Catalogue > Search

More than 170 years ago, Hans Christian Andersen wrote ?The Emperor?s new clothes?, a tale which is universally known today. It is question of vanity, power, deception, manipulation and truth. This tale was already based on an older version from Juan Manuel: ?El Conde de Lucanor?, from 1335. The author puts the question of the effect such a history could produce nowadays, retransmitted by our media. Thanks to the complicity of ARTE, he tried to answer it.

Jakob Gautel, born in 1965 in Karlsruhe, studied in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure of Art. He soon starts to exhibit, in France and abroad, and to try out forms of art out of agreed spaces. He takes part in exhibits in galleries, museums and art centers, as well as in artistic spaces and associations, he takes part in urban projects and seeking to redefine his relationship as an artist with his public. He carries out works of art in public spaces, with the help of others artists (in particular Jason Karaïndros, and the choreographer Sandra Martinez) and craftsmen. He left, between 1995 and 1997, he spent six months in Indonesian, looking for his grandmother, and 1999 to 2000 the Médicis Villa in Rome (Italy). He works with drawing, photographs, video projections, editing, books, etc, choosing each time the most appropriate technique for his subject.

Livestream performance, Paris, March 22, 2020, during the first coronavirus quarantine. Sitting at a table, very close to a candle, just a few centimeters away. Staying immobile, breathing in and out. With every breath the flame flickers.

Jakob Gautel Born in 1965 in Karlsruhe, Germany, lives and works in Paris, but not exclusively. Studied at the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His multiform work (photo, video, installation, performance, drawings, books ...) deals with the image and explores the frontiers between essence and appearance, reality and fiction. Production of sens rather than of objects ...

New Town ? Video installation, Jakob Gautel 2010 An urban intervention for the artis?cité programme, coordinated by ?Le 19?, the regional contemporary art centre of Montbéliard. Cultural project, part of the ANRU urban restructuring programme, led by the Communauté d?Agglomération du Pays de Montbéliard, with support from the City of Valentigney. In 1961, Philippe Bardinet produced a film commissioned by Peugeot, about the new Les Buis area, a model town in Valentigney, near Montbéliard, built to house the thousands of new workers and employees arriving from Italy, Spain or Algeria to work at the Peugeot factory in Sochaux. Though this film was a commission, it asked questions about the real nature of that kind of housing project that are still pertinent today: « Will the children and parents manage to adapt to such new conditions ?  Is it just a housing project or a real town ? » «  But man needs more than just to sleep and to eat. He needs ? He needs ? ». It questions the younger generation?s position, integration, the role played by commerce, and has great cinematographic qualities. In the meantime the area has changed a lot. The population has diminished, unemployment has increased, and there is a danger of ghettoisation. The Ideal City of 1961 seems distant. 50 years on, for the area?s anniversary, I produced a « mirror-film », to be projected opposite the original film, opposing the former imageswith those of today, showing run-down buildings or those about to be demolished, closed shops, b also the social life in the area, the children and youngsters, and images of spectators watching the film during the three public projections organised by the social and cultural service MJC. These projections were followed by discussions, mediated by Guy Vandeneeckhoute. Special thanks to Maxime Fraissinet for his precious assistance.

Jakob Gautel, born in 1965 in Karlsruhe, Germany, came to Paris to study at the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where he worked on drawing, graphic arts, photography and installation with Christian Boltanski. He lives and works in Paris, although not exclusively. Very soon he began to show his work in France as well as internationally, and to experiment with art forms outside traditional art spaces : posters, actions, perfomances, interventions ? He has participated in numerous exhibitions in galleries and art centres as well as artist-run and collective spaces, and has participated in international art biennials in France, and elsewhere. He has created actions within urban settings, interventions within cities and local areas, and worked on projects or interventions attempting to redefine the relationship between artist and public. He has also worked with stage directors and choreographers, and on projects with children. He produced works of art in public spaces and for commissions, collaborating with artisans, and then, from 1995 to 1997, left to Indonesia for six months, and from 1999 to 2000 to the Villa Medici in Rome. In 2008 he was nominated Chevalier de l?ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He works with photography, video, installation, projections, books etc., each time choosing the most appropriate technique for his subject. His principal concern, and one which is visible throughout his work, is not a specific subject or technique, but rather an ongoing research into the narrow line between reality and fiction, between the world of appearances and what is hidden, between being and seeming, between the exterior and the interior. Since 2001 he has also taught at architectural schools, first in Versailles, and now at la Villette in Paris, on undergraduate and postgraduate courses, with lectures on ?Art, Scenography and Architecture?.

"La production fantôme - The Phantom Production" is a video-based piece presented as a diptych. A double screen shows simultaneously a real filmed video and a synthetic video. Inspired by the cultural idea of photorealism (how markers or signs of camera increase the realism of synthetic images), it is the camera movement that is here investigated as a specific cultural sign of photorealism. With this diptych piece, the tension between the filmed sequences and the synthetically generated sequences proposes an interrupted cinematographic production workflow, leaving this open work as an entrance to a cultural and critical reflection on photorealism in the digital age.

Philippe-Aubert Gauthier is a sound and digital artist, junior mechanical engineer and a researcher in acoustics (spatial sound reproduction). He holds an MSc and PhD in acoustics, and is currently a researcher for the Groupe d'Acoustique de l'Université de Sherbrooke (Canada). His artist's statement is at the crossroads of the arts, sciences, technology and culture. Gauthier has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Fonds de Recherche Nature et Technologie Québec and other organizations. Tanya St-Pierre is a Graduate in visual arts from UQTR (Université du Québec, Trois-Rivières, Qc, Canada). Native of Gatineau (Québec, Canada), she currently lives and works at Sherbrooke City (Qc, Canada). St-Pierre's work have been supported by the CALQ and was shown in divers contexts in Canada, United States, Mexico, Morocco and in the United Kingdom. Also member of the performance duet NOÏZEFER CWU, since 2004, she participated in divers performance art and experimental music events.

« Modabe: mod stream » est une animation basée sur une performance sonore de Philippe-Aubert Gauthier produite en temps réel par synthèse modulaire matérielle. En plaçant la performance sonore dans un environnement virtuel et dans un monde imaginaire, l'animation propose un montage vidéo-sonore hétérogène par jump-cut peuplé de références populaires et bruitistes. Initialement créées et produites dans le contexte particulier que l’on connaît de 2021, la performance en studio, sans audience, et la construction virtuelle vidéographique sont non sans rappeler les salles de concerts et de cinéma désertes de 2021.

Philippe-Aubert Gauthier se penche sur les interactions entre arts, cultures, sciences et technologies. Ses œuvres explorent la construction sociale et culturelle des technologies : techno-fiction ou archéologie des médias qui sondent les passés et futurs technologiques. Il s’intéresse au matérialisme numérique, à la spéculation comme méthode. Les formes qu’il déploie appartiennent aux arts sonores et numériques. Il est professeur à l’École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’Université du Québec à Montréal et directeur de la recherche artistique du Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music, Media and Technology. Tanya St-Pierre est artiste en arts visuels, sonores et numériques. En explorant les relations possibles entre les arts visuels ou numériques et la narration, elle transforme divers systèmes d'altération de la narration en propositions poétiques et conceptuelles. Propositions qui, s'inscrivant dans un schéma plus général, déjouent et questionnent les notions de représentation et d’artefacts culturels. On trouve dans ses œuvres des traces déchirées de narrations et de fictions. Gauthier et Saint-Pierre travaillent souvent en duo pour créer des installations et des vidéos, ou même des performances. Ils vivent et travaillent à Montréal (Canada).

"Dans une sorte de rêve éveillé - L'invitation" is a computer-generated animation about the domestication of nature in our homes, based on Tanya St-Pierre's handmade collages. The starting point for the project was the desire to transpose St-Pierre's handmade collage practice into computer-generated images, but not only by integrating collages into 3D scenes, but rather by approaching collage work as a method for creating 3D environments. The first influence for this work was the collage series "Espaces intérieurs" (2019 -2020): a reflection on the theatricality of nature in the interior spaces of our daily lives. The origin of this series of over 150 collages lies in the discovery of a stack of interior design magazines published in the 70s and 80s. To these magazine pages are added a few fragments of gardening magazines from the '80s, The Space Issue (National Geographic Society, 2017), the book En El Espacio (Time Life Editions, 1984) and the illustrated dictionary Natural Wonders of the World (Reader's Digest Selection, 1977). A strong feature in these interior design magazines was this constant narrative tension between the elements of nature and domestic, controlled, organized interior spaces. This series of collages takes an archaeological and architectural look at a theatrical era of interior decoration. An era that seems to desire the domestication of these natural elements through their representation in our homes. Like an attempt to convince ourselves that we dominate and possess these natural elements. An attempt that exposes an almost unresolved fictional tension between, on the one hand, the modern comforts constructed and edified by the thundering economy and, on the other, the muted threat of nature, the changing climate and their implied cataclysmic forces. ? ?

Tanya St-Pierre is a Graduate in visual arts from UQTR (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Qc, Canada). Philippe-Aubert Gauthier is a digital and sound artist, musician, engineer, Ph.D. in acoustics, and a professor at the School of Visual and Media Arts at UQÀM. Both artists presently work and live in Montréal Québec, Canada. Each artists have a solo practice but they also combine their specializations for large-scale visual and sound installations. Gauthier and St-Pierre have been working as a duo since 2003. Their respective interests are addressed in exchanges that lead to hybrid artistic proposals, results of self-critical contests and inventions in tandem. Works have been supported by the CALQ and CAC and shown in divers contexts in Canada, the United States, Maroc, Mexico, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan.

Fiction reposant sur des progrès scientifiques et techniques obtenus dans un passé plus ou moins lointain, dans un passé fictif, dans un univers parallèle au nôtre, un univers possédant ses propres dimensions d?espace et de temps et, où l'avenir promet toujours des progrès techniques. Futur, l'impression existe-t-elle encore? Cessera-t-elle un jour? Pourtant, plaques d’impression courbes, mises en pâte, autres défauts et noir de fumée habitent et forment toujours nos cultures, subtilement. Galaxie d'artefacts historiques imprimés, résidus de scénarios et organisations passés. Sorte d’encodage historique imbriquant cultures et technologies, des indices laissés aux historiens qui décodent. Maintenant, qu'est-ce que cette impression en trois dimensions. Qu'est-ce qu'elle nous dit, quel est son message? Pourquoi emprunte-t-elle le déguisement ou le marketing de l'impression? Nous promettant un futur digne des science-fictions et d’une fabrication instannée voire, magique, est-elle, cette impression 3D, si lisse et si parfaite? Avec Intertypes, nous lisons l'impression 3D dans la ligne historique et culturelle de l'impression. Intertypes : entre les types, entre des époques, il reste une trame. Solidifier des encres et des chimies, la fumée et ses poussières. Intertypes : projection ou installation vidéo. Soutien du CALQ, partenariat avec la Galerie d'art Foreman et la Société d'histoire de Sherbrooke.

La pratique artistique de Philippe-Aubert Gauthier est conséquente de ses profils : artiste sonore et numérique, musicien, ingénieur, M.Sc., docteur en acoustique et professeur à l’École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l’UQAM. Le cœur de sa démarche artistique est basé sur l’interaction des arts, des cultures, des sciences et des technologies. Ces champs de connaissances sont utilisés pour le développement de pièces artistiques et musicales qui abordent les constructions sociales des technologies et des cultures liées aux technologies. Gauthier explore aussi la composition et l’improvisation sonores par l’usage de la synthèse modulaire comme un espace de jeu pour la création de systèmes génératifs rudimentaires et bruyants. Tanya St-Pierre est artiste en arts visuels, sonores et numériques. En explorant les relations possibles entre les arts visuels ou numériques et la narration, elle transforme divers systèmes d'altération de la narration en propositions poétiques et conceptuelles. Propositions qui, s?inscrivant dans un schéma plus général, déjouent et questionnent les notions de représentation et d’artefacts culturels. On trouve dans ses œuvres des traces déchirées de narrations et de fictions. Depuis 2003, leurs démarches se rencontrent dans des projets collaboratifs.

A spontaneous walk through Paris at night.

Fabienne Gautier is an artist who lives in Paris. She works with several forms of media, such as photography, video, and film. Born in 1967, she graduated with a degree in Fine Arts in 1991 in Dijon, France. She collaborated with Tom Jarmusch on several projects. Her work has been exhibited internationally: in the new Museum of Contemporary Art NYC, The Kitchen NYC, Locarno, Rotterdam, Clermont-Ferrand Videoformes, Media City Canada, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Revelation Perth Australia, and the New York underground festivals, among many others.

The video diptych de "sol a sol" builds up the portrait of Antonio Preciado, an Ecuadorian poet. His poetry is strongly related to his country and more particularly to his birthplace, Esmeraldas. In 2003, he was the ambassador of Ecuador in Paris. This video tells the story of somebody who is displaced, of an individual living away from his habitual context. Landscapes of his city Esmeraldas are shown on the left screen, while the right screen presents fragments of an interview carried out in his Parisian residence. The images bring closer two spaces of life of a same man. A broader context takes shape through the specificity of an individual: the history of the black community of his city Esmeraldas and his experience as ambassador representing his country in France, may be perceived through Antonio Preciado's story, told with images of his private life, the account of his childhood and his becoming poet.

I was born in Quito, Ecuador. I have lived in France for 8 years and I speak French, English and of course Spanish. I studied at the School of Art at the Central University of Ecuador and also at the Higher Institute of Art at The Havana, Cuba. I continued my studies at the Higher National School of Arts of Cergy-Paris, where I obtained the DNSEP with the congratulations of the jury. I took part last year in the program of the Post-diploma at the National School of Fine Arts of Lyon and I currently carry out a Master at the UFR Arts, Philosophy and Aesthetics at the University Paris VIII.

Sixteen years after the war, in the main square of Zagreb several thousand people gathered to watch a live broadcast of the verdict to Croatian generals. Through a series of close-ups, the film documents the eruption of emotions caused by the verdict.

Đuro Gavran (Bjelovar - Croatia, 1982.) Đuro Gavran was born in 1982 in Bjelovar. He graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb MA film and television directing. He graduated also from the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the University of Zagreb. He is the author of five documentary features (Bojan; Kelts; We Wanted Workers and All We Got Were People; The Big Day; The Verdict) and two experimental films (Glassballetdancer and Our Beautiful Homeland). As a cinematographer he worked on documentary films Above average (dir. Igor Bezinović; Restart prod, 2008), Irreversible (dir. Igor Bezinović, Restart, 2009) and The Blockage (dir. Igor Bezinović, Factum and Restart, 2012). In addition to film, he is involved in other forms of visual art (photography, graphics and installations). He has held three individual and about thirty collaborative national and international exhibitions. Since 2008 he is a member of ULUPUH (Croatian Association of Artists in Applied Arts), multimedia department. Together with Miljenka Čogelja and Boris Vido?ević, in 2012 he started Pipser d.o.o., a film production company and a design studio.

"The Bread" is a scene, a chapter taken from a documentary work in progress based on a family of Bedouin in Syria for a decade. This documentary is sonorous, musical, it has its songs and its voices, but no dialogue. This project, started in August 2000 in collaboration with the lebanese anthropologist Danielle Davie, is made up of nomad corpuscles, autonomous and interactive. "The Bread", here with a new editing, opens the final project.

Jean-Didier Gazeau, born in France in 1980, is a contemporary artist graduate of the Beaux-Arts of paris. He works and lives in Paris, Tours and Brussels.

1518: An epidemic broke out during a group dance in Strasbourg, France. According to some interpretations, it was due to the ingestion of rye mushrooms. 1520: The smallpox epidemic led to the death of indigenous people in Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco, which would be one of the main causes of the fall of the two cities. 2020: the pandemic of COVID-19 is declared, we live an unprecedented event in contemporary history, it was then necessary to protect the body, limit its space, its interaction, its mobility. Coreomanía links these three historical moments through a dance competition that takes place in the vicinity of Tlatelolco, Mexico City. The winners are the participants who have not stopped dancing. The action is recorded in a video that is then edited as a choreographic piece. The movements, the bodies that come together again, allude to the collective construction and strength of being together. Omar Gámez dedicates his work as a visual artist to making visible dissident communities, as well as exploring different ways of representing the body. His work is distinguished by the expansion of the possibilities offered by visual media in order to present an alternative way of interacting. Coreomanía is a celebration of life through the movement of the body, a celebration of collective interaction through dance. Luis Josué Martínez Rodríguez Curator

The work of Omar Gámez (Lives and works in Mexico City) generates a reflection on actions provoked directly or indirectly, where the body is deployed as a sub-theme. The body is the medium to propitiate concrete practices. Photographic and video documentation is where his work is usually understood. Each project intervenes in public and private spaces with specific activations, generates reflections of the body by deploying various themes such as desire, dissident communities and the production of affective bonds. He has presented his video work at LesGaiCineMad 2023; La Nuit Blanche at the Cervantes Institute in Paris, France, 2008; ADD TV and NewFest, New York, 2007; LesGaiCineMad, Madrid; Video_dumbo, New York; Expresión en Corto, Guanajuato; Mostra Lambda, Barcelona; Athens Video Art Festival; Inside Out Festival in Toronto, Canada, in 2006; and the IX and X Festival MIX at the Cineteca Nacional de México, 2005, 2006 and 2023.

Because a step in the direction of reductionism leads to a dismantling of the limits of traditional music, it is better to exceed reduction and find a new path. The result is a new secession rich with textural sonorities of the most explorative kind for each instrumentalist and the materials she must transform. Aural intensity depends upon the sensitivity of the listening. This profound listening can happen in a dense atmosphere of sound as well as in a thin one. Each musician is skilled in coaxing alien sounds from instruments abnormally considered well understood. Davies' background with the London scene displays not only his improvisational integrity but his desire to take new chances and make them work. Capece is at home with lower case sounds and new music composition but is also able to leave safe idealistic modes behind for the raw work of a new paradigm with his saxophone. Gburek maintains a concern with walking a line that falls between genres and making him invisible, but his sound is suddenly perceived when the other players remove themselves and we realize that like the trees in a valley which have been there all along, blending together almost anonymously into oxygen.

Jeff Gburek is a guitarist, a composer of electronic music, and a sound artist currently living in Berlin. He employs extended & prepared guitar techniques, signal processing, open source applications, and phonography to create richly textural music, wherein extreme pianissimo, organic object manipulation, and silence contrast energetic swells of excited electronics. For eight years he has worked with dance/theater artist Ephia in Djalma Primordial Science, evolving a praxis of body and sound through performance and pedagogy. He spent time re-orienting his electronic environment at STEIM in Amsterdam in 2005, and was awarded a scholarship in 2006 to study composition in Darmstadt with Helmut Lachenmann.

Claus Van Bebber is one of the great German turntablists who still remains largely unknown outside of his country. It was only last year, for instance, that he finally teamed up with Philip Jeck in Cologne. Jeff Gburek had the opportunity to record with Van Bebber at Nur Nicht Nur studios (Kleve, Germany) in March 2006. The session was unique because Claus Van Bebber played only one turntable (instead of 6 or 8). The music is spontaneous, unpredictable but also very measured, reflecting the precise percussion background of both musicians. (Van Bebber as a free jazz drummer and Gburek's study of the rhythmic intricacies of gamelan music.) This duet brings together the talents of two multi-instrumentalists with experience traversing media and genre: Van Bebber as installation artist, sculptor, performance artist, and Gburek employing analog, digital sound, and phonongraphy (field recording).

Jeff Gburek is a guitarist /electronic music composer/sound artist currently living in Berlin. He employs extended & prepared guitar techniques, signal processing, open source applications, and phonography to create richly textural music, wherein extreme pianissimo, organic object manipulation, and silence contrast energetic swells of excited electronics. He recently re-oriented his electronic environment at STEIM in Amsterdam, September in 2005 and was awarded a scholarship in 2006 to study composition in Darmstadt with Helmut Lachenmann. Claus Van Bebber was born in the year 1949 in Niederrhein, Germany. He is active as a musician and artist. He has participated in many expositions in Germany and abroad, and has done performances and concerts. He is also co-founder of the artists-group "Heinrich Mucken"; participated at "documenta 8", kassel 1987; made several LP and CD recordings; and performed with his 'Schallplattenkonzerten' f.e. at 'Loft' Cologne in 1990; 'Ave' Festival Arnhem 1991; 'Kunsthalle' Recklinghausen, 'Performance Festival' Turin 1992; 'Galerie Pankow' Berlin, 'Dodorama' Rotterdam, 'Festival für improvisierte Musik' Copenhagen 1994; and 'de Fabriek' Eindhoven 1995.

When spending a lot of time at home in isolation, the walls begin to move. The sense of time fades, the days pass quietly, everything seems to repeat itself endlessly. Spaces, conversations, visual impressions and sounds merge and make everything seem like a long dream.

Nicolas Gebbe was born in London in 1986. He currently lives and works in Frankfurt am Main / Germany as a 3D artist, filmmaker and sound designer. 2018 he receives his art diploma at Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach with a film major. He focuses on experimental 3D animation and hybrid film formats. Since graduation, his animated short films have been screened on a variety of festivals such as Locarno Film Festival, Festival du Nouveau Cinèma Montreal and Ann Arbor Film Festival.

This movie is about a young girl. Day by day, it zaps into what`s going on around this girl, her encounters, her relationships. She meets men, women, visits her grandmother. One of the men seems to be her boyfriend. But on the very next day, we can see her with another one. In bed. And the following day with a third. Once, at night, after a party, she travels to the sea together with a boyfriend, and when they wake up, there`s sand all around. Desert. But isn`t this episode called "Thursday"? A dream, then? It seems like that. It seems like that because it`s not certain, not clear. What is clear is that there is this girl, and the men, and the other persons. We don`t find out what they think, what they fear. What remains are just moments, moments of longing and/or indifference; moments of loneliness and almost desperate nearness, innocent desire and calculating behaviour. Moments that could be what we call life.

Carsten GEBHARDT was born in 1962. From 1994 to 2001 he was director of the theatre project in the alternative cultural centre VOXXX in Chemnitz and produced several plays. In 1996 he made his first video. Since 1998 he does short films, in which disorientation and ambivalence of its characters feelings are the determining items.

The construction of the controversial Three Gorges Dam on the Chinese Yangtze River has been completed in 2009. In the context of a general research on the landscape as a bearer of meaning Pieter Geenen explores the ?sunken? universe of the flooded Three Gorges Reservoir behind the dam in his video `atlantis`.

Pieter Geenen (°1979) lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. After his Master Photography he studied at Transmedia Postgraduate Program in Brussels. In his audio and video works he examines the landscape as a bearer of meaning, the way landscape and man relate to each other, and how we experience time and space via the landscape. His work has been presented, amongst others, at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL), Argos (Brussels, BE), MuHKA_media (Antwerp, BE), Azad Art Gallery (Tehran), Art Rotterdam (NL), All Art Now International Video Art Festival (Damascus, SY), Images Festival (Toronto, CA), EMAF (Osnabrück, DE), Media City Festival (Windsor, CA) and at the Venice Biennial.

The isolated people of Nagorno-Karabakh are living in a time vacuum since the cease fire of 1994. They live in a de facto independent country, but remain unrecognized as such by the international community. This area is still subject of an unresolved and long forgotten conflict which is the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then what does national identity mean in a country that doesn`t exist? What are the concepts to construct such an identity? Isn`t a nation an artificial construction after all? And how is the landscape an object of identification, to them, and to us, the viewer?

Pieter Geenen (°1979) lives and works in Brussels. After his Master of Fine Arts degree in photography he completed the international postgraduate program Transmedia at Sint-Lukas University College of Art and Design Brussels. His audiovisual work has been presented at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Images Festival Toronto, DocLisboa, EXiS Seoul, FID Marseille, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, Centre Pompidou-Metz, ARGOS Centre for Art and Media, La Capella Barcelona, FRAC Basse-Normandie and Médiathèque FMAC Geneva amongst others. In 2007 he received the `Input/Output Art Prize` for emerging artists and in 2011 he was awarded the first prize `Fondation Henri Servais` from the Art`Contest Art Prize in Belgium. Together with Sirah Foighel Brutmann, Eitan Efrat, and Meggy Rustamova he`s a founding member of Messidor, a platform for reflection on and the production and distribution of moving image.

Around the southernmost tip of Europe, the European and African continent almost seem to meet. That`s why the Strait of Gibraltar is an important migration route, not only for the migratory birds spotted there, but also for refugees trying to reach Europe. At the Mirador del Estrecho panoramic lookout point tourists gather to take pictures of the stunning panorama, and comment on the view of Africa that they`re offered. mirador is centered around spectatorship and the act of watching itself. Like silent witnesses the tourist, the immigrant, the audience and the camera look at the landscape and indirectly at each other. They look to the other side, facing a continent that appears like a fata morgana. While being sold a dream in a world of increasing mobility and globalisation, this situation of `we` versus `they` and `here` versus `there` reveals the postcolonial gaze.

Pieter Geenen (°1979) lives and works in Brussels. He holds a master`s degree in photography and he`s a laureate of the international postgraduate program Transmedia at Sint-Lukas University College of Art and Design Brussels. His work has been presented at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, VIDEOEX Zürich, Doclisboa, Images Festival Toronto, EMAF Osnabrück, EXiS Festival Seoul, FID Marseille, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, M-Museum Leuven, La Capella Barcelona, Centre Pompidou-Metz, FRAC Basse-Normandie, ARGOS Centre for Art and Media Brussels and Médiathèque FMAC Geneva among others. He won the Input/Output Art Prize for emerging artists in 2007 and in 2011 he was awarded the first prize `Fondation Henri Servais` of the Art`Contest Art Prize. Work of Pieter Geenen is part of the collection of the Flemish Community, Colección Inelcom Madrid and different private collections. Together with audiovisual artists and filmmakers Sirah Foighel Brutman, Eitan Efrat and Meggy Rustamova he is a founding member of Messidor, a collective platform for reflection, production and distribution.

Third Person (Plural) is a collage essay film based on a collection of 200 postwar USA informational films and newsreels from the Library of Congress and the American National Archives. Originating as a quest to source documents of the early European integration processes, the film offers a snapshot of the post-war American newsreel film history, and a visual reminder of the crystallisation of the cold war rhetoric. Composed of 8 episodes, the film unfolds into an expansive feminist re-reading of this hegemonic imperial masculine gaze, while paying tribute to the ‘unseen’ glances, making visible a collective ‘third person’.

Aikaterini Gegisian [b. Thessaloniki, Greece] is an artist, filmmaker and researcher whose filmic and photographic collages, drawing on diverse image histories, interweave documentary, archive and found material, in examining the production of cultural and national identities. Five years in the making, Third Person (Plural) (2023) is her first feature length film based on archival research at the Library of Congress. Her short films have been exhibited internationally including International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, IFF Innsbruck, Videoformes, Kasseller Documentary Film Festival, Beirut Art Center, 8th Brighton Photo Biennale, Tallin Photomonth among others. In 2016, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art organised the first survey of her moving image practice. She has received several awards including First Prize, Nagoya University of Arts, Japan & the Golden Lion for best national pavilion for her participation at the group show Armenity at the Armenian Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale. Further recent shows include International Center of Photography (ICP), New York (2023); MOMus-Museum of Modern Art, Greece (2023); Halle 14 Centre of Contemporary Art, Leipzig (2021); The Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (2020); The Whitworth, Manchester (2019); National Arts Museum of China (2018); The Jewish Museum, Moscow (2018); Kunsthalle Osnabruck (2017); BALTIC, Newcastle (2017); among others. She lives between London and Thessaloniki and teaches at London Metropolitan University.

On a bleak day in midwinter, a girl travels to her city's bus station to meet someone. She travels familiar streets, confident and absentminded. Her relationship with her city changes when no one arrives on the expected bus. She wanders out of the bus station, noticing her city in a new way.

Noah Gehman is a Canadian director based out of Montreal and Toronto. He has a BFA in film production from Concordia University. His films explore life in urban environments and rural environments with attention paid to work, public space, and the unknowable. He employs observational cinematography, and expressionistic sound design to straddle the internal and external experiences of his characters. Beyond writing and directing, Noah works as a sound designer.