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Peter Downsbrough
A]PART
Video | dv | black and white | 11:50 | USA, Belgium | 2009
A]PART is the first publication in the brand new CKA _ EDITIONS series, run by Christian Kieckens. It constitutes the third collaboration between Brussels-based American artist Peter Downsbrough and Brussels architect Christian Kieckens. Sharing the same sensibilty for both industrial architectural heritage and public space in general, former joint-ventures involved the industrial `Amylum` site in the centre of Aalst (culminating in the 1996 exhibition and photo/text publication Densities) and Brussels? city centre, where Kieckens took on the technical and logistical side of the public commissioned work AND /MAAR, OP AND /POUR, ET (2000-03). Downsbrough?s passion for industrial architecture takes many forms. More often than not, ?preservation? means survival in the form of a film or photo series. His films and photos always capture an industrial or (sub)urban reality that will sooner or later vanish or be subject to redevelopment ? be it late Seventies Manhattan or the industrial zones around Kent, UK. For now, and for the foreseeable future, this seems not to be the fate of Citroën`s impressive, prototypical modernist interbellum garage at Place d?Yser in Brussels ? the subject of Downsbrough`s latest film. The building, once threatened with demolition, will hopefully be there for some time to come, and Downsbrough pays homage to the building and its architects, Belgians Alexis Dumont and Marcel Van Goethem, who cooperated with French architect Maurice Ravazé. By publishing this work, architect Kieckens pays tribute to them as well. The black-and-white film underscores the building`s basic logic and rhythm. The garage consists of two parts, garage and showroom, and Peter Downsbrough films both in a playful yet formally precise way. This includes trade-mark Downsbrough idiosyncrasies, like suddenly letting in short diegetic environmental sounds, or superimposing words, e.g. IN TIME, at the beginning of the film. Typical `car movements` are alternated with proper cinematic movements like pannings; sometimes, an image freezes, and film becomes film still, photo. Shot from the passenger seat of a car driving down the distended corkscrew ramp, the film shows the garage?s interior and views through its windows onto the urban setting below. Downsbrough In a way, the building is filmically taken apart by Downsbrough: from top to bottom (including close-ups of the stained garage floor) it is visually analysed and scrutinised. Yet the physicality of the building also imposes its framing rules on the film; `rules` the artist evidently plays with ? as before. Towards the end of the film, we witness a gay, somewhat absurd dance of cars at the roundabout in front of the building, a picture reminiscent of the famous last scene of Jacques Tati`s fillm Trafic. Still, A]PART ? elegant, heedful and spare ? has a darker side too: it is both ode and elegy. A part. In time. Apart in time. In paying attention to all the minute details of the space and its immediate surroundings, the work symbolically preserves the Citroën building-as-film. However, it also shows how space itself (every space, not just a filmed one) is formed as well by an `attention`. Created by circumstances of history, society and perception, it will in the end always be subjected to the workings of time. (Steven Tallon)
Peter Downsbrough (1940, New Brunswick, N.J.) studied architecture and art. Around the mid-1960?s, after several years of work and exploring materials, including cardboard, wood, steel, lead, neon tubing, an evolution took place which resulted, in 1970, in the work with the Two Pipes (outside), Two Dowels (inside) and Two Lines (on paper). At the same time, he also started taking photographs to document these pieces. By taking photographs from different angles and distances, he gradually started taking photographs of ?cuts? that already existed in the urban landscape. Some of these photographs were used in books, some appeared in magazines, but it wasn?t until 1980 that they showed up in exhibitions. From 1977 on, Downsbrough realized several videos as well as audiotapes. A record was made in 1978 and released in 1982. Looking to expand the vocabulary, he developed a series of works using dice. In 1980, on the Spectacolor Board on Times Square, New York, he realized a piece, a 30 second spot shown once every hour for four days, and documented it in a short film, ?7 come 11?. Around 1980, he also started using regular postcards, initially by applying two lines, later to be followed by the use of words. The work with maquettes as a means of exploring space and structure started around 1983. The first commissioned public work was a wall piece realized in Rennes, France, 1990. The film ?Occupied? was produced in 2000, ten years after it was conceived. Since then, several films, shot with a digital camera, have been published as dvd?s. Today, all these disciplines occupy the field of his activities. An overview exhibition, curated by Marie-Thérèse Champesme, opened on June 24, 2003, at the Paleis van Schone Kunsten, Brussels. It was accompanied by an extensive catalogue and traveled to two other venues.
Peter Downsbrough
AS] IN
Art vidéo | dv | color | 3:35 | USA, Belgium | 2007
The interior of an empty office building in Zaventem?s Corporate Village, next to Brussels Airport. Human presence is only to be found outside, through the windows, in the passing cars or close-by office buildings. Using fluid camera movements, travellings as well as panoramics, Downsbrough scrutinizes the environment, exploring the possible relations that may rise from it: inside and outside, empty and inhabited, horizontal and vertical, light and dark surfaces. The geometry of the space, emphasized by Downsbrough?s use of black and white images, determines that of the screen as well. In Downsbrough?s work, the way of looking at space, and at a space in particular, is deeply political. His videos and films point out the limits, the order and the regulations that the social system imposes upon us and our ways of appropriating the space, reminding us that all ?placement? is at the same time an ?ordering?.
The work of Peter Downsbrough (US, 1940) ? sculpture, graphics, photography, video, film, books ? began with an interest in architecture and articulates a complex relationship between architecture, language and typography. Only the bare essentials remain: form is reduced to lines, colours are mostly barred. In his videos, movement and language are explored in relation to time and space: they both represent and deconstruct modern urban and industrial architecture. At the same time, a linguistic twist takes place: by inserting and interposing word blocks like AND, AS or IN, Downsbrough tilts the videos to a kind of ?phrase?, which simultaneously functions as a ?place? for the viewer to lodge in. Downsbrough has exhibited at the Reina Sofi a (Madrid), the SMAK (Ghent), the Paleis voor Schone Kunsten/Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels) and the Muzeum Sztuki (Lodz).
Peter Downsbrough
And Here
Experimental video | dv | color | 24:0 | USA, Belgium | 2007
] AND HERE is a video project filmed in North Kent?s urban and industrial environment. It captures images from Kentish town centres to the container transport hub on the Isle of Grain, to the Isle of Sheppey?s caravans, etc. It was commissioned by the Faversham Society in response to the rapid changes brought about by The Thames Gateway North Kent Development, a major regeneration programme extending from Dartford to Teynham in the south of the region. The Faversham Society is a voluntary organisation established in 1962 to protect and promote the heritage of the market town of Faversham and its surrounding area in Kent. Somewhat different from other Downsbrough films, here the represented space is fully identified. This makes it theoretically possible (if one would have this want) to trace down on a/the map the places Downsbrough visited with his camera. But above all it underlines an aspect of Downsbrough?s work (current in other films as well) that consists of documenting lived material history: places still there ? still ?on the go? ? but going, disappearing as well. Another difference lies in the mentioning of ?B/W? ànd ?colour? in the technical specifications above. Indeed, contrary to most Downsbrough?s films, this one also features colour (A]S and THRU does too), albeit in a somewhat ironic and rather teasing way: the concentrated viewer may at some moment discern two full seconds of colour image! Finally, with its 24 minutes running time this is also the longest film since the 1979 The Other Side (25?). In general the viewer is confronted with comparable Downsbrough ?worlds? as the ones preceding this film. As before, the film is made up of space ? a represented space as well as a mentally-induced place ? and typography and word blocks: the title?s ]AND HERE itself of course or words like AS, seemingly migrating from other Downsbrough films. The film alternates between fixed camera shots, travelling and images filmed from the inside of a car, and one could easily ?prolong? some car-shot scenes from for example AND [BACK into this film, or vice versa. Still, not only industrial sites are visited: there are also images from Kent?s cities and villages. With their typical use of bricks, the presence of pubs etc., these places and habitations ? contrary to the formally and geo-economically unifying, ?de-placing? force of industrial space ? are thus identifiable, clearly indicating to the southeast of England and more in particular, to the county of Kent. But the most important difference with former projects, perhaps indicating a new road taken by Downsbrough, can be discerned, not so much in the use of text and images (or ?textual images?) but in that of sound. For ] AND HERE Downsbrough uses especially commissioned improvised music, executed by Xavier Garcia Bardon and Benjamin Franklin, both members of the Brussels-based jam/shoegaze/trance band Buffle. Music was already used in the very first videos ? with (pop) bands like The Spinners or Talking Heads ? and some recent films feature music as well, but here the purpose is not only to create a certain atmosphere, but to use the music as a structural and structuring element as well. As is the case with the filmed images, the music is often interrupted quite suddenly ? the longest continuous piece of music being only about one minute ? than continued. There is a (minimal) musical theme, as is the case in most narrative cinema, but there is also a confrontation and dialogue between sound/music and image/typography. Similar to the ?structuralist? images of Downsbrough?s cinema, the music ? positioning itself somewhere between 90s shoegaze, post-rock and improvisation ? has a strong emphasis on texture, especially through the use of guitar pedal effects and digital signal processing. At the same time, there?s an industrial side to it, reflecting and reinforcing the industrial landscapes filmed by Downsbrough. Interestingly, the glitch-like noise returning throughout the performance is actually not a real glitch ? an electronic slip or short-lived fault in a system, used purposely and creatively in contemporary electronic music ? but a pedal-induced loop. In some undercurrent way the creation of sound by using analogue material at times sounding digital (the glitch) reflects the way in which the film?s seeming aloofness ? above all stemming from the use of industrial footage and from the strict formal approach ? is tempered or dialectically refined, both by the word and language games Downsbrough plays, and by the interest he pays, not only to the spookiness of the industrial landscapes ? void of people ? but to the much more individualised and localised (if not less empty) cityscapes as well. If both film and film music possesses a certain ?frozen? quality, then at the same time they are as if betrayed (tempered, complexified) by the very material side of the process of structuring (?ideally?) a space or a soundscape. It?s exactly this material side of Downsbrough?s ?method? ? ?real? matter turned ?film material?, matter that is always historical, ever residual ? which creates a tension in his films, as well as the pleasure of watching them.
The work of Peter Downsbrough (US, 1940) ? sculpture, graphics, photography, video, film, books ? began with an interest in architecture and articulates a complex relationship between architecture, language and typography. Only the bare essentials remain: form is reduced to lines, colours are mostly barred. In his videos, movement and language are explored in relation to time and space: they both represent and deconstruct modern urban and industrial architecture. At the same time, a linguistic twist takes place: by inserting and interposing word blocks like AND, AS or IN, Downsbrough tilts the videos to a kind of ?phrase?, which simultaneously functions as a ?place? for the viewer to lodge in. Downsbrough has exhibited at the Reina Sofi a (Madrid), the SMAK (Ghent), the Paleis voor Schone Kunsten/Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels) and the Muzeum Sztuki (Lodz).
Peter Downsbrough
ET- [
| hdv | color and b&w | 9:11 | USA, Belgium | 2009
ET[- opens with a silent black-and-white close-up of a vertical rod shuttling back and forth across a mechanical loom. The short sequence could be mistaken for footage from an early 20th-century propaganda film. Cut sharply to the next scene, also in black and white and taken from a fixed position but unmistakably contemporary. Reflected in a polished, slightly distorting surface, cars are seen entering a gated parking lot. That image is overlaid on the lower left by the film's title, printed in black, and is accompanied by a burst of ambient sound: the dull rumble of traffic. Cut abruptly to a silent close-up in color -- a kind of industrial interior still-life-- then cut again to black and white: a steel door opens vertically onto a cavernous corridor where mini-forklifts scurry about. The rest of the film, which zig-zags between exterior and interior views, is in black and white. Two more jarring spurts of ambient sound are heard and a second word, LA, appears, in white and preceded by a closed bracket, just before the final fade-out and credits. The reflected scene over which ]LA is superimposed is much like the one seen in the film's title image. ET[- has all the characteristics of a signature piece by Peter Downsbrough. The mostly silent, almost entirely black-and-white film is a visual exploration of constructed form, in this case, a modern factory building, a sprawling reflective box situated next to a busy road in a semi-rural setting. The blind facade of pleated, polished stainless-steel mirrors the constant flux of its surroundings and seems to dissolve into them. Inside is a different story: a universe of crisp, hard-edged geometries, gleaming surfaces and clinical precision. Giant spools, looms and bolts of material are stacked, aligned and otherwise arranged in perfect order. Fully automated machines revolve, throb, swivel and tick, each in its own rhythm and speed in the film's eerie silence. Eerie too is the absence of humans. Except for the two forklift operators, whose tiny vehicles occasionally career by like wind-up toys in a madcap adventure, there isn't a soul in sight. The camera surveys the factory's outside features and inner workings with slow pans, and it fixes on details with a steady gaze, shifting its focus constantly from interior to exterior, and its pacing from smooth, stately pans to rapidly cut fixed shots -- a visual interweaving that mimics the manufacturing processes taking place in the factory itself. If the final product is shown wrapped up and ready to go, we don't necessarily recognize it as such. However, we do witness its departure in trailer trucks as they pull out from the factory's loading docks, bound for the highway. That part of the drama, too, is seen reflected in the building's skin. - Sarah McFadden -
Peter Downsbrough
I, Y, AND
| dv | color and b&w | 6:30 | USA, Spain | 2010
Peter Downsbrough
IN [ TO
Video | hdv | black and white | 2:47 | USA, Belgium | 2012
The silent, ultra-short black-and-white video IN [ TO is shorter than a video clip: it clocks in at 2 minutes, 47 seconds. It was made with material shot exclusively for the film, plus footage filmed `on the occasion`, while Downsbrough was working on other projects. One sees images from (South) Chicago, Brussels and Kent respectively, but since everything is filmed at night, only viewers who are familiar with the location will easily identify the spots. Here, the purpose is not to be specific about a site, to identify a place, or to document a certain location. Rather, Downsbrough gives an overall feeling of some quasi-archetypical `city at night`. The city is shot both as cityscape, from a distance, e.g. from outside the window of a Brussels apartment private building, or from nearer-by: a zoom-in from inside of the same building. IN [ TO contains many elements that define former Downsbrough films, both content-wise ? urbanism, cars, freeways and ring roads ? and formally: clean, `structural` framing, abstraction, the use of graphically inserted words. Here, as before, a phrase or a word game, almost hidden, can be discerned ? it might or might not be a key to the film. First, there?s the title of course, IN [ TO. Only at the very end, when the image is fading, the word TIME lights up, shortly. It seems like an indication of what time does: fading out light. Into time, the light fades out. A stream of cars passes by, only their head lights are visible. Everything else is dark, except for the horizon, with the outlines of distant buildings and hundreds of lights flickering: lit windows, neon publicity, street lights. At the film`s very end, a point of view shot from inside a car shows a road at night: Kent ? but it might be any city, or in between cities. To the left, trees; to the right, light posts; in front, the beam of the headlights, some other cars` rear lights. Then the image fades. TIME. The image`s gone. IN ] TO, with reversed bracket. Credits. - Steven Tallon -
Peter Downsbrough (1940, New Brunswick, N.J.; lives in Brussels) initially studied architecture but decided early on to work as a sculptor. Taking photographs of his trademark Two Pipes lead to taking photographs of ?cuts? that already existed in the urban landscape. Initially used in his books, they were shown in exhibitions from 1980 on. After having realized a few videos around 1978, Downsbrough took up filming again when he got a digital camera in 2002. In 1980, on the Spectacolor Board on Times Square, New York, he realized a 30-second spot shown once every hour for four days, and documented it in a short film, ?7 come 11.? His ongoing research of time, space and structure is further articulated through lines and letters in maquettes, wall and room pieces, and public commissions. Exhibitions include POSITION, 2003, curated by M.-T. Champesme, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (B), Espace de l?Art Concret, Mouans-Sartoux (F) and Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz (PL); Mamco, Genève (CH); FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon (F); SMAK, Ghent (B) and PETER DOWNSBROUGH: THE BOOK(S), curated by M. Küng, deSingel, Antwerp (B) which will have a second venue at Fabra i Coats, Barcelona (E) in the beginning of 2013.
Peter Downsbrough
THE [ AS
Video | hdv | black and white | 10:12 | USA, Belgium | 2016
Peter Downsbrough (1940, New Brunswick, N.J.) studied architecture and art. Around the mid-1960’s, after several years of work and exploring materials, including cardboard, wood, steel, lead, neon tubing, an evolution took place which resulted, in 1970, in the work with the ‘Two Pipes’ (outside), ‘Two Dowels’ (inside) and ‘Two Lines’ (on paper). At the same time, he also started taking photographs to document these pieces. By taking photographs from different angles and distances, he gradually started taking photographs of ‘cuts’ that already existed in the urban landscape. Some of these photographs were used in books, some appeared in magazines, but it wasn’t until 1980 that they showed up in exhibitions. From 1977 on, Downsbrough realized several videos as well as audiotapes. A record was made in 1978 and released in 1982. Looking to expand the vocabulary, he developed a series of works using dice. In 1980, on the Spectacolor Board on Times Square, New York, he realized a piece, a 30 seconds spot shown once every hour for four days, and documented it in a short film, ‘7 come 11’. Around 1980, he also started using regular postcards, initially by applying two lines, later to be followed by the use of words. The work with models as a means of exploring space and structure started around 1983. The first commissioned public work was a wall piece realized in Rennes, France, 1990. The film ‘Occupied’was produced in 2000, ten years after it was conceived. Since then, several films, shot with a digital camera, have been published as dvd’s. Today, all these disciplines occupy the field of his activities. Downsbrough’s interest for industrial architecture takes many forms. More often than not, ‘preservation’ means survival in the form of a film or photo series. His films and photos always capture an industrial or (sub)urban reality that will sooner or later vanish or be subject to redevelopment ‘ be it late Seventies Manhattan or the industrial zones around Kent, UK.
Peter Downsbrough
AND TO
Video | hdv | black and white | 3:1 | USA, Belgium | 2018
We don`t know where we are. We`re in a car, looking at other cars, roads, structures, tunnels – wasteland. Position? The Global Positioning System informs us, with its horde of satellites, orbiting Earth. Guiding us with its synthesised voice, transporting us, `translating` us. Telling us what to do. `After 250 meters, keep to the right on the Brudermühlstraße, then keep to the left.` (And so on, and so forth.)
Brussels-based Peter Downsbrough (born New Jersey, USA, 1940) has developed a highly distinctive, strongly cohesive body of work that includes sculpture, drawings, photographs, films, videos, books, wall pieces and room pieces, architectural maquettes, and sculptural interventions in public space. Frequently heightening his famously sparse visual vocabulary with an equally sparse linguistic component—often just a single word—Downsbrough calls attention to a vast landscape of structures both physical and social, cultural and political—that shape modern life.
Philipp Döring
Deutschland im Sommer
Fiction | 16mm | color | 13:20 | Germany | 2006
Germany, in the summer 2006: a woman is roaming around, torn between images of her past in the Red Army Faction and the flood of pictures of the world football championship. Her loneliness grows between the huge "public viewing" places and the giant screens, when talking to officials, and finally standig in front of the grave of Baader, Ensslin and Raspe. By associative montage the film tries to portray from ?behind the mirror? what Germany looked like in the Summer 2006.
Philipp Doering was born November 28th, 1977, in Freiburg, Germany. After high school one year of civil services in Hamburg. He studied German, Slavistics and Cognitive Science at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Since 2004 he studies film directing at the Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg in Ludwigsburg, Germany.
Philipp Döring
Palliativstation
Documentary | hdcam | color | 245:33 | Germany | 2025
A film about people facing death. The film follows the everyday routines at the Palliative Care Unit at the Franziskus Hospital in Berlin. How do fatally ill patients face death? And how can you help them fill their remaining time with as much quality of life as possible?
Born 1977 in Freiburg. After high school, he first studied linguistics, then film at the Filmakademie in Ludwigsburg. His graduation film AM ANDEREN ENDE (At the Other End) received the First Steps Award for best film school film of the year, as well as the Deutscher Kamerapreis (German Cinematography Award). He realized several other short films, produced clips for NGOS, and worked for Luk Perceval at various theaters. Despite his love of long films, he makes a living from short clips for social media. PALLIATIVSTATION is his first feature-length documentary.
Philipp Döring
Kalypso
Fiction | dv | color | 15:20 | Germany | 2006
A short film about parting.
Philipp Doering was born November 28th, 1977, in Freiburg, Germany. After high school he completed one year of civil service in Hamburg. He studied German, Slavistics, and Cognitive Science at the University of Freiburg. Since 2004 he has been studying film directing at the Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg in Ludwigsburg, Germany.
Christoph Draeger
Black september
Experimental video | dv | color | 1:0 | Greece, USA | 2004
Robert Aliaj Dragot
Spring & Stalin
Experimental doc. | dv | color | 8:30 | Albania | 2006
"Spring & Stalin" is based on 27,000 stills photographed from the archives of the National Television in Tirana. The movie is accompanied by a poem from the writer, Ismail Kadare, which was published in "The teacher and the Art", 1953, p. 49- 53. It is a reflection on the mentality and nature of the transition period in the artist's home country. Kadare's poem is intentionally recited by an anonymous fictional voice that has no clue about poetry, not even about language, and it reads in a mechanical and computer-like manner, with a low rhythm and almost sleepy voice, which later on generates a chaotic tension to an growing stressed babbling. All this pandemonium unfolds the idea of false propaganda and governmental elite hypocrisy that in fact displays doubt in these images, which are not believed and understood even from those who see them. Here, the goal is not to stigmatize Kadare's work, but the veiling of that happy and idyllic in disguise reality, after which was hidden the drama of the persecuted people, unable to have the freedom of speech and the freedom of individuality; a people who tried to survive in a oppressed and isolated society.
Robert Aliaj Dragot, not only began as a painter, but his painting was also the point of departure for all the other activities he has manifested. At the end of 90's, after a long career as a pop star singer, he nearly stopped music altogether to go back to his first career as an art painter. Now many years later in Brussels, he is focused especially on a multimedia research, experimenting with photography, moving images, animations, sounds, and painting without losing the picturesque quality. His attention is divided between a critical curiosity of the artistic scene in Europe and a renewed interest for the shockingly fast therapeutic change that the Albanian state underwent.
Sam Drake
Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air
Experimental doc. | 16mm | color and b&w | 9:9 | USA | 2025
Fragmented records of events almost too sinister to believe: Cold War era covert radiation testing performed by the United States government on its citizens. The film grapples with the challenges of documenting the invisible, and capturing what is merely waves and frequencies. Shot on expired film, it is through the contaminated image and a complex soundscape that the unseen becomes manifest. During the Cold War, the U.S. government developed a program of covert human radiation experiments, using its own citizens as test subjects. Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air is an elliptical exploration of this dark historical episode, operating across vast landscapes and individual human bodies. Fragments of archival and 16mm imagery – shot on expired film stock – evoke the locations of numerous test sites across the United States. Urban landscapes at night, bleached scenes of the American desert, and close-up details of rural America are interwoven with voice-over and on-screen text that reference testimony of the continuing impact of this period of covert testing.
Sam Drake (b. Dayton, OH) is a filmmaker based in Milwaukee, WI. Her work has been exhibited at film festivals and venues including The Museum of Modern Art, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Media City Film Festival, CROSSROADS, The Museum of the Moving Image, Alternative Film/Video, Collectif Jeune Cinéma, Non-Syntax Experimental Image, Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, Transient Visions Festival of the Moving Image, and Antimatter. She has programmed for the Union Cinema and Mini Microcinema and is currently a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Sam Drake
Terminal Island
Experimental doc. | 16mm | color | 12:51 | USA | 2024
Tracing a space between real and phantasmatic ecological dread, Terminal Island presents a multi-sensory portrait of a landscape in peril, an ambivalent lament for LA’s vanishing palms and a sermon on Doomsday infrastructure delivered to no one.
Sam Drake (USA) is a filmmaker based in Milwaukee, WI. Working with 16mm film and found media, her work embraces collage as a framework for interrogating contemporary life and landscapes. She received a BFA in Film from Wright State University, and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in Cinema Arts. Her work has been exhibited at film festivals and venues including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Doc Fortnight (MoMA), Media City Film Festival, ExiS, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Curtas Vila do Conde, CROSSROADS, Non-Syntax Experimental Image, Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival, Collectif Jeune Cinéma, Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, Transient Visions Festival of the Moving Image, and Antimatter. She is currently a lecturer in Film, Video, Animation and New Genres at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Veronika Dräxler
Traces of Life / How to Kill
Experimental video | 4k | color | 15:45 | Ecuador, Finland | 2025
Traces of Life / How to Kill unfolds as a poetic trilogy in which three female figures—each performed by the artist—move through landscapes scarred by war, memory, and survival. From the frozen forests of Finland to a spiralling stone garden in Germany and the deserted urban expanse of La Défense in Paris, the body becomes a vessel of remembrance, confronting violence through gesture and silence. Weaving performance, film, and fragments from the UN Genocide Convention, Veronika Dräxler creates a visual language of resistance—an intimate meditation on the traces that conflict leaves behind in human and geological time.
Veronika Dräxler is a German–Ecuadorian media and performance artist whose work explores how bodies and landscapes become living archives of trauma, memory, and survival. Working between Paris and Munich, her practice spans performance, essay, and experimental film, investigating visible and invisible traces of historical violence, displacement, and resilience. Through a research-based and interdisciplinary approach, she examines how histories of conflict and care shape identities, architectures, and collective narratives. Dräxler studied under Klaus vom Bruch and Andrea Fraser at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich and graduated as a Meisterschülerin of Anna Anders from the Berlin University of the Arts. She is currently a PhD candidate in the SACRe program at ENS–PSL Paris, where her research explores invisible female diplomacy, memory politics, and the resistant body between art, history, and film. Her works have been shown internationally, including at Manifesta 11 (CH), a.topos (IT), Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim (DE), ZKM Karlsruhe (DE), Activists Without Borders (UK), and the Turicine Festival (EC). She has received support from the European Union, the Bavarian Ministry of Science and Art, Stiftung Niedersachsen, and the German Federal Government (Culture and Creative Pilot Germany).
Fabian Driehorst, Frédéric schuld
Hohenpeissenberg
Video installation | 35mm | color | 0:0 | Germany | 2011
A car is burning in front of the Alps and swallows it`s smoke. Two screens, one scene: one backwards, one forward. The impact on the ground of the car falling from the sky and flying back to it is the point of synchronization of both film- channels. The car is disappearing and exploding loop after loop. The sound channels of both projections forward and backwards access into each other creates a collage of sound.
SHORT BIO Fabian & Fred: Fabian Driehorst & Frédéric Schuld studied together at Academy of Media Arts, Cologne (KHM) till October 2011. Hohenpeissenberg is one of a couple of works they created together in and alongside their studies at Academy of Media Arts. Frédéric worked as a designer for multimedia and Fabian worked as cameraman, editor and director of film productions. They work together as creative duo called Fabian&Fred. Fabian Driehorst (born 17.02.1982, Gifhorn) 2004-2011 freelance cameraman, director, editor 2006-2011 studied Film and Art at the Academy of Media Arts (KHM), Cologne 2011 founded creative atelier Fabian&Fred 2012-2013 scholarship of AV-Gruenderzentrum for Fabian&Fred 2011 till now Director, Author, Producer of art- and film projects. Frédéric Schuld (born 20.06.1985, Dusseldorf) 2004-2011 freelance designer for multimedia and film 2006-2011 studied Film and Art at the Academy of Media Arts (KHM), Cologne 2011 founded creative atelier Fabian&Fred 2012-2013 scholarship of AV-Gruenderzentrum for Fabian&Fred 2011 till now creative director of art- and film projects.
Driessens & Verstappen
Deep Dive
Création numérique | 0 | color | 7:35 | Netherlands | 2016
Deep Dive offers an endless zoom into a picture, revealing an infinitely detailed imaginary world that emerges from the original image. While zooming, the image is constantly being refined in real-time, and the viewer can steer this process by tracking points of interest with the cursor. Each new `dive` starts with a randomly downloaded picture from the online WikiMedia archive.
The artists couple Driessens & Verstappen have worked together since 1990. They attempt an art in which spontaneous phenomena are created systematically. Art that is not entirely determined by the subjective choices of a human being, but instead is generated by autonomously operating processes. In addition to working with natural processes, the couple develops computer programs for artificial growth and evolution. An important source of inspiration are the self-organising processes in nature which continuously create original forms. Works of Driessens & Verstappen are in collections a.o. Centre Pompidou Paris, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen Rotterdam. They exhibited at museums and galleries a.o. Kröller-Müller Museum Otterlo, IVAM Institute Valencia, Neue Pinakothek München, Eyebeam New York, Young Projects Los Angeles. The artists couple gave presentations at conferences such as Siggraph Los Angeles, Second Iteration Melbourne. In 1999 and 2001 they have won the VIDA award with their Tickle robot projects in an international competition for Art & Artificial Life. In 2013 the couple received the Witteveen+Bos Art+Technology Award for their entire oeuvre. Driessens & Verstappen are represented by DAM gallery Berlin.
Driessens & Verstappen
E-volved Formulae
Multimedia installation | 4k | black and white | 10:1 | Netherlands | 2024
The image generating Formulae E-volver software is developed by the artists. The building blocks of the software are all kinds of basic mathematical operators. The computer can compose an infinite amount of valid formulas out of these elements. Each time, a small set of formulas is composed and visualised on the screen. The viewer compares these animated images with each other and reviews them. In turn, the software responds on those reviews when it composes new formulas. Formulas that were displayed on the screen for a long time have more chance to crossbreed, whereby visual properties are mixed and passed on to future generations. The process begins with a "primordial soup" which yields relatively simple images. On the basis of personal preferences of the user, this gradually evolves into complex intriguing animations. The final results, the E-volved Formulae, are stored and are displayed on a large screen or projected. They show a wide variety of outcomes of the successive evolutionary processes.
The Amsterdam based artist couple Erwin Driessens (1963 Wessem) and Maria Verstappen (1964 Someren) have worked together since 1990. After their study at the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and the Rijksakademie Amsterdam, they jointly developed a multifaceted oeuvre of software, machines and objects. Their research focuses on the possibilities that physical, biological and computer algorithms can offer for image generating processes. An important source of inspiration are the self-organizing processes in nature. In the Morphoteques series (form collections), they show the form variations, which can be expressed within a specific generative process. In other works, the shape transformations are evoked in real time by means of a machine. In their software and AI projects, they develop an artificial nature, which is expressed in all kinds of variations. Driessens & Verstappen participated in numerous exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad, a.o. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen Rotterdam, Centre Pompidou Paris, IVAM Institute Valencia, Museum Kröller-Müller Arnhem, Garage Museum Moscow, CaixaForum Barcelona, Eyebeam New York. The couple gives lectures and presentations at universities, art academies, festivals and conferences, a.o. Siggraph Los Angeles, Sonic Acts Amsterdam, Second Iteration Melbourne. In 1999 and 2001 their Tickle robot projects have been awarded first prize at VIDA Telefónica Madrid. In 2013 the couple received the Witteveen+Bos Art+technology Award for their entire oeuvre. The artists are represented by gallery DAM in Berlin.
George Drivas
Empirical Data 2.0
Experimental fiction | hdv | black and white | 30:0 | Greece | 2019
Empirical Data 2.0” is based on the personal experience of the georgian actor David Malteze as an immigrant in Greece, and his trajectory from entering the country to taking up acting. The protagonist of the film David Malteze, impersonates himself, at his first professional steps 10 years ago in one half of the screen. The reenactment of the actor’s real life is contrasted with a monologue held by himself, presented at the other half of the screen.
George Drivas was born in Athens, Greece. He has represented Greece at the 57th Biennale di Venezia, 2017. George Drivas’s work has been featured as a Solo Show at AnnexM / Megaron, Athens (2020), the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2018 and 2009) and La Galleria Nazionale, Rome, Italy, (2017) , as a tribute to him at the Lumen Quarterly Festival, Beijing, China (2017/18) and Athens’s International Film Festival (2014), and as part of a group exhibition or festival among others in “back forward rewind”, Media Art Lab, Moscow, Russia, “Imagined Communities”, 21st Biennial of Contemporary Art_Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2019-20), “Resilient Futures”, Contemporary Art Center of Thessaloniki (CACT, 2018), “ANTIDORON- the EMST Collection”, documenta 14, Kassel, Germany (2017), “As Rights Go By”, Q21 International, MuseumsQuartier Vienna, Austria (2016), Festival du nouveau cinéma, Montreal, Canada, (2015), “future past – past future”, Transmediale Festival, Berlin, Germany (2014), “Art Projections”, Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2013), “Hybrid Stories”, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2013), “Melancholy in Progress”, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei City, Taiwan (2012), “FILE”, Electronic Language International Festival, FIESP Cultural Center, Sao Paulo, ?razil (2012), Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, USA (2012), “Polyglossia”, Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, Greece (2011), “Digital Wave”, Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Thessaloniki, Greece (2009); “Young Greek Artists – In Present Tense”, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2008)and Media Art Forum, XXVII Moscow International Film Festival, Moscow, Russia (2006)
George Drivas
Laboratory of Dilemmas
Video | 4k | color | 10:38 | Greece | 2017
Laboratory of Dilemmas is a narrative video installation based on Aeschylus’ theatre play Iketides (Suppliant Women), which poses a dilemma between saving the Foreigner and maintaining the safety of the Native. Addressing current global sociopolitical issues, the work deals with the anguish, puzzlement, and confusion of individuals and social groups when called upon to address similar dilemmas. Aeschylus’ Iketides (Suppliant Women) is the first literary text in history that raises the issue of a persecuted group of people seeking for asylum. The Suppliants have left Egypt to avoid having to marry their first cousins and arrive at Argos seeking asylum from the King of the city. The King is then faced with a dilemma. If he helps the foreign women, he risks causing turmoil among his people and going to war with the Egyptians, who are after the Suppliants. But if he doesn’t help them, he will break the sacred laws of Hospitality and violate the principles of Law and Humanism, leaving the Suppliants to the mercy of their pursuers. Laboratory of Dilemmas focuses on the play’s dilemma through the excerpts of an unfinished documentary in the form of found footage about a scientific experiment. This experiment was never completed for unknown reasons, however the found excerpts of the unfinished documentary reveal today, after so many years, details of the experiment, as well as the hopes of the professor who envisioned it and the disagreements with his co-researchers.
George Drivas completed an MA in Film and Media studies at the Freie Universitaet in Berlin, after doing his bachelor in Political Science and Public Administration at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The artist makes films combining texts, videos and photographs. Through his camera, the artist seems to hide from his subjects. He focuses his narrative on the relation of the individual to society, addressing themes such as social integration, alienation, promisses, desillusion. He is the recipient of numerous awards namely the Best Experimental Film Award at London Greek Film Festival, London, UK (2010); Special Mention at “Strange Screen”, Experimental Film and Video Festival, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece (2009); 2nd prize at VII Media Art Forum, XXVII Moscow International Film Festival, Moscow, Russia (2006); 2nd prize at the Zebra International Poetry Film Festival, Berlin, Germany (2002) and Jury Award for Experimental Short Film at the New York Expo, NY, NY (2002). The artist’s work has also been featured as a Solo Show at the Galleria Nazionale, Rome, Italy, (2017) and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2009); as a Tribute to him at the Athens’s International Film Festival (2014), and as part of a group exhibition or festival among others in “ANTIDORON- the EMST Collection”, documenta 14, Kassel, Germany (2017), “As Rights Go By”, Group Show, Q21 International, MuseumsQuartier Vienna, Austria (2016), Festival du nouveau cinéma, Montreal, Canada, (2015), “future past – past future”, Group Show, Transmediale Festival, Berlin, Germany (2014), “Art Projections”, Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2013), “Hybrid Stories”, Group Show, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2013), “Melancholy in Progress”, Video Art Exhibition, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei City, Taiwan (2012), “FILE”, Electronic Language International Festival, FIESP Cultural Center, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2012), “Annual Exhibition”, Group Show, Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, USA (2012), “Les Rencontres Internationales: New Cinema and Contemporary Art”, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, “Polyglossia”, Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, Greece (2011), “ECU”, European Independent Film Festival, Paris, France (2010); “Digital Wave”, Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Thessaloniki, Greece (2009); “Transexperiences Greece” at Space 798, Beijing, China (2008); “Young Greek Artists – In Present Tense” at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2008); “Les Jeunes Cinéastes D’aujourd’hui” at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2007); Media Art Forum, XXVII Moscow International Film Festival, Moscow, Russia (2006); Poetry International Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2003); and Dactyl Foundation for the Arts and Humanities, NY, NY (2002). George Drivas’s work is part of the Athens’s National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) collection.