintings, use bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present day society. Irreverent, surrealistic, and sexually explicit, the videos and the works by Federico Solmi are as he is: extravagant, rowdy and ironic. They are satires about the evilness and the vices that affect contemporary society and mankind. In the year 2009, Federico Solmi was awarded by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in the category Video & Audio. Federico?s work has been featured in the following museums and Institutions for Contemporary art; Santa Fe Biennal (upcoming June 2010), Centre Pompidou, Paris, Drawing Center, New York; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, Australian Center of Moving Images, Melbourne, Victoria Memorial Museum, Calcutta, India, Contemporary Art Center of Rouboix, Palazzo Delle Arti, Naples, Palazzo Delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy.

KING KONG AND THE END OF THE WORLD - 2005 - 2006 King Kong and the End of the World is a sensational and sarcastic drawing animated film, based on the original 1933 King Kong movie. In this version, King Kong (played by the alter ego of the artist) destroys New York City, using the Guggenheim Museum as a weapon, then he climbs to the top of the Empire State Building where he pees, eats wall street brokers for lunch, and fights the Statue of Liberty in the arena of Time Square. The artist uses King Kong as an allegory of the art world and the money-frenzy culture of the city. In this world, art is struggling against its role as a commodity. Ideas around the nature of money, technology, the natural and ?man-made? come together in the painstaking hand drawing of every frame. When he is finally killed, King Kong triggers a cataclysmic earthquake that destroys the earth or as it?s called by the artist ?the world of assholes?. All that is left is for Federico and his wife Jennifer to repopulate a better mankind using a baby making machine.

Federico Solmi was born in Bologna, Italy in April 1973 and currently lives and works in New York. His exhibitions, which often combine articulate installations composed of different media such as video, drawings, mechanical sculptures and paintings, uses bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present day society. Power is often the nemesis in his worlds, manifesting itself in the elliptical layers of the Guggenheim Museum (King Kong and the End of the World, video 2006), the shiny Prada shoes of the Pope (The Evil Empire, video 2007), and the personal obsession to be as famous as the giant letters that spell out ?Hollywood?. The artist uses images culled from the video game industry, pop culture, and the Internet and collages them with a historical influence to produce original artworks about the seemingly disparate subject at hand. What results from the combination of all these elements is art that is humorous, absurd, and scathingly critical of our contemporary society. .

The documentary filmmaker is filming an old Securitate officer with a hidden camera. He suspects that, 60 years ago, the officer had followed and photographed a famous monk turned civilian - a real character, now about to be sanctified. The former spy is now being spied upon, but things turn out badly.

In the early 1990s, Solomon emerged as a young director of photography and he started making documentaries aside from filming feature films. Solomon was among the first Romanian film-makers who committed themselves to a then compromised genre; today, he is one of the leading political film-makers from Romania and active on the international documentary scene. His recent work triggered public debates about the function of documentary film within the public sphere and contributed to re-establishing documentary film as an arena for reframing Romania’s recent history. Solomon’s previous work, “The Great Communist Bank Robbery” (2004), broadcast on Arte and as part of BBC4’s prestigious Storyville series, was awarded Best Film at the History Film Festival in Pessac, France and the Prize for Social Values at Documenta Madrid. His ‘Cold Waves’ (2007) is a chilling slice of political history that played for 12 weeks in Romanian theatres. It deals with the love and hate story between Radio Free Europe, the Romanian audiences and the communist regime. “Kapitalism - our secret recipe” (2010), speaks of the rise of a new ruling class in the East (produced for Arte and RTBF with Media support). “Tarzan’s Testicles” (2017), premiered in Karlovy Vary, is a film about utopias & a metaphoric drama that threads the similar destinies of monkeys & men.

The work Ecumenopolis departs from a specific aspect of the Cold War: the efforts on both sides, East and West, to extend their spheres of influence by means of art and culture. As a counterpart to Socialist Realism, the United States advanced modernist art as a vehicle for spreading Western values. This Cultural Cold War also took place on the front of architecture and urbanism. Against this geopolitical background, Ecumenopolis zooms in on Greek architect-urbanist Constantinos Doxiadis and his role as a cultural agent of change. In the 1950s and 60s, Doxiadis developed many key projects across the Middle East, Asia and Africa, and was responsible for the modernist master plans of Riyadh, Baghdad and Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. Parallel to these influential commissions, he worked on his own mission: a visionary urbanist theory which he named ekistics, the science of human settlements. Its ultimate aim was a blueprint for a future city that would encompass the entire world: Ecumenopolis. In the work Ecumenopolis a voice-over narrates about Doxiadis’ mission and his interdisciplinary network of inspirational fellows, the Delians, which he gathered annually on a boat in the Aegean Sea to contribute to his mission. The camera hovers around the island of Delos and its ancient city where Doxiadis would take them. In order to envision the urban future, they were to travel back in time. As the story unfolds, two different perspectives are interweaved on Doxiadis and his Delians, drawing both on official archives celebrating his architecture as a practice beyond politics, and on alternative sources that trace a more complex context - the context of the Cultural Cold War.

Elian Somers (NL, 1975) is a visual artist based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Her works have been shown at various art venues, a.o. Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (SMBA), Amsterdam; Pennings Foundation, Eindhoven; Foam, Amsterdam; TENT, Rotterdam; Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, Wilhelmshaven (DE) and MK Galerie, Berlin (DE). The works have also been regularly published as artist books, and in art, photography and architecture magazines. The book One and Another State of Yellow (Fw: Books) was published in 2017, and the book Border Theories (Fw: Books) in 2013. The work Ecumenopolis (A Stone from the Moon, 2015-2022) was selected for the International Film Festival Rotterdam, IFFR 2024. Elian Somers’ projects have been financially supported by the Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam, Culture Fund, Amsterdam, and CBK Rotterdam.

"Diamante" is built as a game of reflections on the basis of a fact: a jewelry theft committed in Russia in 2018 allegedly committed by a criminal organization called Pink Panther.

Francisca Somigliana (Buenos Aires, 1992) studied Image and Sound design. She did the Film Program (2017) and the Artist Program (2020/21) of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. She was selected in 2019 to participate in the Biennial of Young Art. She participated in different shows and screenings such as Space between (CCR), Today I have permission to lie (UTDT), Program 2016 (Dahaus Studio), Satellite XIII (CHELA) and Cinematographic images and their path to freedom (UTDT)

In “Sagn om jord” (Legends of Earth) the point of view is from a distant future. The sci-fi inspired narrative is set in the region of Hardanger in Norway, where the landscape has vanished. An excavation uncovers films revealing images from today’s Hardanger: a research station where they research mainly fruit production, a salmon farming facility and a slate quarry. These are the first images of the lost landscape to appear. ?A woman attempts to make the visual fragments of an estranged world comprehensible and locate them in an imaginary landscape. The film explores how the management of natural resources shapes our surroundings and the connections between landscape, language, history and image production. The region where the story is set is visually an iconic part of Norway, representing ideas and histories of nationalism and identity. By playing with the sci-fi genre as a way to create estrangement and make the familiar surreal, possibilities and ideas of what shapes a landscape opens up. The soundtrack is from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s tv-serie “Blindpassasjer” from 1978, which was the first sci-fi series produced in Norway.

Helene Sommer (b. 1978) is a Norwegian visual artist. She graduated from the National Art Academy in Oslo in 2003 and has since exhibited her work in galleries, museums and in festivals in numerous places. In her practice she is interested in the multiple levels of translation, interpretation and rhetorical devices that are involved in all storytelling. Through video, collage, text and installation she wishes to question the way we understand and relate to our surroundings and its history. A common denominator has been an interest in overlooked perspectives within history and science. Her works are often based upon a precise montage of an extensive selection of archival material in combination with her own production. See www.helenesommer.net for more information about her work.

The video Great Piece of Turf explores place through the narratives of plants. A piece of uncultivated, urban land in Los Angeles was mapped out by collecting the histories of its plants with the help of local biologists and botanists. The place is by a former freight switching facility and the Los Angeles River. Whether a weed from China brought during the Gold rush, a palm tree introduced in an attempt to create a vision of paradise or a native hallucinogenic - narratives are revealed reflecting the interwoven and fragmented layers of history and space. Sampled material from a range of sources such as educational films, commercials, television, documentaries and movies is included. The title is borrowed from Albrecht Dürers watercolor (Das große Rasenstück) from 1503 which is a study of a seemingly random group of wild plants.

Helene Sommer (b. Oslo, 1978) graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo in 2003. In her works - which often takes the form of collages and compilations involving installation, video, text and photo - a common denominator is an interest in recontextualization, documentation and classification in relation to image production within subjects such as history and science. She has recently exhibited places such as Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo), Space for Art and Industry (NY), Kunstnerforbundet (Oslo), Motorenhalle Dresden, Grazer Kunstverein (Graz), De Appel (Amsterdam), University of Oslo, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (Berlin), Chert Gallery (Berlin), Fotogalleriet (Oslo)

?Persistence?* of vision is based upon an amateur film and video archive from a 90 year old man, from 1950 to present day. The focus is on his travels- from NY to South America during the 50s, Japan in the 60s, Egypt in the 70s to Spanish retirement villages during the 90s. By deconstructing and reassembling the material a new travelogue is created where time and place blends. ?Persistence of vision?* investigates how memory and perception function in regards to history and the act of documenting. The use of the camera as a way of seeing.

Helene Sommer was born in 1978 in Oslo, Norway. She studied Fine Arts at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. As an artist she works mainly within the fields of video, photo, text and installation. She has over the last year shown several places in Europe. She was recently a resident artist at Platform Garanti in Istanbul, and is currently a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, within the discipline of Film/Video/New Media.

The initial purpose of the trip was to observe the construction of an indoor tropical amusement park, but the intentions and interests change as the already existing landscape becomes inevitable. "Das Gelände" follows the construction of an indoor tropical amusement park in a former airship hangar, localized on what was previously a Soviet military base in the GDR. In the video, the history of the landscape is being uncovered at the same time as the construction of an artificial indoor landscape is being observed. As facilities change functions, the layers of history become apparent. The visible recycling of the landscape triggers the question of whether the amusement park trivializes, camouflages, or clarifies the place's history. The video consists of images from web cameras downloaded over a period of 9 months, in addition to photos and video collected during the construction period. A narrative is conveyed through subtitles, leaving only the sound of the landscapes.

Helene Sommer was born in 1978 in Oslo, Norway, where in 2003 she graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts. She works with various media such as video, photo, text, and installations, and currently lives and works in Berlin and Oslo.

Golf, a man who works as a debt claimer in Khonkaen. He wakes up early to work as usual. He meets many people including a desperate man in debt who falls critically ill. Golf is forced by the situation to weigh up between his professional duty and sense of moral.

Wichanon Somumjarn was born in Khon Kaen in 1982. While he was in the final year of studying engineering, he made a short film titled Phee Hong Nam (W.C.) The short won Honorable Mention at the Siam Cement Group Young Thai Artist Award 2005 in the film category. He then decided to leave his formal studies to pursue his dreams in the field of cinema. Wichanon was a participant in Asian Film Academy (AFA), Pusan International Film Festival 2009. In February 2010, Wichanon had also attended the Berlinale Talent Campus # 8 at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival, Germany. In November 2010, Wichanon had also attended the Next Master Tokyo Filmex 2010, Japan. His short film, Four Boys, White Whiskey and Grilled Mouse has been a major success on the international film festival circuit. It won Best Fiction award at the prestigious Tampere Film Festival in Finland in 2010. In April the Following Year, There was a Fire, is Wichanon’s first feature. In January 2012, it was selected for Tiger Awards Competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2012. Now Wichanon is developing his second feature called “Beer Girl”.

The filmmaker begins to view CHARACTERS, her first feature film made in 2011, not from the outside as a product to be consumed, but from the inside, as an engaged performance of consciousness in and through which the story is both lost and regained in the actual process of filmmaking itself. Exploring the paradoxical boundary between two worlds, she focuses on the basic conditions of existence, identity and survival of an individual in a fictional world.

Since 2003 when she received the M.F.A. in Film/Video/New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Kwang-Ju Son(b.1970) has presented her varied short projects of both film and video, at diverse venues & international film festivals.

A weekday afternoon in the EverLand, one of the largest amusement parks in Korea.

Born 1970 in Korea, Kwang-Ju Son is a two-time award-winning filmmaker at the Pusan International Film Festival. She has presented her short films in major festivals including Pusan, Rotterdam, and Oberhausen. She is currently working as a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, Holland.

The Video work STUXNET in Denmark tells a hallucinatory realist fable about an unnamed intelligence officer who has participated in the cyber warfare attack against the Iranian Nuclear plant in Natanz from a hotel room in Copenhagen. What unfolds through the story is a dialogue about the fictive side of documents, participation and complicity in remote warfare, the trap of paranoia and the unattainable desire to be completely immune to mass surveillance. This video is based upon the real events of what has been termed the STUXNET virus, a cyber warfare weapon that was developed by a consortium of different government bodies as a way to disrupt the enrichment of uranium at the Iranian Nuclear plant in Natanz from 2010-2012. Cyber security experts have tracked the virus and discovered that one of the main control servers was located outside the city of Copenhagen, Denmark. It has been suggested by security analysts that because the control servers were located in Denmark then there would have been a forward operating command and control center set up in the country that was active during the time of the attack. An intelligence officer following standard operating procedure would have established this in a hotel and worked cloaked in what is referred to as a “security tent” that is specifically designed to create an electromagnetic shield around its exterior so as to disrupt any listening or watching devices.

Guston Sondin-Kung is a visual artist born in the USA and currently living in Copenhagen, Denmark. He works in a project-based manner primarily in the mediums of film/video, installation and writing. His artwork explores how historical narratives, memory, and ideology are constructed and influence our perception and thinking. Informed by marxist theory, psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory and feminism he is invested in deconstructing the complex intersections of race, class, and gender from a transnational perspective in order to pose alternative narratives and forms of representation. In addition to art institutions, he regularly presents his artworks and artistic research in academic, activist, educational and film festival contexts.

A NEW NORMAL is a stereoscopic essay film, that examines the question how to go on when everything has changed. A young man leaves his apartment in an old high-rise and wanders through deserted landscapes. Something is waiting for him out there, but what drives him forward is his desire to leave everything behind, even himself. A narrator recounts fragments and experiences of an everyday life following catastrophe. They bear no resemblance with the journey of the young man, but cannot be cleanly separated from them either. Stories start out as banal episodes about grocery shopping or commuting to work but reveal various strategies to engage with a profound crisis of identity. The 3D images are both an artistic and a narrative choice: they serve as a window into his thoughts and attempts to develop a new sense of normalcy.

Luzie Loose (*1989) and Paul Sonntag (*1991) grew up in post-wall Berlin. Luzie studied at UdK Berlin while Paul received a BA from Columbia. Their paths crossed at Filmakademie BW, where Luzie graduated in 2018, with her first feature Swimming, which won several awards. Paul has been studying cinematography since 2016. His films have been shown at various festivals around the world. A NEW NORMAL is the first collaboration between the two and celebrated its world premiere at Filmfest Munich.

A NEW NORMAL is a stereoscopic essay film that examines the question how to go on when everything has changed. A young man leaves his apartment in an old high-rise and wanders through deserted landscapes. Something is waiting for him out there, but what drives him forward is his desire to leave everything behind, even himself. A narrator recounts fragments and experiences of an everyday life following catastrophe. They bear no resemblance with the journey of the young man, but cannot be cleanly separated from them either. Stories start out as banal episodes about grocery shopping or commuting to work but reveal various strategies to engage with a profound crisis of identity. The 3D images are both an artistic and a narrative choice: they serve as a window into his thoughts and attempts to develop a new sense of normalcy.

Luzie Loose (born 1989) and Paul Nungeßer (born 1991) both grew up in post-wall Berlin of the 1990s. Luzie studied communications at Universität der Künste in Berlin while Paul majored in Photography and Architecture at Columbia University in New York. Their paths crossed for the first time in 2017 at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, where Luzie graduated in 2018, directing her first feature-length fiction film Swimming. The film premiered at Busan International Film Festival and won the Hof gold award for best directing debut. Paul is studying cinematography since 2016 at Filmakademie. His films have been shown at various festivals, including Dok.Fest & Filmfest Munich, Achtung Berlin and Max-Ophüls-Prize. A NEW NORMAL is the first collaboration between the two filmmakers and celebrated its world premiere at Filmfest Munich. Paul and Luzie live and work in Berlin.

NEVADA: Of Landscape and Longing is a reminiscence of a journey to the desert state of Nevada in the summer of 2009. It is a portrait of contemporary Nevada, which documents the region as a place of extremes. On the one hand, it is a land of notorious desolation and silence, while on the other it is a capital of excess, artifice, and paragon of the American economic collapse. Through the voyeuristic camera of outsiders, the film explores the death of the American frontier through Nevada, a place where contemporary notions of progress are wrestling with the West?s wild landscape and mythology.

Ian Soroka is a filmmaker and multimedia artist who was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in the mountains of western Colorado, USA. He studied cinema and philosophy at the University of Colorado in Boulder (2009) and at the Film and Television School at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Czech Republic (FAMU Int. 2008). His work has previously exhibited at Rencontres Internationales (2008-9), the Albuquerque Film Festival (2009), Insideout Gallery (2009). In 2009, Soroka was awarded the prestigious Princess Grace Foundation fellowship. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Nostalgia is a specific emotion that represents a patchwork of memories stitched together to create an idealized past. Through reflections of the banality of everyday life, Nostalgia explores the creation of filmic emotion and atmosphere. It seeks to construct a ?film? environment to allude not only to something inherently human but also to a collective emotional history.

Ian Soroka was born New York City and raised in the Mountain region of Colorado, USA. He has Accreditation from FAMU International: Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and is currently working towards a degree at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

On the eve of the local elections, Istanbul is dressed with a stage-set built of posters, banners and flags. This set covers the city like a uniform. Different neighbourhoods with different socio-cultural and architectural characteristics become indistinguishable. Rallying buses stroll through the city playing campaign songs. It is a kind of temporary frenzy; a paradox: the ones who promise a better look for the city are the ones who distort its face. Inseparable from the stage set are the actors. They appear with plastic smiles and slogans, some demanding, some emotional. It seems as though we vote for poster people instead of real candidates. Slogans cover not only the main roads but also side streets, shop windows, trees, construction sites, apartment blocks, lampposts, rubbish bins and even traffic signs.

Belmyn Söylemez was born in Istanbul. She has worked as a copywriter, editor, director, and producer. Her short films and documentaries have received many awards in national and international festivals, and have been shown on TV Channels such as ARTE, SVT (Sweden), YLE (Finland), and SBS (Australia). Her films have also participated in exhibitions such as "Call me Istanbul", ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany (2004), and "Free Kick" - the 9th Istanbul Biennial, 2005. She is also a member of the Filmist Collective and is currently working on the script of her first feature film, as well as a photography project called "Foam". Hasmet Topaloglu (Haþmet Topaloðlu) was born in 1968. He studied business administration but spent more time in cinémathèques and on short-film production than in the classroom. In 1993 he started working as a TV-journalist at Turkey's ATV, a national television channel. He worked for three different national television channels over a period of ten years as a reporter, a producer, and a presenter. His focus was mainly on human stories, features, and TV documentaries. Topaloglu was also a film critics for the daily papers in the early 90's and 2002-2003. Since 2002 he has been working as a freelance director/producer. He is currently making a video documentary on the Turkish Punk Group "Rashit".

Brothers escape to the virgin forests of Impivaara to create a new world. An experimental imagining of Finnish national author Aleksis Kivi’s novel Seven Brothers (1870) for the 21st Century, focusing on the energetic basis of a Northern welfare state and a possible future emerging from the climate crisis.

Writer and Director Patrik Söderlund is the founding member of artist duo IC-98. With backgrounds in visual arts and cultural studies, Söderlund’s and Visa Suonpää’s 25-year collaboration as IC-98 has produced artist publications, site and context specific projects and interventions, animated moving image installations and various public commissions. IC-98 received the Finnish State Art Prize in 2009 and represented Finland at the Venice Biennale in 2015 with Abendland (Hours, Years, Aeons), which was picked by Sundance Film Festival in 2016. Their work has been shown extensively at museums, biennials and festivals in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Though their practice is essentially conceptual, IC-98 is best known for animations, which combine classical drawing and digital effects, depicting landscapes shaped by long time durations, natural and human histories and climate. The landscapes are always devoid of humans but completely shaped by their actions. Mythical, material, factual and ctional elements are weaved together into visual narratives, which – though deeply political and meticulously researched, scripted and executed – are presented as open-ended poetic reveries, which leave room for the viewer to make her own conclusions. IC-98's work since 2010s addresses the environmental crisis and artistic-political methods of finding solutions to it. The projects seek to replace anthropocentric worldview with modes better suited to take into consideration the interrelationships, dependencies and myriad temporal rhythms of all animate and inanimate nature.

A cast of clones are trapped inside a seminar room and subjected to a kind of presentation or slideshow. The slideshow features over a hundred images of board games, and seems to trigger, via a small mysterious ball of light, the audience of clones to sift through their notes and act out small, possibly internal or dreamlike, dramas. As the film progresses the identies start to get tangled and conflict arises, characters want to jump out of the system or structure, while some, seemingly in power, try to control the situation and preserve the order of things. The film unfolds and is driven trough the association and manipulation of symbols: One board game leads to the next and one identity refers to another in a sequential series of mind games that eats its own tail. The sub-stories of the film deal playfully and somewhat loosely with evolution, science, existentialism, and society, as well as mysticism and hierarchies. It is part of a larger artwork and film cycle begun in 2003 and scheduled for completion in 2007.

Gustav Sparr was born in 1977, grew up in the region of Stockholm, and currently lives and works in Umeå, Sweden. After having gradually shifted from sculpture, painting, and digital illustration, his work currently focuses on animation. References from popular culture, esotericism and scientific writings have been filtered through a rather direct visual language that hides many underlying and unorthodox connections of ideas. The most obvious framework or manifestation of these thought-experiments is through the both limiting and enriching world of board games and childlike acts, which are deciphered, re-interpreted and re-coded. The animations and images are concerned with questions about identity, self-image, structures, symbols, loops, surfaces, topology, vessels of information, lifeforms, and how thoughts and ideas are born and relate and mutate. Basically it's about the brain...

Translating a musical stage performance by the group "Larry Peacock" into the language of film, SYNCPOINT combines film images created directly on film leader with those created through normal exposure of 24 frames per second with a 16mm film camera. Central to this experimental music video is the image of the synchronization-point as a hole, derived from the film-technical synchronization method of punching a hole into the first exposed and keycode-numbered frame of a roll of film prior to its transfer to video. The image of the hole does not only mark a point in time, but is in connection with the photographically captured (percussion-) actions of the performers perceived either as a round mask of censorship or as a filled, dot-shaped image. Purposefully designed and random synchronicities between the visual and accustic events allow for a variety of interpretive connections. Larry Peacock is a feminist project with and about the performativity of electronic/pop music, reflecting gender politics and the role of the audience. The project not only destabilizes the normativity of binary gender categories, but also art categories such as ?high` and `low`, ?dance?, ?concert-performance?, and ?choreographic work?.

Isabell Spengler, born in Berlin, studied experimental film at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. She was a recipent of a DAAD grant and a Eastman Kodak stipend. She currently teaches film at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Her filmography includes "Psychic Tequila Tarot" (1998), ?Transformation in the Land of Enchantment? (2003), ?The Natural Life of Mermaids? (2004) and ?Permanent Residents? (2005). Her work including films, video installations and photography has recently been exhibited at Los Angeles Film Forum; Cirrus gallery, Los Angeles; Cerealart, Philadelphia; Taxter & Spengemann, New York; KunstWerke - Berlin e.V. - Institute for Comtemporary Art; Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Berlinale 2007) and at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany. distribution & further information: http://www.fdk-berlin.de/en/arsenal-experimental/kuenstler/isabell-spengler.html

The film "Permanent Residents" combines extreme costume design with staged documentation of everyday activities in the urban space of Los Angeles. The costumes point to a collective imaginary world, which consists of the floating signifiers of pop-icons, myths, and social fictions. The protagonists of the film communicate in a non-verbal language across spatial distances. Their simultaneous movements at different locations merge into a choreography, which draws our attention to musical and abstract visual aspects in the design of our environment. A portrait of the city's influence on its residents.

Isabell Spengler, born in Berlin (Germany), studied experimental film at the Universität der Künste in Berlin (Meisterschülerin 1999) and at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia (MFA 2001). She was a recipent of a DAAD grant and a Eastman Kodak stipend. She currently teaches film at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Her filmography includes "Psychic Tequila Tarot" (1998), "Transformation in the Land of Enchantment" (2003), and "The Natural Life of Mermaids" (2004). Her films have received awards at the NoBudget Festival in Hamburg, the Gera International Short Film Festival, and the Göttinger Low Budget Film Festival. Her work has recently been exhibited at Los Angeles Film Forum, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles; the Australian Center for Photografy, Sydney; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and at KunstWerke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.

Translating a musical stage performance by the group "Larry Peacock" into the language of film, SYNCPOINT combines film images created directly on film leader with those created through normal exposure of 24 frames per second with a 16mm film camera. Central to this experimental music video is the image of the synchronization-point as a hole, derived from the film-technical synchronization method of punching a hole into the first exposed and keycode-numbered frame of a roll of film prior to its transfer to video. The image of the hole does not only mark a point in time, but is in connection with the photographically captured (percussion-) actions of the performers perceived either as a round mask of censorship or as a filled, dot-shaped image. Purposefully designed and random synchronicities between the visual and accustic events allow for a variety of interpretive connections. Larry Peacock is a feminist project with and about the performativity of electronic/pop music, reflecting gender politics and the role of the audience. The project not only destabilizes the normativity of binary gender categories, but also art categories such as ?high` and `low`, ?dance?, ?concert-performance?, and ?choreographic work?.

Isabell Spengler, born in Berlin, studied experimental film at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. She was a recipent of a DAAD grant and a Eastman Kodak stipend. She currently teaches film at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Her filmography includes "Psychic Tequila Tarot" (1998), ?Transformation in the Land of Enchantment? (2003), ?The Natural Life of Mermaids? (2004) and ?Permanent Residents? (2005). Her work including films, video installations and photography has recently been exhibited at Los Angeles Film Forum; Cirrus gallery, Los Angeles; Cerealart, Philadelphia; Taxter & Spengemann, New York; KunstWerke - Berlin e.V. - Institute for Comtemporary Art; Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Berlinale 2007) and at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany. distribution & further information: http://www.fdk-berlin.de/en/arsenal-experimental/kuenstler/isabell-spengler.html

The film "Permanent Residents" combines extreme costume design with staged documentation of everyday activities in the urban space of Los Angeles. The costumes point to a collective imaginary world, which consists of the floating signifiers of pop-icons, myths, and social fictions. The protagonists of the film communicate in a non-verbal language across spatial distances. Their simultaneous movements at different locations merge into a choreography, which draws our attention to musical and abstract visual aspects in the design of our environment. A portrait of the city's influence on its residents.

Isabell Spengler, born in Berlin (Germany), studied experimental film at the Universität der Künste in Berlin (Meisterschülerin 1999) and at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia (MFA 2001). She was a recipent of a DAAD grant and a Eastman Kodak stipend. She currently teaches film at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Her filmography includes "Psychic Tequila Tarot" (1998), "Transformation in the Land of Enchantment" (2003), and "The Natural Life of Mermaids" (2004). Her films have received awards at the NoBudget Festival in Hamburg, the Gera International Short Film Festival, and the Göttinger Low Budget Film Festival. Her work has recently been exhibited at Los Angeles Film Forum, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles; the Australian Center for Photografy, Sydney; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and at KunstWerke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.

Die Hörposaune (The Hearing Trombone) film / installation by Isabell Spengler, Antonia Baehr, Jule Flierl, Germany 2022 filmed in a visual installation by Nadia Lauro short synopsis Through a floating camera motion, the film invites us to enter a world with its own logic, passing through sensitive membranes, liquefied borders and openings between inner and outer spaces. Here we attend a reading circle or vocal performance in memory of the counter tenor and queer icon Klaus Nomi, one of the first public figures to die within the AIDS pandemic. Daydream-like, as if to save them from oblivion, the film delves into the guts of fantastical, queer body imaginations - with spit, panting, oral sounds, singing, and vulva-like paper flower arrangements, whereby anatomical representations are reinterpreted.

Isabell Spengler (director) is a film/video artist from Berlin. In her films, installations and performances she analyzes and mediates diverging constructions of realities, imaginary worlds and their representation. Since 2005 she has created a series of conceptual Expanded Cinema works in dialogues with other artists. /www.isabellspengler.net Antonia Baehr (director) is a choreographer living in Berlin. Her pieces explore, among other things, the fiction of the everyday and the theater. She has worked with scores for many years - as a way to connect and collaborate. Baehr is producer of horse whisperer and dancer Werner Hirsch (performer in Die Hörposaune). /www.make-up-productions.net Jule Flierl (director) is a dance and voice artist from Berlin. She develops practices that conceive of the voice as a dancer. She revives the legacy of Valeska Gert, avant-garde dancer from 1920's Berlin, who first conceptualized the term ToneDance: to dance with one's voice. Her practice unsettles the relationship between seeing and hearing. /juleflierl.weebly.com Nadia Lauro (visual installation) is a visual artist and designer based in Paris, who works across contexts including scenic spaces, landscape architectures, museums. She conceived set designs, environments and visual installations with strong dramaturgical power, thus generating new ways of seeing and being together. /https://nadialauro.com

In Spilliaert, filmmaker Lisa Spilliaert inquires into her blood relationship with the renowned Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946). Is she predestined to an artist’s life by this kinship, which may or may not be fictitious? She reveals herself as a rapping, fanatical genealogist who probes into the origins of her artistry.

Lisa Spilliaert lives and works in Ghent (BE). She was born in Tokyo in 1990 to a Japanese mother and a Belgian father. After spending her youth in Tokyo, she moved to Bruges at the age of 17. Her fascination for genealogy and the continuous alternation between her Eastern and Western cultural background are recurring motifs in her work, which is mostly of an autobiographical nature. Her videos blur life and work and lend universal appeal to her personal story.

A silent film composed of digital scans and blow-ups of Guido Horn D’Arturo’s photographic plates depicting Bologna’s skies.

Giuseppe Spina is an Italian filmmaker based in Bologna. His films have been screened at numerous international festivals, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, EMAF and Annecy’s IAFF. He is the co-founder of Nomadica, an international network of artists and intellectuals focused on experimental cinema.

Mozambique?s civil war saw hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the bitter post independence carnage, jumping the fence and crossing the Kruger National Park, into South Africa. Nearly two decades later, the fence is still a physical and psychological barrier dividing families. Through the use of video messages filmed and transported between the two countries, Voices Across The Fence provides a glimpse into the lives of those who left and of those who remained behind. Ongoing communication across the fence between family members in South Africa and Mozambique is extremely difficult, and messages by word of mouth are the dominant form. The most common alternative for connecting is for people to risk their lives on a 2-3 day walk across the Kruger National Park. This walk exposes them to dangerous wild animals, dehydration and arrest by border police. Through this programme, an alternative communication opportunity was provided. In August 2000 and November 2001 video messages were recorded amongst Mozambican refugees living in the Bushbuskridge area of South Africa. The messages were then driven the cross border journey to relatives and friends in villages of the remote Massingir district of Mozambique. These were screened and replies videod and brought back to South Africa. This documentary presents the messages exchanged between families who were once separated by war and are now divided by changing times.

The essay film "In this silence I believe" gives us an ambient impression of the nightlife in a city disco. The guests provide the focus for documentary observations and the resulting investigation of a subculture. With an alienated sound design, the familiar elements at the club are viewed in an experimental cinematic way.

Born 1988 in Vienna, Austria. After visiting Vienna Filmakademie, he started visiting Artuniversity/ Timebased Media in Linz. Besides his own films, he is also working for other directors in differen departments.