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all through a life is a video installation that examines routines of care and control, and questions the possibility of imitating, demarcating, and regulating natural systems. The work invites viewers into an ambiguous environment. the space is filled with reverberating industrial sounds and two monitors arranged like surveillance or control-room screens. A slowly transforming colour field unfolds across one of these displays, alongside a looped film. Within this film a figure moves methodically through a space whose function remains undefined. This caretaker or scientist-like presence performs gestures of monitoring and documentation, enacting a rhythm of daily labour. A shell-based bioplastic receiver, reminiscent of a telephone, softly transmits a voice. If picked up and held to the ear, the voice gently informs the listener about tasks, routines, and the contours of their working environment. The film both documents a real location and opens up a fictional dimension within it. It references architectural spaces designed for containment or control, such as Biosphere 2 or the sarcophagus over the Chernobyl reactor—sites where the boundary between care and crisis, science and survival, is constantly negotiated. These are infrastructures that demand continuous regulation, where control is never absolute and systems must be maintained despite their inherent instability. The title all through a life refers to a song by the band Rites of Spring and also gestures toward the often-invisible material and political forces that permeate our lives and bodies. What seeps into our existence—wage labour, radiation, ambient toxins? What do we manage to control, and what always escapes us? The voice over was composed from an interview with the actual care-taker of the depicted space as well as from theory and fiction. The looped video itself depicts a loop of work: an everyday routine organized around maintaining a status quo. And yet, change creeps in—subtly, continuously. This is made tangible in the gradual de-synchronization of the colour field, which alter the ambient light and begin to “contaminate” the film from which they were originally extracted. Control proves to be porous; feedback and bleed-through occur despite all efforts to contain. There are no truly closed systems. In an era of Mars colonization fantasies, luxury survival bunkers, and geoengineering dreams rooted in mechanistic thinking, the line between science fiction and nfrastructural reality grows thinner. all through a life asks not only what we are trying to hold together, but at what cost—and with what illusions of stability.

Lisa Hoffmann works in-between art, research, film, and performance. Her installations, moving images, and collective actions are equally material- and concept-driven, engaging critically with the complex currents of ongoing ecological and economic crises and the decomposition of dominant cultural narratives. Often departing from a clichéd phenomenon—such as shells, palm trees, or fire—Hoffmann approaches these motifs with rigor and obsession, unpacking their layered cultural, ecological, and political meanings through experimentation and context-specific techniques. Her practice draws on Situationist tactics and more-than-human thinking, attending to absent presences and present absences. The result is a body of work that is referential, layered, and at times darkly humorous. Hoffmann studied Sustainable Product Design (MFA, Bauhaus University Weimar) and Art and Media (MFA, Berlin University of the Arts), where she was appointed Meisterschülerin. She is an active member of the climate-education collective Klasse Klima and a co-initiator of Studium Planetare, a pilot project for applied climate education at art and design academies. Her work has been presented internationally, including at Kunsthaus Dresden (2025, DE), Kommunale Gallerie (DE, 2024), BAK – basis voor actuele kunst (NL, 2023), KOMMET Art Space (FR, 2023), Hamburger Bahnhof (DE, 2022), Tampere Film Festival (FI, 2022), Roman Susan Art Foundation (US, 2020), Biennial of Photography Porto (PT, 2019), DL gallery (GR, 2019), Closer Art Space (UA, 2019), Triennial of Photography Hamburg (DE, 2018) and Kunstfest Weimar (DE, 2016), among others. She is the recipient of the UdK Art Award and Rundgang 50Hertz, and has held residencies at l’escaut (BE, 2025), an• other here and the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Hoffmann lives and works in Berlin.

“Glimmerstørv” is a video work about transness, inspired by cartoons like Winx, Ben10 and Dragon Ball, which are cartoons about people transforming themselves in fantastic, luminous sequences and becoming a more magical version of themselves. I work with creating digital realities that can act as a virtual utopia for queer people, free from the constraints of our physical reality.

Bio Noah Holtegaard (b. 1999) is a transmasculine nonbinary artist and uses the pronouns they/them. Holtegaard completed their BFA in fine arts from HDK-Valand in Gothenburg in 2022 and began their MFA in media arts at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen the same year. In their artistic practice, Holtegaard primarily works digitally, which includes image manipulation, 3D modelling, animation, AR (Augmented Reality) and video. Holtegaard's work often revolve around queerness and transness. They describe how they want to give a voice to those who have never had a voice before, tell stories about transgender people that have never been told before, and show bodies that have never been shown before. In their art, Holtegaard dreams of creating a queer utopia in a digital space without the limitations of the physical world.

Preface is a film about seeing. What do we see in a face, and how do we decode what we see. Introduction to Careless Reef, 6 films about the world under the surface.

gerard holthuis is independent filmmaker

Synopsis The double video projection ?Make news instead of? is based on a double slide projection which was part of my exhibition ?More Opportunities? at Plymouth Arts Centre, 2007/ 2008. It deals with issues of regeneration in Plymouth as an example for changes of industrial cities to service economy in the globalized context. It addresses the fast and radical change of identity of a city and its people in a docu-fiction as collage of various material: Film scenes and stills from: _?A Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea? by Irwin Allen, a science fiction movie, 1961 _16mm film documentation of the dockyard strike in Plymouth, 1969 (Southwest Filmarchive Plymouth) _?The Way We Live? by Jill Craigie, 1946 (documentary on Abercrombie, the architect and urban planner who developed ?A plan for Plymouth?, after Plymouth?s city centre was destroyed in WW II) _?More Opportunities? by Barbara Holub, 2007 (a staged demonstration Barbara Holub held in Dec.2007 as part of her exhibition project for Plymouth Arts Centre) The text includes quotes taken from the film ?Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea? (1961, by Irwin Allen), Superstudio: Middelburg Lectures (edited by Valentijn Byranck, Amsterdam 2005), Taking the Matter into Common Hands (edited by Maria Lind, Johanna Billing and Lars Nilson, 2006). The piece refers to lost utopias from the 1960?s and the longing for new visions which seem to be impossible at this time, due to capital interests, which are dominated by the private part of public-private partnerships. The title of the piece refers to a quote from the science fiction movie from 1961, ?A Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea?, which is ?make news instead of listening to them?.

Barbara Holub Alongside her work as an artist Barbara Holub?s career includes the President of the Secession in Vienna from 2006-2007. From 2004-2007 she was a member of the Public Arts Committee of Lower Austria. In 1999 she created the architecture and urbanism company transparadiso with her partner Paul Rajakovics. Their experimental work reflects architecture and urban development in the context of global issues alongside developing new tools for what transparadiso calls ?direct urbanism?. Currently transparadiso is realising a new city quarter in Salzburg and has won the Otto-Wagner-Prize for Urban Design in Austria in 2007. In 2004 Holub was recipient of the Schindler Grant, Los Angeles. Recent/ current exhibitions include: 2008 This is a Gallery and a Gallery is Many Things, Eastside Projects, Birmingham; ?Orientierungen?, Regionale 08, Styria; ?Periscope Elevator?, an urban intervention for the ?Blue House? by Jeanne van Heeswijk, Amsterdam/ Ijburg; ?Ganz nah so fern?, public art project for the facade of the BUWOG housing company, Vienna (in cooperation with Grita Insam Gallery); ?More Opportunities?, Austrian Cultural Forum/ London Festival of Architecture; 2007/08 ?More Opportunities?, Plymouth Arts Centre; 2006 ?The System: Prêt-à-porter ?, Künstlerhauspassage, Vienna; ?Konfrontationen und Kontinuitäten?_ Österreichische Kunst von 1900 bis 2000?, Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg; 2004 MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles.

LONG SHOT: In one long shot the camera travels along the section of Cairo?s Friday market that is set up on railroad tracks. Here, framed by the highway and the Al-Imam As Safi?i cemetery, every Friday locals and vendors from all over the city offer their products for sale, set up on tables or spread on the ground. The camera moves at a steady, slow paste along the tracks, like a train passing a closed down station. The people inhabiting the market ? the sellers and buyers, and the people living at its edge become the protagonist of the film, collapsing the borders between performance, documentary and fiction film. The slow paste of the shot allows the viewer?s attention to oscillate between the market in the foreground ? the goods for sale, the dynamics between sellers and buyers, and the many (informal) architectural layers of the housing area and cemetery directly behind. I am equally interested in the complex and multilayered architectural constructions as in the informal economy of the market. The range of products for sale questions our western concepts of what holds value, and the very notion and definition of a ?product? in itself: What we easily label as trash - useless or broken parts - are being recycled and offered for sale, a sign not only of desperation and economic need, but also of faith in the creativity of the buyer to find a possible new use for these items. MAKING-OF: The making-of documents the film shoot during the course of the day (from 6 am to the early afternoon when rain and a sandstorm hit the market) and offers glimpses into the socioeconomic context of the market, the location and its inhabitants through close ups of sellers, buyers and products, and short interviews with locals.

Heidrun Holzfeind studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at Cooper Union in New York. She lives and works in New York. solo exhibitions include CCA, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2010); De Vleeshal, Middelburg, The Netherlands (2009); Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City (2008), Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2007); Lado b, MUCA Museum Mexico City (2005), Artists Space (project room), New York (2005), W139 in Amsterdam (2004) Recent group shows and screenings include CASM, Barcelona; Manifesta7, Trentino; Photocairo4, Cairo; MOMA, New York; Zendai Art Museum, Shanghai; Goethe Institute Dublin; OK Centrum Linz, Austria; Grazer Kunstverein; Festival der Regionen 2007; Exit Art, New York; Architecture Museum Basel; Salzburger Kunstverein, Austria; Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Swiss Institute New York; BAK Utrecht, and others. Festivals include European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck; Assim Vivemos Festival Brazil, Rio de Janero & Brasília; Duisburger Filmwoche, Germany;
 Diagonale, Graz, Austria; Impakt Festival, Utrecht; Transmediale Festival Berlin; Videoart Center Tokyo; SKIF Festival, St. Petersburg; SNIFF Int. Short Filmfestival, Novo Mesto, Slovenia, and others.

Horticulture, agriculture and animal care are taught in the agricultural department of the integrative August-Sander-School in Berlin Friedrichshain. Over the course of a school year, the film accompanies students with different learning capacities, behavioral issues and impairments in their everyday school life. A portray of adolescents at the crossroads between school and work, childhood and adulthood, struggling to find their place in the school system and society.

Heidrun Holzfeind is an artist and filmmaker based in Berlin. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at Cooper Union in New York. She is interested in how architecture interacts with people’s everyday life. Her works question immanent architectural and social utopias and explore the relationships between history and identity, individual histories and political narratives of the present.

An essay-film by artist Juul Hondius about the remarkable relationship between himself and the exceptional sculpture that stands in front of the NATO headquarters in Brussels. Since its inception, the sculpture has been shown countless times on worldwide media broadcasts. Hondius enters into a direct dialog with the sculpture against the backdrop of the chronology of the relocation of this sculpture. Do we want to keep you as a symbol? Can we still identify with the concepts you represent? In the film, the elderly architect Raymond Huyberechts is revealed as the author of this iconic symbol. How does Huyberechts feel about his creation from 1970? To Unveil a Star (2021) is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a sculpture in which the filmmaker transforms a solid, steel sculpture into an anthropomorphic character. Playing with the formalities of genres, to create a stream of consciousness about the context of this sculpture that moves from one character's mind to another, through objects and experiences that seem to repeat themselves throughout history. The narrative intends to make the audience question their own position towards a sculpture that represents a system we are all somehow connected with. To Unveil a Star shines a critical light on the alliance between a military-political ideology, a piece of modernist design, and the shifting geopolitical landscapes it has witnessed.

Juul Hondius (1970, Ens, The Netherlands) studied at the FAMU Photography, Film & Television School in Prague and the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His work can be found in the collections of the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain in Paris, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Amongst other venues his work was exhibited in Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2006); Centraal Museum Utrecht (2021/2007); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2002); Platform Garanti (Salt), Istanbul (2007); Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (2014); Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (2013/2004); The Chicago Art Institute (2006); Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes (2002); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2011); Juan Miro Foundation, Barcelona (2011); Kunsthalle Mannheim (2010); Museum de Fundatie, Heino (2010); Fotomuseum, The Hague (2010);; De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam (2004), Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (2003); and numerous festivals and biennials, including LOOP Barcelona (2015), Beijing Photo Biennial (2014), Lagos Photo International (2010), IDFA (2005), and Busan Biennale (2004). Recent screenings of ‘To Unveil A Star’ where held in the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam (2021) and in cooperation with Centraal Museum in Utrecht during the NFF, the National Dutch Film Festival (2021).

my castle your castle Set up as a somewhat retro TV talk show my castle your castle operates from within the skeleton of the Prussian castle that is currently being re-built in the center of Berlin. Erected on the foundations of the dismantled GDR parliament building called Palace of the Republic, the castle is not only an imperialist architectural remake, in its future function as exhibition space for the “ Ethnographic Collections ” of Berlins National Museums it literally embodies Germany’s legacies of colonial violence. The video engages with the building site as a stage for the material and social construction “ as well as the queer contestation ” of “ nation ” and (white) “ masculinity”: Interviewed by a talk show host over a piece of cake from porcelain dishes with reproductions of the castle and its disappeared counterpart, two construction workers evoke an opaque third in a language of structural matter. Peter Friedrich had supervised the construction (1973-76) of the Palast der Republik, and Gunter Teichert worked as the head of its deconstruction (2006-08). In the matter of fact conversation between the “ makers of the palace ”, their body of work “ in other words architecture, political representation, memory ” disintegrates in the builder’s jargon. However, the material and machinic vocabulary of construction site itself resonates the massive urban reconstructions, redistributions of properties and redefinitions of political meaning through architecture that have followed the disappearance of state socialisms in Europe. This vocabulary is emphasized and queered in short interludes to the talk show in which the talk show host, who is performed by the artist Kerstin Honeit herself incorporating elements of drag, appears sitting on a huge excavating machine or between metal poles that stabilize casts for concrete. (Text by Suza Husse)

Kerstin Honeit was born in Berlin, where she still lives and works. She studied Fine Art and Theatre Design at the Kunsthochschule Weissensee in Berlin. Since 2014 Honeit has been teaching at the Kunsthochschule Kassel (künstlerische Mitarbeiterin, class of Bjørn Melhus). Using video works, performance and installations in her artistic research, Honeit examines worlds of hegemonic image production in the media of information technology and pop culture. Intervening at the boundaries of representation and reception, she questions the construction of social norms. Her recent work has been shown at Berlinische Galerie - Museum of Modern Art, Haohaus Taipei, Stuttgarter Filmwinter - Festival for Expanded Media, Bärenzwinger Berlin, SixtyEight Art Institute Copenhagen, Kunstverein Leipzig, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Arsenal - Institut für Film u. Videokunst Berlin, Monitoring Dokumentarfilm- u. Videofest Kassel, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Videonale.15 Kunstmuseum Bonn, Les Complices* Zurich, Gallery 400 Chicago, CCNY New York, Site Gallery Sheffield.

Since 2017 the Giant Panda Bears Meng Meng and Jiao Qing have been hired out to the Berlin Zoo from China to attract more visitors and to therefore increase profit. Unfortunately for the Berlin Zoo this advertising campaign did not work out as planned - in fact it worked backwards. Meng Meng, the female Panda will only walk backwards - probably protesting the fact that she is kept in captivity and in a totally different continent from her origins. But instead of rethinking the problematic concepts of zoos in general, international media is taking on a different debate: blaming Meng Meng’s behavior on the fact that she has not bred yet and is just looking for attention. Kerstin Honeit’s video aligns Meng Meng’s protest with other performances of protesting bodies using movement in public space to address grievances.

Kerstin Honeit studied fine arts and stage design at the Berlin Weissensee School of Art. She has been teaching at Kunsthochschule Kassel since 2014. Using video works, performance an d installations in her artistic research, Honeit examines worlds of hegemonic image production in the media of information technology and pop culture. Intervening at the boundaries of representation and reception, she questions the construction of social norms. Most recently, her works were shown at Off Biennale Cairo (2018); Videoart at Midnight, Berlin (2018); Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2018); La Centrale, Montreal (2018); Bärenzwinger, Berlin (2018); Schwules Museum, Berlin (2018); Rencontres Internationales Paris / Berlin (2018); International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2017); Berlinische Galerie (2017); SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen (2017).

Silo 5, once the largest granary in the world, was celebrated by architect Le Corbusier in 1927 as a glimpse towards a utopian modernity and an aesthetic future of architecture. Since the 1990’s Montreals gigantic silo complex has been an industrial ruin, far too big to be demolished. The abandoned granary, now an unintended monument to colonial global extractionism, marks as a place of storage the starting point for the video piece [?zi:lo]5. The work approaches different gestures and technologies of preservation and collection and therefore – simultaneously and inseparably – also questions of overwrite, delete or rewrite. Seen from the perspective of a near (queering) future, collections expose themselves as accumulations of gaps and omissions. These voids become resonating bodies, having the potential to open up spaces for other practices of intermediate storage.

Kerstin Honeit studied fine arts and stage design at the Berlin-Weissensee Art Academy. She lives in Berlin and is teaching media art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig. In her practice as an artist and filmmaker, she works at the interface of different forms of staging. Her artistic research focuses on the investigation of representation mechanisms in the production of hegemonic image worlds, especially in connection with cultural and linguistic modes of translation in the context of the moving image. Since 2006 she has been showing her work in exhibitions and at festivals. Exhibitions / Screenings (Selection): La Centrale Powerhouse, Montreal / HMKV, Dortmund / International Short Film Festival São Paulo, São Paulo / Ruhrtriennale, Bochum / Kunsthalle Rostock, Rostock / Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin / Off Biennale Cairo, Cairo / Videoart at Midnight, Berlin / MMOMA Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow / Schwules Museum, Berlin / Fajr International Film Festival, Tehran / HKW, Berlin / Internationale Kurzfilmtage, Oberhausen / SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen / Berlinische Galerie, Berlin / Les Complices*, Zurich / Videonale, Bonn / Gallery 400, Chicago / CCNY, New York / Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst, Berlin

The film consists of the photographic narratives of individuals’ polaroid pictures taken at the time of their birth, which is used as the intertwining signifiers. A few of the selected actors came from broken families and had similar life experiences as the concept expressed in this work. In other words, the subjects in the images are not only a semiotic interpretation of role-playing? but also a reiteration of life experiences that overlap with these actors. That is, the creative approach adopted constantly seeks subjects close to its own life trajectory as a way to realize internal, psychological imageries and spiritual restoration.

Jun-Yuan Hong was born in 1981 in Taiwan and is currently a candidate in the Doctoral Program in Art Creation and Theory of Tainan University of the Arts. Video has strong inner emotional problems. The main reason comes from his incomplete original family. Therefore, in the video, he likes to construct these tangled feelings through close-up, and look for people with similar family situations, let them be his elements of the image that respond to and express their emotional state of facing family problems through the encounters of these different living individuals.

Wang, an unemployed and destitute artist, received an invitation from a producer to leave the city and film the lives of mountain people. During a period in the mountains, he returned to a beautiful world. However, this is not everything, he is trying to return to the city?his hometown, and win back his life. He is like an aimless old Jeep, running around with the aim of not becoming scrap metal.

Hongbo Zhou graduated from Beijing Film Academy, with a master’s degree in 1999. His graduation film, A Fish Who Wants to Fly, was selected for Cannes Film Festival 2000, Cinéfondation. Since then, Zhou has made several features and documentaries which were screened at various international film festival.

An essay film about crowds, nationalism, and the loneliness of rollercoasters. Born in London to Polish immigrants and now living in Germany, Krzysztof Honowski is very confused by what is happening right now in the two countries that he comes from. Examining the roots of his own political disappointment Honowski, together with the German actress Laura Sundermann, attempts to create a narrative that “speaks for a generation”. This is of course impossible, and this parody of a grand narrative soon gets derailed by the small details of the everyday. Honowski and Sundermann’s narrator must instead confront their own cowardice, exhaustion, and disavowal.

Born in London in 1986, Krzysztof Honowski studied English Literature at the University of Cambridge, and completed his postgraduate studies in Art at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and the Academy of Media Arts (KHM) Cologne. He is a doctoral candidate in Art Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He has presented performances and exhibitions throughout Europe. These include 'Kustom Kar Kommandos Karaoke' (2015-16) at the Barbican London, Sound Acts Festival Athens, and a.m. London as well as 'And Now The Screen Is Struck By Lightning' at Tropez Berlin in 2019. Group presentations include Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Art Cologne, and Jewish Museum Berlin. In 2019 his short film 'Beasts Of No Nation' had its world premiere at the Ruhrtriennale and was selected for the Official German competition at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2020. In 2021 the film was chosen by the German Short Film Association for their Emerging Artists programme. A new installation will be presented at Kunstverein Leverkusen in 2021.

Radical feminist, street fighter, practical dreamer. This lyrical doc, shot in super 8, recounts Judy Rebick’s pivotal role in securing women’s rights over their own bodies in Canada. She lays out the key tenets of second wave feminism, even as a family time bomb threatens. The film closes with a harrowingly personal account of a divided self, and a startling embrace of mental illness as creativity.

Mike Hoolboom (1959, Toronto). Media artist and writer. He was schooled at the Funnel, Toronto's former underground movie palace, and has made more than 100 movies since 1980. He is the author/co/editor of 30 books. There have been 20 international retrospectives of his work, and he has won more than 80 festival awards, including the Best Short Film Award in Toronto IFF two times. In 2009 he received the Bell Award in Video Art, presented by the Canadian Council of Arts "for the exceptional contribution to the advancement of video art and practices in the country".

Artiste majeur de la scène canadienne des années 70, Collin Campbell, maître du "drag" dans ses vidéos, était un provocateur du genre. Bien plus qu`un simple portrait d`un artiste et de son époque, le film est une réflexion captivante sur le désir d`images et sur l`emprise qu`exercent celles-ci. Mike Hoolboom cinéaste expérimental prolifique et passionnant nous livre ici un film à la narration innovante et d`une exceptionnelle beauté. Mais "Fascination" est avant tout un film sur vous...

Mike Hoolboom is a Canadian artist working in film and video. He is often considered to be one of the finest experimental filmmakers of his generation. He is the author of two books: Plague Years (1998) and Fringe Film in Canada (2001). He is a founding member of the Pleasure Dome screening collective, and has worked as the artistic director of the Images Festival and the experimental film co-ordinator at Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. He has won more than thirty international prizes and exhibited his work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, and major festivals around the world. He has enjoyed nine retrospectives of his work, most recently in Buenos Aires.

A portrait of my pal Jorge Lozano, lensed in our A Space gallery exhibition as he talks the talk. He brings back early moments in Toronto, Sam the Record Man meets Norman McLaren. His outsider immigrant frames underline a marriage of art and politics, forever searching for new approaches that will birth new ideas. Along the way he muses on the backdrop of his ongoing experimentalisms (150 movies and counting), moments of which punctuate his address. He winds up with an unrehearsed and deeply felt take on race and the unending wound of “where are you from?”

Mike Hoolboom began making movies in 1980. Making as practice, a daily application. Ongoing remixology. Since 2000 there has been a steady drip of found footage bio docs. The animating question of community: how can I help you? Interviews with media artists for 3 decades. Monographs and books, written, edited, co-edited. Local ecologies. Volunteerism. Opening the door.

Film is made out of gelatin that comes from horses. They’re waiting to be slaughtered, so that pictures can be made.

Mike Hoolboom is a Canadian media artist and writer.

Public Lighting is a meditation on photography and the creation of images that can capture, replace and outlive our experiences. It`s a videofilm in seven parts.... Each chapter is a case study of the different types of personality that have been identified by the young author who guides us through the prologue. The first, a gay man, takes us on a tour of the bars and restaurants where his affairs have ended, recounting ironic stories of his many lovers. An homage to composer Philip Glass is incongruously followed by Hey Madonna, a confessional letter to the singer from a fan who is HIV positive. Amy celebrates another birthday, but concedes that she has lost her memory to television. At least she has a camera: `I take pictures not to help me remember, but to record my forgetting.` Hiro lives life at a distance, rarely venturing out beyond the lens, and an anxious young model recounts poignant events from her past. Few film-makers use re-appropriated footage in such an emotive way: at once humorous and incisive, these chains of images inevitably lead us back to parts of ourselves. Hoolboom`s recent work is in such profound sympathy with the human condition that it speaks directly to our hearts. -Mark Webber London Film Festival

Mike Hoolboom is a Toronto-based artist working in film and video. He is the author of several books, including Plague Years (1998) and Fringe Film in Canada (2001). He is a founding member of the Pleasure Dome screening collective, and has worked as the artistic director of the Images Festival and the experimental film officer at Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. He has exhibited his work in major festivals including Berlin, Rotterdam, Locarno and Lyon. He has enjoyed retrospectives in eight European cities.

Lensed in Ohio’s Broadview Developmental Center in 1967 by secret camera genius and audio visual healer Jeffrey Paull, Scrapbook tells the story of audacious autistic Donna Washington in her own words, as she encounters pictures of one of her former selves fifty years later.

Born: Korean War, the pill, hydrogen bomb, playboy mansion. 1980s: Film emulsion fetish and diary salvos. Schooling at the Funnel: collective avant-geek cine utopia. 1990s: experimentalist features, transgressive psychodramas, questions of nationalism. 2000s: Seroconversion cyborg (life after death), film-to-video transcode: feature-length-found-footage bios. Fringe media archaeologist: copyleft author 7 books, co/editor 12 books. Curator: 30 programs + www.fringeonline.ca Occasional employments: artistic director Images Fest, fringe distribution Canadian Filmmakers. 80 film/vids, most redacted. 10 features. 70 awards, 15 international retrospectives. 3 lifetime achievement awards. www.mikehoolboom.com

Is it the oldest dream? Giving birth to my father. Shot on a single starry afternoon.

Mike Hoolboom is a Canadian media artist living in Toronto.