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Browse the entire list of Rencontre Internationales artists since 2004. Use the alphabetical filter to refine your search. update in progress
Federico Solmi
Catalogue : 2023The Bacchanalian Ones | Experimental VR | 0 | color | 0:0 | USA | 2021
Federico Solmi
The Bacchanalian Ones
Experimental VR | 0 | color | 0:0 | USA | 2021
The Bacchanalian Ones, VR Experience for Oculus Quest 2 Inspired by ancient mythology, modern myth, and contemporary celebrity culture, The Bacchanalian Ones compares the historical myth with a satirical mash-up of the powerful self-absorbed who preen and wallow in a banal spectacle of their own creation. In a fantastically opulent setting of unrestrained hedonism, political, religious, and military leaders with ghoulish, bouffonesque appearances are surrounded by social elite sycophants like the devotees of the cults of Bacchus and Dionysus. Solmi’s phantasmagoric world of whirling space, jerking movement, and oscillating facades that strive to overwhelm the viewer’s visual field is pushed to extremes in a new interactive Virtual Reality installation. This work invites the visitor to enter the Bacchanal by donning a VR mask and manipulating two hand-held controllers in order to pick the perspective of one of his historical avatars. Newly empowered, and emboldened, the visitor is able to control the narrative, allowing them to experience the debauchery up close and personal through their embodiment of the avatar.
Federico Solmi was born in Bologna, Italy in 1973. Since 1999 he has lived and worked in New York. Solmi’s work utilizes bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present-day society. His exhibitions often feature articulate installations composed of a variety of media including virtual reality experiences, video installation, painting, drawing, and sculpture. Solmi uses his art as a vehicle to stimulate a robust conversation with his audience, highlighting the contradictions and fallibilities that characterize our time. In 2009, Solmi was awarded by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in the category of Video & Audio. Solmi’s work was included in the 100-year anniversary exhibition of The Phillips Collection, Seeing Differently, and in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s traveling exhibition, Outwin 2019: ‘American Portraiture Today,’ as well as the inaugural exhibition of the Ocean Flower Museum Island in Hainan Province, Danzhou, China. From 2016 to 2019 Federico Solmi was visiting Professor at Yale University School of Art, and Yale School of Drama, New Haven CT. Solmi was appointed guest critic at the Yale University School of Art for 2022.
Alexandru Solomon
Catalogue : 2025Cameras do not record such things | Documentary | digital | color | 23:40 | Romania | 2024
Alexandru Solomon
Cameras do not record such things
Documentary | digital | color | 23:40 | Romania | 2024
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.
Elian Somers
Catalogue : 2025Ecumenopolis | Video installation | 4K | color | 19:40 | Netherlands | 2022
Elian Somers
Ecumenopolis
Video installation | 4K | color | 19:40 | Netherlands | 2022
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.
Francisca Somigliana
Catalogue : 2021Diamante | Experimental fiction | 4k | color | 7:29 | Argentina | 2020
Francisca Somigliana
Diamante
Experimental fiction | 4k | color | 7:29 | Argentina | 2020
"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)
Helene Sommer
Catalogue : 2022Sagn om jord | Video | mov | color | 16:3 | Norway | 2021
Helene Sommer
Sagn om jord
Video | mov | color | 16:3 | Norway | 2021
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.
Helene Sommer
Catalogue : 2013Great Piece of Turf | Video | hdv | color | 25:0 | Norway, USA | 2011
Helene Sommer
Great Piece of Turf
Video | hdv | color | 25:0 | Norway, USA | 2011
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)
Catalogue : 2008Persistence of vision | Art vidéo | dv | color | 11:0 | Norway | 2007
Helene Sommer
Persistence of vision
Art vidéo | dv | color | 11:0 | Norway | 2007
?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.
Catalogue : 2007Das Gelaende | Experimental video | dv | color | 7:56 | Norway, Germany | 2005
Helene Sommer
Das Gelaende
Experimental video | dv | color | 7:56 | Norway, Germany | 2005
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.
Wichanon Somumjarn
Catalogue : 2016The Young Man Who Came From the Chee River | Experimental fiction | hdv | color | 16:38 | Thailand | 2015
Wichanon Somumjarn
The Young Man Who Came From the Chee River
Experimental fiction | hdv | color | 16:38 | Thailand | 2015
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”.
Kwang-ju Son
Catalogue : 2017Characters Revisited | Experimental doc. | 4k | color | 18:14 | Korea, South | 2016
Kwang-ju Son
Characters Revisited
Experimental doc. | 4k | color | 18:14 | Korea, South | 2016
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.
Catalogue : 2008Amusement Epitome | Experimental doc. | dv | color | 2:46 | Korea, South | 2006
Kwang-ju Son
Amusement Epitome
Experimental doc. | dv | color | 2:46 | Korea, South | 2006
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.
Guston Sondin-kung
Catalogue : 2016STUXNET in Denmark | Video | 4k | color | 4:37 | USA, Denmark | 2015
Guston Sondin-kung
STUXNET in Denmark
Video | 4k | color | 4:37 | USA, Denmark | 2015
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.
Paul Sonntag, Luzie Loose
Catalogue : 2021A New Normal | Experimental film | 4k | color | 17:10 | Germany | 2019
Paul Sonntag, Luzie Loose
A New Normal
Experimental film | 4k | color | 17:10 | Germany | 2019
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.
Catalogue : 2020A New Normal | Experimental film | 4k | color | 17:10 | Germany | 2019
Paul Sonntag, Luzie Loose
A New Normal
Experimental film | 4k | color | 17:10 | Germany | 2019
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.
Ian Soroka
Catalogue : 2012Nevada: Of Landscape and Longing | Experimental doc. | 16mm | color | 15:0 | USA | 2011
Ian Soroka
Nevada: Of Landscape and Longing
Experimental doc. | 16mm | color | 15:0 | USA | 2011
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.
Catalogue : 2009Nostalgia | Experimental film | 16mm | color | 6:46 | USA, Czech Republic | 2008
Ian Soroka
Nostalgia
Experimental film | 16mm | color | 6:46 | USA, Czech Republic | 2008
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.
Belmin Soylemez
Catalogue : 2007Bugun Istanbul ne kadar guzel | Experimental video | dv | color | 5:30 | Turkey | 2005
Belmin Soylemez
Bugun Istanbul ne kadar guzel
Experimental video | dv | color | 5:30 | Turkey | 2005
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".
Patrik Söderlund
Catalogue : 2025Impivaara - A New World | Experimental fiction | 4k | color | 26:2 | Finland | 2024
Patrik Söderlund
Impivaara - A New World
Experimental fiction | 4k | color | 26:2 | Finland | 2024
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.
Gustav Sparr
Catalogue : 2007Slide Projector: I.D. Roles Project | Animation | 0 | color | 27:46 | Sweden | 2006
Gustav Sparr
Slide Projector: I.D. Roles Project
Animation | 0 | color | 27:46 | Sweden | 2006
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...
Isabell Spengler, Antonia Baehr, Jule Flierl - Filmed in a visual installation by Nadia Lauro
Catalogue : 2023Die Hörposaune | Experimental fiction | 0 | color | 29:38 | Germany | 2022
Isabell Spengler, Antonia Baehr, Jule Flierl - Filmed in a visual installation by Nadia Lauro
Die Hörposaune
Experimental fiction | 0 | color | 29:38 | Germany | 2022
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
Isabell Spengler, Larry Peacock
Catalogue : 2008Syncpoint | Experimental film | 16mm | color and b&w | 3:54 | Germany | 2007
Isabell Spengler, Larry Peacock
Syncpoint
Experimental film | 16mm | color and b&w | 3:54 | Germany | 2007
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
Catalogue : 2007Permanent Residents | Experimental film | 16mm | color | 9:32 | Germany, USA | 2005
Isabell Spengler
Permanent Residents
Experimental film | 16mm | color | 9:32 | Germany, USA | 2005
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.
Isabell Spengler
Catalogue : 2008Syncpoint | Experimental film | 16mm | color and b&w | 3:54 | Germany | 2007
Isabell Spengler, Larry Peacock
Syncpoint
Experimental film | 16mm | color and b&w | 3:54 | Germany | 2007
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
Catalogue : 2007Permanent Residents | Experimental film | 16mm | color | 9:32 | Germany, USA | 2005
Isabell Spengler
Permanent Residents
Experimental film | 16mm | color | 9:32 | Germany, USA | 2005
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.
Lisa Spilliaert
Catalogue : 2023Spilliaert | Experimental doc. | 4k | color | 29:10 | Belgium | 2022
Lisa Spilliaert
Spilliaert
Experimental doc. | 4k | color | 29:10 | Belgium | 2022
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.
Giuseppe Spina
Catalogue : 2020Variazioni luminose nei cieli della città | Experimental film | mov | color | 6:20 | Italy | 2019
Giuseppe Spina
Variazioni luminose nei cieli della città
Experimental film | mov | color | 6:20 | Italy | 2019
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.
Andy Spitz
Catalogue : 2006Voices across the fence | Documentary | dv | color | 26:0 | South Africa | 2002
Andy Spitz
Voices across the fence
Documentary | dv | color | 26:0 | South Africa | 2002
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.
Simon Spitzer
Catalogue : 2023In This Silence I Believe | Experimental film | hdv | color | 17:28 | Austria | 2022
Simon Spitzer
In This Silence I Believe
Experimental film | hdv | color | 17:28 | Austria | 2022
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.