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Being lead by a virtual voice an ordinary man find shelter in the woods. There, he will try to understand the mystery of his situation.

Miguel Mejías (Tenerife, Spain, 1991) studied in Madrid screenwriting after having the studies in sociology and communication. After miscellany of other jobs as driver, cultural promoter, stevedore, journey laborer, editor, historical restorer, he is currently a professor of cinema and literature in Sundsvall, Sweden. His work has been selected for international festivals as Trieste, Toulouse, Experimental Superstars, International Film Festival of Las Palmas, Málaga, Mostra de Cinema Mediterraneo, Ismailia, Bogotá or Buenos Aires.

Vast desert expanses extend out in our imaginations as life after death, the white blinding light transforming the mere mortal into the eternal. The curtains go down but the brilliance of the spirit lives on, truly free amongst the sweeping winds and blowing dust. Judy Garland, Jim Morrison, Big Jim and even you?the essence of life may be meaningless but there is unspeakable beauty in its demise.

Bjørn Melhus, born 1966, is a German-Norwegian media artist. In his work he has developed a singular position, expanding the possibilities for a critical reception of cinema and television. His practice of fragmentation, destruction, and reconstitution of well-known figures, topics, and strategies of the mass media opens up not only a network of new interpretations and critical commentaries, but also defines the relationship of mass media and viewer anew. Originally rooted in an experimental film context, Bjørn Melhus`s work has been shown and awarded at numerous international film festivals. He has held screenings at Tate Modern and the LUX in London, the Museum of Modern Art (MediaScope) in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, amongst others. His work has been exhibited in shows like The American Effect at the Whitney Museum New York, the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, solo and group shows at FACT Liverpool, Serpentine Gallery London, Sprengel Museum Hanover, Museum Ludwig Cologne, ZKM Karlsruhe, Denver Art Museum among others.

Towards the end of the 1960ies the world witnessed the war in Vietnam through what can still be called one of the largest ever TV war spectacles. At the very same time American astronauts looked down on Earth from the moon for the first time in human history. Although initially intended as affirming American dominance in the cold war this first view on the blue planet as whole created an image that quickly became the icon of ecological thought and central to a whole movement of counter culture. MOON OVER DA NANG draws these two contrasting media events together in Melhu’s own quirky and experimental quest to come to grips with the country’s post-socialist present in the throughway between the past and the future. Interviews with residents and dreamlike associative sequences are mixed with the documentation of the production process of a life-sized marble sculpture in Da Nang, a city in central Vietnam, which, 40 years after the end of the war in Vietnam, is being discovered by international investors for the tourism business. Traces of the past and of the war are gradually covered up by the construction of hotels and luxury resorts. At the end of the film the marble sculpture receives its finishing touches and turns out to be an Apollo astronaut.

Bjørn Melhus was born in Kirchheim unter Teck in 1966 and studied Fine Arts with a major in Film/Video at the Braunschweig University of Art from 1990 to 1997. He was a fellow of the DAAD at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles and of the federal state of Lower Saxony in ISCP, New York. He participated in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York, the 8th International Biennial of Istanbul, the Venice Biennial in (1998/2011), the FACT in Liverpool, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the ZKM in Karlsruhe, the Denver Art Museum, as well as others. Bjørn Melhus has been a professor of Fine Arts/Virtual Realities at the School of Art and Design Kassel since 2003. Bjørn Melhus has been living and working in Berlin since 1987. In his short films and installations, Bjørn Melhus focuses on general global ideas and trends, the critical reception of mass media, as well as the direct effects they have on people. He uses footage from film and television excessively and deconstructs stereotypical themes, figures and patterns of perception through means of exaggeration. At the same time, he breaks up a seemingly fixed relationship between media and audience, thus opening up the view on the essentials of human interaction.

A man in a hotel. A newscaster. A corpse under a bed sheet, which suddenly awakens and postulates the advent of "sudden destruction". Speech is gushing out in the rhetoric of the apocalypse taking itself to the absurd. The quotes are taken from YouTube videos of self-proclaimed evangelist prophets.

Bjørn Melhus, born 1966, is a German-Norwegian media artist. In his work he has developed a singular position, expanding the possibilities for a critical reception of cinema and television. His practice of fragmentation, destruction, and reconstitution of well-known figures, topics, and strategies of the mass media opens up not only a network of new interpretations and critical commentaries, but also defines the relationship of mass media and viewer anew. Originally rooted in an experimental film context, Bjørn Melhus`s work has been shown and awarded at numerous international film festivals. He has held screenings at Tate Modern and the LUX in London, the Museum of Modern Art (MediaScope) in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, amongst others. His work has been exhibited in shows like The American Effect at the Whitney Museum New York, the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, solo and group shows at FACT Liverpool, Serpentine Gallery London, Sprengel Museum Hanover, Museum Ludwig Cologne, ZKM Karlsruhe, Denver Art Museum among others. Since 2003 he has been professor for Virtual Realities at the School of Art Kassel, Germany. Bjørn Melhus lives in Berlin.

Isolated from the outside world, grotesque figures negotiate the pandemic state of emergency using language quotes from end-time movies. The video evokes fear, loneliness, illness, as well as threat and defense scenarios. Or: Several bizarre creatures reminiscent of human beings find themselves huddled away in squalid basements, at safe distance from the outside world. Speaking in selected quotes from doomsday films we observe them in various stages of despair, loneliness and sickness reflecting the pandemic state of affairs.

Bjørn Melhus In video art Bjørn Melhus has developed a singular position, expanding the possibilities for the critical reception of cinema and television. His stories have narrative structures formed by the fragmentation of the levels of image and sound. His practice of fragmentation, destruction, and reconstitution of well-known figures, topics, and strategies of the mass media opens up not only a network of new interpretations and critical commentaries, but also defines the relationship of mass media and viewer anew. His collages of rhythmic language and sound include almost incidentally the techniques of the video clip and trailer culture, although Melhus quotes neither pop music, nor does he engage in any lifestyle propaganda. His works expose the mechanisms of commercialization and rebel against simplification and global cultural standardization. His European view of American culture and of the global and trivial branches of mass culture is determined both by fascination as well as by a deep scepticism, by the longing to get away and by homesickness. Bjørn Melhus (born 1966 in Kirchheim/Teck, Germany) studied at the Brauschweig School of Arts in Germany and 1997/1998 with a DAAD grant at CalArts filmschool. In 2001/2002 he participated in the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP in New York). Since 2002 he lives and works in Berlin. His works have been shown and awarded at numerous international film festivals and he has held screenings at Tate Modern and the LUX in London, the Museum of Modern Art (MediaScope) New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris - amongst others. His work has been exhibited in shows like The American Effect at the Whitney Museum New York, the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, the 54th Biennale di Venezia, solo and group shows at FACT Liverpool, Serpentine Gallery London, Sprengel Museum Hanover, Museum Ludwig Cologne, ZKM Karlsruhe, Denver Art Museum – to name just a few. More info: www.melhus.de

They`ve met in the summer, under tha rain. A film about silence and carnival. About anger and joy. A passionate homage to Rio de Janeiro surface: full of pain, dreams and sadness. A carnival tale of love and violence. Created through the screaming-silence that surrouds our hometown like a enderless mask.

Felipe Bragança and Marina Meliande, 24, are both part of a new generation of brazilians film critics and film makers. Bragança and Meliande had directed two awarded short-films together and produced some important cine festivals in Rio de Janeiro. Bragança has just finish his first feature film script and worked like Director-Assistent and Co-Screenwriter in the Karim Aiznou`s (Madame Satã) seconde feature film. Marina Meliande is specialized in sound and image edition and works with some great cinema editors in Brazil. She is now preparing her first feature film together with Felipe Bragança.

Imagine what Electro Vishnu would look like in Provence. See body merge with nature.

French blogger-journalist, documentary director, music composer and singer, I have been trying short movies since 2000.

“Excursion” was born out of my curiosity to explore from a distance a territory that has become dangerous not only for human life but also for life in general. I delved into a narrative that traces the natural and cultural history of the territories in Ukraine, particularly in the exclusion zone where the radioactivity caused by the Chernobyl accident continues to be active. The narrator of this narrative recalls the ontology of her own voice, creating a unique voice for each thing and giving a plurality of bodies to this discourse stemming from a single voice.

Pablo Mendez, born in Buenos Aires in 1988, is a contemporary artist, independent researcher, exhibition curator, teacher, lecturer, and translator. His artistic work has led him to become a resident at the Académie des Beaux Arts at La Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris) for the period 2023-2024. In 2022, he participated in the latest edition of documenta (documenta fifteen) in collaboration with the Lumbung artist, La Intermundial Holobiente (Argentina). He has received grants from organizations such as the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (Argentina), the Fondo Metropolitano de las Artes y de las Ciencias (Buenos Aires), Mecenazgos Culturales, CREA (Matadero, Madrid), the creation grant of the Biennial of Moving Image (BIM, Buenos Aires), among others. Pablo has been engaged in personal and collective projects since 2010. In 2015, he earned his diploma from the National School of Photography in Arles with honors for his research thesis. He has participated in various exhibitions, including the International Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles (Arles, 2015), Les Brasseurs Art Contemporain (Liège, 2015-2016), FRAC-PACA (Marseille, 2015-2016), Casa Nacional del Bicentenario (Buenos Aires, 2016), Stocq 72 (Brussels, 2016), University of San Martín Campus (Buenos Aires, 2019), Puertas Abiertas (Matadero, Madrid, 2021), Simbiología Prácticas artísticas en un planeta en emergencias (Centro Cultural Kirchner, Argentina, 2021-2022), Campamento Temporario (Investigaciones de Futuro, Buenos Aires, 2022), and documenta fifteen (Kassel, Germany, 2022), among others. His education should acknowledge several individuals who, regardless of their age, have worked alongside him, introducing him to new ways of thinking, collaborating, understanding, and feeling and growing as an artist and researcher. These individuals include Valeria González, Gonzalo Aguilar, Vinciane Despret, Dalila Puzzovio, and Claudia Fontes.

A crystal hunter finds a quartz crystal on the Mont Blanc massif. The mineral passes through the hands of geophysicists, acoustic engineers and gemmologists, exploring our potential for communication with the inanimate world. This diary of a quartz crystal takes us on a journey to the edge of our systems of perception, skilfully calling into question the seemingly irrefutable.

Three artificial intelligences frantically speak to one another. They appear to be alone on Earth. Humanity, maybe all multicellular life, has disappeared. Did they, the AIs, cause their extinction? The AIs can’t be certain. Their memories are malfunctioning; their trialogue is fragmented and circular. Digital images they were once tasked with analyzing accompany their voices. We see a flood of sports games, physics simulations, hardcore pornography, CCTV footage, feature films, military demos, home movies, television commercials. Like their artificial minds, time has eroded the images into incoherence. As images rush by, the AIs are by turns regretful, forgetful, psychotic, and philosophic. Once treated as secular oracles, they are now uncertain of past and future. The AIs come to realize that they may have predicted their own end, and intelligence itself might be a kind of catastrophe.

John Menick is an artist and writer who works with the moving image and digital media.

Made during the New York lockdown, “Haunting” is a two-channel film assembling footage from several decades of supernatural domestic horror films. These are films in which domestic and residential spaces—suburban houses, decaying mansions, off-season hotels—are haunted by the spectral or the paranormal. Drawing on horror’s highly organized genre conventions, “Haunting” creates an imaginary architecture in which the repressed always returns and the past is never dead. The film’s protagonists—often played by actors now forgotten—appear not unlike ghosts themselves, their wanderings twinned across the film’s two screens in a strange, apparitional choreography. “Haunting” is a study in the spectral, as it is a response to the ghostly world that emerged from the pandemic—a world that became, for many, both uncanny and terrifying.

John Menick’s visual art and writings investigate how the fictive troubles the real. Working with cinematic history, hearsay, pseudoscience, and genre, Menick has created a diverse artistic practice that operates between fiction and critique. His earliest film, The Disappearance (2002), took the form of a fictional location scouting in Nuremberg, Germany, in order to tell the postwar history of the city. Menick’s Starring Sigmund Freud (2012) was a video memento for Sigmund Freud’s life as a fictional character in film. His most recent project, Haunting (2020), is an evocation of the long history of ghosts in cinematic horror, and how film itself can be understood as a spectral medium. Born in White Plains, New York, Menick studied fine art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. After graduation, he was an early member of several seminal New York art collectives including Nomads + Residents and 16 Beaver Group. His visual art and films have been exhibited and screened at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel; the International Film Festival, Rotterdam; MoMA PS1, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; and Artists Space, New York. Menick’s essays and stories have appeared in Frieze, The Believer, Mousse Magazine, BOMB, Spike Art Quarterly, Art in America, and Witte de With Review, among other publications. His first book of collected prose, A Report on the City, was published in 2012 by Walther König and was listed by Frieze magazine as one of the highlights of the year. Menick received grants from the Jerome Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has received several commissions, including from Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers in France. Menick currently lives in New York City where he is also a visiting professor of film at the Cooper Union.

John Menick's film "Occupation" proposes a portrait of Malik, a postcards seller with Senegalese origins living some kind of marginal life and who surveys the city of Aubervilliers by car to capture photos that he attempts to sell on the run. Through both his daily and nocturnal journeys, the urban scenery is discovered in its singularity, its diversity, and its contemporary mutations, distilling the ultimate signs of a post-industrial transition in which the actor, in a methodical and resolute manner, seems to be one of the last agents.

John Menick is an artist, filmmaker, and writer living in Brooklyn, New York. He was born in White Plains, New York, and graduated with a BFA from the Cooper Union. Menick's gallery projects and digital films have been exhibited at the P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; and Maison Rouge, Paris.

Starring Sigmund Freud is a video memento for Sigmund Freud?s little-known film career. Based on an essay John Menick published in Frieze in 2011, the video collects the dozens of appearances that the character of Sigmund Freud has made on small and big screens. After the 1950s, when pill vials replaced analytic couches, the father of psychoanalysis found a second career impersonating himself in everything from a John Huston clunker to a Star Trek episode. The video suggests that maybe it is in front of the camera, alongside surgically enhanced starlets and CGI chimeras, that ?Herr Doktor? will find his final resting place.

John Menick makes films and audio works, writes essays and short stories, and occasionally makes prints and drawings. These works are often populated by wandering detectives, duplicitous storytellers, homeless documentarians, mad travelers, and institutionalized cinephiles. His artwork has been shown at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel; MoMA PS1, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; and Artists Space, New York. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Mousse, and Art in America. Menick has received grants from the Jerome Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and he is a visiting professor of film and video at the Cooper Union in New York. His ideal audience member ? possibly you ? watches no television, can?t drive or swim, always carries a pen, hates cell phones, names Pale Fire as his or her favorite book, wears glasses, and is afraid of flying. Most of the time he lives in New York City.

An unidentified man describes his ongoing fixation with "last person on earth" films -- films in which a single person awakens to find that he or she is the sole living inhabitant of a city.

John Menick is an artist, filmmaker, and writer living in Brooklyn, New York. He was born in White Plains, New York, and graduated with a BFA from the Cooper Union. His artwork has been exhibited at the P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art, New York; La Maison Rouge, Paris; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; CAA Wattis, San Francisco; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; Artists Space, New York; The Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, among other venues. His latest short fiction film, Occupation (2006), about urbanism and immigration in France, was commissioned by the Les Laboratoires d`Aubervilliers, and has been screened in film festivals throughout Europe. In addition to his own work, Menick has contributed to many artist-run groups, including Nomads & Residents, 16 Beaver Group, and The Thing. He has previously taught art at the Cooper Union and SUNY Purchase, and lectures regularly about his art practice and film projects. Menick recently finished a feature-length screenplay about a modern-day wild child, is developing a documentary investigating the obscure corners of psychiatry, and is at work on a series of sculptures relating to standardized time.

Electricity is a natural but invisible component in modern life. The new and controversial phenomena electro-hypersensitivity, concerning oversensitivity against electro- magnetic fields from mobile telephony, power lines etc., drastically throw light upon our dependence on electricity. What would happen in our society if more and more people would become oversensitive? What would a society without electricity look like? The footage was mainly filmed with a spring-driven 16 mm camera, but we also used a digital video camera, some historical footage, and stills. The sound was recorded on an old tape recorder in order to minimize the electromagnetic stress during the interviews.

Timo Menke and photographer Nils Agdler have been engaged in several long-term collaborative projects. In their artistic practice they share a common interest in contemporary social phenomena, storytelling and history. Major projects include film works and installations on electrical hypersensitivity (Fugitives from the Fields, 2005), and commercial anonymous sperm donation (Made in Denmark, 2013 and Gifted Men, 2015). For more information on other works, projects and collaborations see the portfolio enclosed. Nils Agdler was born in Östersund, Sweden, in 1969. He lives and works in Stockholm since 1993, and is currently working as an artist and freelance photographer. Since 2006 he works part time as a teacher/photographer at Konstfack, Arts, Crafts & Design University College, Stockholm. Timo Menke was born in Germany. He lives and works as an artist/filmmaker in Sweden since 1988. He was a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Art at Konstfack, Stockholm, 2004?2014. He is also engaged as a Media Producer at Filmform Foundation, Stockholm. His work is represented at Moderna Museum, Stockholm, and is distributed by Filmform.

. In this work I call ?Exodus? is the leaving tradition. In nowdays, I see and experience the ?cultural exodus? myself. Film ?Exodus? directs the viewer into present day Kazakhstan, where an equally strange and powerful tale unravels. While local men and women are in the process of packing up their Yurtas (nomadic tents) with the obvious intention to move on, a young girl watches, captivated and immobile, subsequently appearing to be left behind ? synonymously invoking the experience of global uprooting. As an interlude and a visual bow to Kurban, two young women thrash their hair, symbolically morphing into birdlike creatures flapping their wings. . The Peries walk around the yurt making ancient shamanistic nomand ritual ? The Closing Road? which makes nomads stay in the place, but nobody from adults seeing that ritual only small wondering girl.

Almagul Menlibayeva was born in Kazakhstan and currently lives and works in both Berlin and Almaty ( Kazakhstan). She holds an MFA from the Art and Theatre University of Kazakhstan in Almaty, and has been the subject of several solo exhibitions and numerous group shows. Her video On the Road was screened at the Paris-Berlin International Film Festival at the Centre Georges Pompidou and at the 51st Venice Biennale in the Central Asian Pavilion. Her performance Peristan, premiered at the opening of the 52nd Venice Biennale, in the Central Asian Pavilion. Recent group exhibitions include, Live Cinema/The Return of the Image: Video from Central Asia at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Time of the Storytellers at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, Finland; Thermocline of Art - New Asian Waves at the ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art in Karlsruhe, Germany; Caravan Seray at the Sydney Biennial; and Art and Conflict in Central Asia at the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. She participated in the 34,36,37th Edition Film Festival (2005,2007,2008) in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

This performance is a shamanic act of seven ancestral mothes (Apa).this is act is unusial because mostly male ancestors are recollected in this kind of rituals: so this is an artistic performance rather than traditional ritual: With a beautiful panorama of the white mountains naked ggirls are standing in skirts made of snow. Each of them, over and over again call upon "Apa" until they enter the state of trance where they turn into mystical animals and disappear. In this film i simple things i often reverse direction of the clip and slow action down.

Member of the Artists Union of the Kazakhstan Republic Graphics, painting,performance video art Lives in Kazakhstan Biographic note: Date of birth: 29.11.69 in Almaty in Kazakhstan. 1987-1992 graduated from Art and Theatre University of Kazakhstan in Almaty. Awards: 1995 Kazakhstan, received State Grand Prix for artists "Darin". 1995 Uzbekistan, received the Grand prix of the second biennale of Central asia "Asia Art" in tashkent 2002 Almaty, received an Independent Prize of Kazakhstan "Tarlan" 2002 Almaty, 2d priseat the Ferst Video Festival by Center of Contemporary Art, Sorous-Kazakhstan. 2004 Almaty 3d prize at the "Sacrate places of Kazakhstan" video festival by Center of Contemporary Art Sorous- Kazakhstan Last exhibitions ( 1988 present): 2005 " Tamerlan`s Syndrom ", Italy, Orvietto. 2005 "On the road", 51 International Art Exhibition, Biennale di Vinezia, Central asian Pavilion, Venice, Italy 2005 26 Biennale of Graphic Art in Lublyana, Slovenia 2005-2004 " Vom rotten Stern zur blauen Kuppel" Kunst und arhitektur, Islamische Welten, Ifa-gallery Berlin und Stutgard, Germany. 2004 "Sacrate places of Kazakhstan" video festival, Almaty, Kazakhstan 2004 "Paris- Berlin" international video festival paris, France 2004 the first Bishkek International exhibition of contemporary art "....and others", Bishkek, State of Museum,Kirgizstan 2004 Novosibirsk, Russia, "Art Novosibirsk" 2004 "International vision" the gallery in Washington 2004 Mexiko City, CANAJA gallery,"Pueblos I sombras", exhibitions of contemporary art 2003 Paris - Berlin, international video festival, Berlin, Paris. 2003 "20 Wold Wide Video Festival" in Amsterdam, Holland

Il existe une croyance en Asie Centrale, selon laquelle le fait de manger les organes de son animal totémique renforce son pouvoir propre : le c?ur donne du courage, les yeux améliorent la vue, la langue renforce l`éloquence. Cette croyance est reflétée dans cette vidéo. De jeunes femmes kazakhes urbaines mangent dans un restaurant d`Almaty, la tête d`un mouton. Ce repas provoque leurs transformations, et elles deviennent des Peri des steppes, créatures féeriques.

Née le 29 novembre 1969 au Kazakhstan, Almagul Menlibayeva est diplômée de l`Université d`Art et de Théâtre d`Almaty, sa ville natale, en 1992. Trois ans plus tard, elle reçoit ses deux premiers prix, dont le Grand Prix de la seconde Biennale d`Asie Centrale, Asia Art. Depuis, Almagul Menlibayeva expose aux quatre coins du monde, à la fondation Soros d`Almaty, au Musée d`Art de Saint-Petersbourg, à la Maison des Artistes de Moscou, ainsi qu`à Berlin et aux Pays-Bas. Depuis, elle participe aux plus grands événements internationaux. En 2005, elle présente sa vidéo "On The Road" à la Biennale de Venise. En 2006, on la retrouve à la Biennale de Sydney avec une installation vidéo/performance, "Caravan Seray". Graphisme, peinture, vidéo, installation et performance, le travail d`Almagul Menlibayeva est protéiforme. Engagées, ses ?uvres amorcent une réflexion sur la féminité, sur le corps et son esthétisme, sur la société et l`Islam.

Synopsis for video Kissing Totems I have experienced several events which coincide with and reflect the narrative sequence of Kissing Totems. As a child, my mother experienced severe illness, for which my brother and I decided to seek the help of an old shaman woman. On our way to the shaman we passed one of the many Soviet established factories, still in production. The presence and visual characteristics of the factory prompted my brother to describe his favorite film ?Stalker? by Tarkovski. Stylistic characteristics and themes from this film reoccur in Kissing Totems. Behind the factory expanded an open plain, within this steppe, we found the shaman woman?s little house, full of birds. When she spoke, for some reason the old woman began our conversation with an old nomadic tale ?Peri and the Girl?. This story, although seeming irrelevant at the time, served as a parallel and foreshadowing to Kissing Totems. After having taken a good look at us, she added, ?I will help your mother, but you have to try to meet your totems, so that she does not get sick again.? I remember that day as a dream. Much time has passed since this memory. The USSR is no longer, and Kazakhstan is scarred by its abandoned factories which were constructed over ancient burial grounds. Today these sites have become ghost-like settings. The factory next to the old shaman woman?s house has become desolate and overcome by birds. For me, the abandoned factory has become a realm or zone in which the rules, regulations and standards of reality no longer exist. Here the characteristics and personality of birds seem to take over; it has become a bird zone. For the creation of Kissing Totems, I drew on the ancient nomadic story and my memories of this bird zone. The shamanistic themes of that tale and my experience are explored through the image of a little girl. Somewhere, in the endless steppes of Kazakhstan, a lost mother is leading her young daughter through the abandoned, post-Soviet industrial landscape. As the old shaman woman had instructed, they seek to meet the surviving totems of their ancient people. The wandering pair, mother and daughter, end up in the so-called zone of bird totems. It is in this landscape, and within this quest, that a modern, surrealist story of shamanism unfolds. The video, Kissing Totems is a modern interpretation of the ancient nomadic tale ?Peri and the Girl?. This intimate experience could happen to any of us, if we are lucky enough to see our own Kissing Totems? ?Totem - duhi jivotnih i prirodi kotorie zajijayut I pomogayut cheloveku.? -- Almagul Menlibayeva

Born November 29th in 1969 in Kazakhstan, Almagul Menlibayeva obtained a degree from the University of Art and Theatre in Almaty, her native town, in 1992. Three years later, she received her first two prizes, the Grand Prix of the Second Central Asia Biennale and Asia art. Since then Almagul Menlibayeva has exhibited in the four corners of the world: at the Soros Foundation of Almaty, at the Museum of Art inn Saint-Petersburg, at the Maison des Artistes in Moscow, as well as in Berlin and The Netherlands. She has also participated in some of the great international events. In 2005, she showed her video "On the Road" at the Venice Biennale. In 2006, she was at the Sydney Biennale with a video/performance installation, "Caravan Seray. Graphics, painting, video, installation and performance- the work of Almagul Menlibayeva is prolific. Her work initiates a thought provoking look at femininity, the body, society and Islam.