Catalogue 2023-2024

Ceci est l'histoire d'un Indigène Uitoto qui a organisé une résistance contre l'exploitation du caoutchouc au début du XXe siècle sous la Casa Arana. Yarokamena invoque les forces spirituelles et cosmiques de la guerre, libérant de son conteneur son pouvoir destructeur qui finit par créer une spirale de trahison et de mort. Ce récit remarquable a été interdit par les autorités traditionnelles en raison de son potentiel à inciter les jeunes à la rébellion et à servir de stimulus pour recourir à la sorcellerie. Cette histoire est racontée par Gerardo Sueche, conseiller du peuple Uitoto, traversant des portraits filmiques d'une Amazonie délirante, envahie par des ruines technologiques, des antennes dysfonctionnelles, des navires fantômes et des spectres coloniaux ancrés dans la mémoire orale des survivants de cet épisode d'exploitation et d'extractivisme. Le film utilise le cinéma comme un nouveau récipient pour cette force destructrice.

Andrés Jurado, is a Colombian artist, filmmaker, researcher, and producer whose creative exploration spans experimental and expanded cinema, archives, counter-archives, contemporary art, propaganda, mosquitoes, extraterrestrials, and the space race. He investigates their intricate impacts on shaping modern narratives and politics. He co-founded La Vulcanizadora, a studio that facilitates the convergence of Experimental Cinema, Visual Arts, Expanded Theater, and other practices. His film "El Renacer del Carare" earned a Special Mention at the 31st FIDMarseille (2020) and the Audience Award at Panorama de Cinema Colombiano (Paris, 2021). His recent short film, "Yarokamena," premiered at the 72nd Berlinale Forum Expanded and received an Honorable Mention at DocLisboa, Portugal. Between 2017 and 2021, he curated the Expanded Documentary section at MIDBO in Colombia. Part of the Forensic Architecture Team, he contributed to the "Traces of Disappearance" research and exhibition, focusing on land issues in Colombia. Currently, he's engrossed in his debut feature documentary, "Welcome: Interplanetary and Sidereal Space Conquerors." This captivating essay film offers a Latin American perspective on cinema, colonization, and the space race, following the specters of a jaibaná, an Emberá indigenous shaman involved in preparing astronauts for their monumental lunar journey.

Halmang revolves around a group of eight women in their 70s and 80s. It is filmed by the coast of Jeju Island near a lava rock islet that used to serve as a shamanic shrine for the wind goddess Yongdeung Halmang. The women, who have worked and made a living together for most their lives as haenyeo sea divers, used to depart together for the sea from this very location. The title Halmang refers to this spiritual aspect as shamanic goddesses in Jeju are referred to as ‘halmang’ while also being the Jeju term for ‘grandmother’ and a respectful form of address for a woman. It was also from this area that Kaisen’s grandmother during her lifetime used to depart for the sea as a haenyeo sea diver. The film portrays the aging women’s lived experience, their community and spirituality connected to the sea, the wind and the island. Central to the work is its focus on the collective use and care for sochang; a white, long cotton cloth associated with female labor and a symbol of cycle of life and death and humans’ connection to the spirit world. The camera carefully registers their hands, gestures, and facial expressions as they meticulously tend to the fabric. As the piece unfolds, they start connecting the long rolls of sochang until it comes to form a large spiral enveloping the black lava rocks. The music is produced by Lior Suliman (also known as Dub Mentor) and is comprised of layers of on-site recordings, looped, interleaved and treated to create an immersive sound experience. It also features The Song of the Haenyeos by Gang Gyung Ja and Song of Haenyeo Preservation Association.

Jane Jin Kaisen is an artist, filmmaker, and Professor of the School of Media Arts, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Spanning the mediums of video installation, experimental film, photography, performance, and text, her work is informed by extensive interdisciplinary research and long-term engagement with minoritarian communities. She is known for her visually striking, multilayered, performative, poetic, and multi-voiced feminist works through which past and present are brought into relation. Engaging topics such as memory, migration, borders, and translation, she activates the field where lived experience and embodied knowledge intersect with larger political histories. Kaisen is a recipient of is a recipient of the New Carlsberg Foundation Artist Grant (2023) and a 3-year work grant from the Danish Arts Foundation (2022) and awarded Exhibition of the Year 2020 by International Association of Art Critics, Denmark for the exhibition Community of Parting at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. She represented Korea at the 58th Venice Biennale and has exhibited and screened her artworks and films in a wide range of contexts internationally.

A procession of non-conforming people – from musicians, artists and poets to anti-miliary activists, environmentalists and diasporic, queer and trans people – carry a coffin together through the ruins of what turns out to be an abandoned resort on the South Korean island of Jeju. It soon becomes clear that this is no traditional Confucian funeral. Age and gender roles are subverted, the coffin is draped in dark camouflage colours and the traditional portrait of the deceased is replaced by a black mirror. In the field between funeral ritual, political protest and carnival performance, the people in the procession who have come together to undo a world order built upon hierarchy and division, march through the ruins of capitalist modernity. Time and place begin to lose their stability as mythical Dokkaebi deities pass through the building and heavy rain and wind blow through its cavities. As if possessed the group, in a moment of revolutionary fervour, overthrows and dismantles the scaffolding of the prevailing order and other stories begin to take form. Jane Jin Kaisen’s interdisciplinary work not only activates Jeju’s violent history as a site of oppression and rebellion, but is a work with universal power.

Jane Jin Kaisen (born 1980 in Jeju Island, lives in Copenhagen) is a visual artist, filmmaker, and Professor of the School of Media Arts, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Spanning the mediums of video installation, narrative experimental film, photographic installation, performance, and text, Kaisen’s artistic practice is informed by extensive interdisciplinary research and engagement with diverse communities. She is known for her visually striking, multilayered, performative, poetic, and multi-voiced feminist works through which past and present are brought into relation. Engaging topics such as memory, migration, borders, and translation, she activates the field where lived experience and embodied knowledge intersect with larger political histories. Through multi-year projects and collaborations, she has engaged topics such as transnational adoption, the Korean War and division, the Jeju April Third Massacre, and Cold War legacies. Another recurring focus revolves around nature and island spaces, cosmologies, feminist re-framings of myths, and engagement with ritual and spiritual practices. Working from the thresholds of mediums and forms, disciplines and sensibilities, her works negotiate and mediate the means of representation, resistance, and recognition, thus contouring alternative genealogies and sites of collective emergence. Kaisen is a recipient of the New Carlsberg Foundation Artist Grant (2023) and a 3-year work grant from the Danish Arts Foundation (2022). She represented Korea at the 58th Venice Biennale with the film installation Community of Parting (2019) alongside artists Hwayeon Nam and siren eun young jeong in the exhibition History Has Failed Us, but No Matter curated by Hyunjin Kim. She was awarded “Exhibition of the Year 2020” by AICA - International Association of Art Critics, Denmark for the exhibition Community of Parting at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. Kaisen has participated in the biennials of Liverpool, Gwangju, Anren, Jeju, among others. Recent solo exhibitions include Jane Jin Kaisen: Braiding and Mending at The Image Centre (2023), Of Specters or Returns at Le Bicolore (2023), Currents at Fotografisk Center (2023) Parallax Conjunctures at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2021), Community of Parting at Art Sonje Center (2021) and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (2020). Other recent exhibitions and screenings: Dislocation Blues: Jane Jin Kaisen, Tate Modern (2023), Ceremony (Burial of an Undead World), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2022), Checkpoint: Border view from Korea, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2022), Unmoored Adrift Ashore, Or Gallery Vancouver (2022). She holds a PhD in artistic research from the University of Copenhagen, Department of Art and Cultural Studies, an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Art from the University of California Los Angeles, an MA in Art Theory and Media Art from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and she participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. Other exhibition and screening venues include: Kunsthal Aarhus, Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center, The National Museum of Photography (DK), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlinale, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Times Art Center, Museum Ludwig, Videonale (DE), Asian Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Gana Art New York, DePaul Art Museum (USA), ARKO Art Center, Seoul Museum of Art, Incheon Art Platform, Seoul New Media Art Festival, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Asia Culture Center, Coreana Museum of Art, DMZ International Documentary Film Festival (KR), Silencio Club, Palais de Tokyo, Foundation Fiminco (FR), Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö Konsthall, Inter Arts Center, Kalmar Art Museum (SE), Sørlandet Art Museum and Oslo Kunstforening (NO), Finnish Museum of Photography (FN), ParaSite (HK), Kyoto Arts Center, Kyoto Museum of Art, Fukouka Museum of Art, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, (JP), Times Museum Guangzhou, Beijing 798 Art Zone (CN), Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Art, Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival (TW), Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (PH), The National Gallery (Indonesia), and Townhouse Gallery (EG).

Shokouk: A Cosmicomedy in Four Acts is a transhistorical hybrid documentary that traces a polyphony of characters, sites and encounters related to infrastructures of space travel and cosmic imaginaries. Following a vertiginous narrative connecting various cosmic machinations from the 12th century Persianate world to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the present moment, the film weaves historical facts and archival fabulations, and questions our common perceptions of time and space.

Pejvak is an ongoing collaboration between Rouzbeh Akhbari (Tehran, Iran 1992) and Felix Kalmenson (Saint Petersburg, Russia 1987). Their films have screened in numerous international film festivals including at São Paulo International Film Festival, Doclisboa, Sharjah Film Platform, and Kasseler Dokfest, winning awards including the Prix George at Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, 2020. Their work has been exhibited at museums and galleries internationally including; MAC VAL (Paris), Villa Arson (Nice), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), M HKA (Antwerp), Z33 (Hasselt) and Si Shang Art Museum (Beijing).

The video is an artist’s momentary personal reaction on the events of August 2022, which took place in Estonia, in Narva, Maria’s home town. Since the war in Ukraine escalated, the removal of Soviet monuments in Estonia became intensively debated topic followed by the government’s decision to demolish any Soviet attributes and monuments from the public spaces. The tank monument in Narva became a stumbling block between the views of different communities within the country. It has especially became symbolic and problematic because it stood right at the border with Russia, on a riverbank of Narva river, facing Estonia. In the final scene the artist stands on that riverbank facing Russia. As Kapajeva grew up on that border, she felt an urge to speak up about the situation with the monument. As the artist states, the video helped her not just to scream out everything what accumulated for the first half a year of the war, but, also, it helped her to regain meaningfulness in her own art practice that she lost since the full invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

Born in the Soviet Union, raised in an independent Estonia and educated in the UK, Maria Kapajeva has found herself in an involuntary position of ‘the other’ everywhere. A position, she has embraced and employs as datum in her artistic practice, leads her to explore a diverse spectrum of cultural identity and gender issues within historical and contemporary contexts. Being originally from a borderland region, border within postcolonial and post-Soviet geopolitical conditions becomes to be the core in her work. She uses various mediums, such as video, photography, textile and installations, to bring to the focus what is often left invisible or stays in peripheral vision. Kapajeva’s works exhibit internationally including some of the solo exhibitions at Estonian National Archive (2013), Estonian Museum of Art KUMU (2022), Finnish Museum of Photography (2021), Lithuanian Gallery of Photography (2020) and Tallinn Art Hall (2020). Her video works were screened at various venues and festivals including Art Viewer (2023, Spain), VAFT: Visual Art Festival (2020, Finland), Luminocity Video Art Festival (2018, Canada), Berlin Feminist Film Week (2017, Germany) and others. Her video work ‘Test Shooting’ received Runner-Up Award at FOKUS Video Art festival (2018, Denmark). Kapajeva is a member of Estonian Artists’ Association.

Pendant l’inexplicable état d’urgence à Moscou, un jeune homme solitaire essaie de retrouver son chien disparu et de comprendre ce qui se passe vraiment. Finalement, il se retrouve dans un monde parallèle où les morts et les vivants sont inséparables, mais le mot « mort » est strictement interdit.

Depuis 2015, Alexandra Karelina travaille comme réalisatrice de documentaires et de films expérimentaux. Ses films ont été sélectionné à des festivals de films internationaux : IFFR, ISFF Oberhausen, Image Forum Tokyo, Le Guess who ?, MIEFF etc. Ses films ont été primés : How to behave au LUFF 2018 (Suisse) et Bobok au NHIIDFF 2021 (Russie). Elle vit et travaille actuellement à Nancy, en France.

The Book of the Dead is an experimental documentary meditating on the American poet Muriel Rukeyser’s poem about the Gauley Tunnel tragedy. In the 1930s in West Virginia, nearly 2,000 primarily Black migrant workers were sickened or killed by silicosis, a lung disease caused by breathing silica dust. Rukeyser travelled to West Virginia to meet workers and their families, in some cases, appropriating their words directly. The film revises her white characters to a predominately Black cast — more accurately reflecting the insidious racism prevalent in American society at the time. The film appropriates interviews with the poet, her unfinished screenplay, and worker’s testimony to U.S. Congress. Using actors, theatrical sets, and 3D generated backgrounds, the film produces a multisensory experience of Rukeyser’s process and the industrial tragedy. Unable to travel during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kelley designed the West Virginia mining sets in Unreal, a 3D gaming software and filmed actors at a green screen studio near his home in Los Angeles. The work's theme of failure to breathe poignantly resonates with the Covid-19 pandemic, and the final words turned protest chant of George Floyd: I can't breathe.

David Kelley (Born in Portland Oregon. Lives in Los Angeles California.) Kelley is an artist working with photography, video, and installation. His recent projects draw attention to the effects of global capitalism, resource extraction, and shifting physical and political landscapes. Influenced by a range of visual traditions, Kelley draws upon elements of experimental documentary, ethnography, performance, and avant-garde cinema. By working at the intersection of these strategies, he encourages an understanding of his subjects that is simultaneously direct and speculative. His work has been shown in galleries and museums nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Fotofest Biennial, Houston. Other exhibitions include Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles, The Bank in Shanghai, the de Cordova Biennial in Boston, BAK in Utrecht, MAAP space in Australia, and the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok. Kelley received a Master of Fine Art from the University of California, Irvine, and was a 2010 -11 resident at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. He is currently based in Los Angeles, California, and is an Associate Professor of the Practice at the Roski School of Art and Design, University of Southern California.

The work approaches the feeling of searching in a particular sense: searching for something that is already there – and does not need to be found. The point of departure is the well-known Rosenhan experiment, in which eight sane individuals, ‘pseudo-patients’, feigned symptoms to be admitted to psychiatric institutions. As recently shown, the experiment itself was dogged by inconsistencies and anomalies – the pseudo-patients likely never existed in the first place. Through repetition and superimposition, the work explores the liminal space between thinking and perceiving, re-activating the gaps and contradictions that return to haunt a scientific material.

Dag Kewenter is a visual artist, working primarily with installation and film. In 2022, he graduated from the Masters program at Malmö Art Academy with the exhibition Post Sunrise / Post Oracle, for which he received the Edstrandska Grant.

SCULPTORS deals with the hardships of a farmer on dry land and those of a taxidermist who wants to stuff a species threatened with extinction. Both men find special solutions to their problems: The farmer places his entire herd of goats in the branches of a tree next to the motorway to attract tourists who want to capture the bizarre image. The taxidermist, on the other hand, makes do with two black bear skins, one of which he bleaches white and then sews together with the second skin to end up with something resembling the black and white fur of a giant panda. In describing these strategies, Khereddine is concerned with the relationship between image and thing, copy and original, imagination and reality, appearance and essence. In both examples examined, the obsession with the repetition of the image, the consumer’s desire to always have everything, and the individual’s urge to stand out from the crowd shines through.

In his work, Roman Selim Khereddine combines academic research and essayistic writing, found footage and his own moving images. His video essays deal with topics such as the popularity of police dogs in North Africa (German Shepherds Need Heroes Too, 2020), two of the most iconic photographs of the 21st century (Falling Man / Hooded Man, 2021), the history of Moroccan workers in Swiss circusses (‘How the Circus got its Moroccans’, 2021), the difficulties of making a taxidermy mount of a Panda (SCULPTORS, 2022) or the trials and tribulations of zookeepers in Palestine (behind a thousand bars no world, 2023). Khereddine holds Master’s degrees in History and Fine Arts. He lives and works between Zurich and Paris.

In the 1860s and 70s the so-called Molly Maguire assassinations rocked Pennsylvania’s anthracite region and made national headlines. A Vague Dread Seems to Silence the Tongue attempts to conjure the specter of violence that emerged out of the racial animus and labor struggles of the Civil War in the present day, setting the bloody events of the late 19th century against the contemporary landscape of a fading coal economy.

Edward Kihn’s work ranges across documentary and experimental cinema, photography and installation, and focuses on entanglements of politics, technology and labor--especially as they reflect and shape the particularities of place. He has received awards and fellowships from organizations such as NYFA and the Whitney Independent Study program and his work has been shown at venues such as Ji.Hlava, CPH:DOX, MSPIFF, Mimesis, Arquiteturas, Artists Space and others. He teaches Film Studies and media production at CUNY and UCSD.

A bird carries us swiftly through empty lobbies and offices of a bank in Frankfurt, until it collides with a glass façade and falls to the floor. In this way, ‘Killing Kidding Colliding’ shows glass as both a material and an ideological symbol, moving between transparency and reflection, making things visible but impossible to touch. Moving mechanically between the different spaces of the bank, it draws attention to its own technique, while looking at the power and ideology of modern architecture, and how its immediate openness, transparency and smoothness also contain an underlying and invisible volatility.

Freja Sofie Kirk is a visual artist based in Copenhagen. Working across video, photography and installation, and often in connection with each other, she looks at the inner mechanisms and contradictions of images. Her work takes the form of a continuous study of spatial and medial constructions, the violence they perform and the architecture they manifest. By utilizing the camera, Freja Sofie Kirk attempts to renegotiate the power relations inherent in both archi- tecture and image production.

Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness is a creative research project by South African artists Russel Hlongwane, Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson. In fabricating a fictional institute and its archive, the artists explore and imagine vernacular technological practices operating across the African continent. An intertextual conversation between the documentary and the poetic, the video operates as an in-house media assemblage created for the preservation of the institute’s activities and ideas. The project aims to foreground indigenous technological knowledge and to explore how science, technology and innovation are part of a long interlinked process of accumulative knowledge production which extends long into the past. The work builds on the field of technopolitical research to formulate a multi-scalar history and future of technological creativity. Positioning the triumphs and failures of the everyday in the future-oriented technoscientific, the work unfolds the idea of development as a historical process Africans shaped.

Russel Hlongwane works in the production and assembly of culture. His area of interest is in heritage, tradition and modernity in South Africa. He moves between art-making (installation and film) and curating. His performance work operates as a bridge to transmit his academic interest to a broader audience, while his writing practice moves between academia, policy and art journals. His most recent peer reviewed paper is titled ‘Transcendental Technologies, Mother Tongues and Space (2022). He works intentionally with language (isiZulu) as a way to mobilise ideas contained in supressed histories. His work, Ifu Elimnyama (The Dark Cloud) has featured in six exhibitions and won the Sharjah Film Platform Jury Award. He curated the Bristol based Cntrl Shift Network festival that featured filmic works from the global south confronting the relationship between technology and the continent. Lo-Def Film Factory (Francois Knoetze & Amy Louise Wilson) is a DIY art duo who work across archival research, dramaturgy and visual strategies with video art, collage, sculptural installation and virtual reality. The duo aims to create a space for storytelling through the democratization of filmmaking via video by and for underrepresented communities across Southern Africa. They run workshops and work with various communities, placing value on the transmission ideas and lived experience over high production values. Their VR experience and research project The Subterranean Imprint Archive explores the legacy of technologies used in the extraction of mineral resources in Central and Southern Africa. It has been shown at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, University of African Futures (France), MUTEK Montreal and the Geneva International Film Festival. Amy and Francois have exhibited at the ZKM Center for Art and Media, The Centre Pompidou, The Dakar Biennale and the Akademie Der Kunste, Berlin.

FOLDS OF STONE Experimental film, 2022 DCP, AT, 4:07 min. Nicole Krenn & Lisa Truttmann Rock is subject to constant change. Forces of nature, geodynamics, and anthropogenic interventions shape the ostensibly rigid matter as an extended organism, which can only be perceived in a geo- logical concept of time. In the short film Folds of Stone, we see breathing stones, pulsing grooves and trembling rocks: material that vibrates. Microscopic landscapes come to life and dissolve into the images. Surface, materiality and structure oscillate between jagged rock edges and soft, silky fabric folds. Nicole Krenn and Lisa Truttmann have translated their multimedia installation from a former sawmill in Gesäuse National Park into the cinema space, tracing the act of touching and unfolding as artistic gestures.

Short biographies: Lisa Truttmann (*1983) is an artist and filmmaker based in Vienna, Austria. In her practice she ties documentary elements into staged settings and rhythmic compositions, tracing the structures of social, architectural and ecological landscapes. Playfully she exposes work and thought processes in essayistic montages, reflecting upon the poetics of a certain cinematic language. She studied Transmedia Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and received an M.F.A. in Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts, where she developed her feature film debut Tarpaulins (2017). Lisa’s moving images and installations have been shown in exhibitions and film festivals such as CPH:DOX Copenhagen, New York FF Projections, Images Festival Toronto, Jihlava IDFF, Viennale, Kunsthalle Vienna, MAK Vienna, among others. https://lisatruttmann.at Nicole Krenn (*1982) lives and works in Vienna. Her artistic work includes performance, installa- tion, video and graphic art. Krenn’s engagement with the motif of rock manifests itself in various techniques. In her graphic works, she traces material-immanent structures and thus transforms the karstified surfaces of limestone into filigree cartographies. Through her work, she tries to understand the geological thinking of time and visualize it on different levels of artistic expression. Nicole Krenn studied art history and archaeology at the University of Vienna, graphic arts at IADE Lisboa and KKP at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she graduated in 2010. In 2015 she was awarded the Koschatzky Art Prize. http://www.krennn.at

Following a passionate encounter with a young man, Karl finds himself filled with reservations and suspicion as the latter unexpectedly leaves from his apartment. Yet, the ensuing night presents Karl with a chance to reassess his perception.

Paolo Laganá was born in 1986 in Italy. Their artistic practice revolves around queer culture and themes of identity. They are currently based in Berlin, studying Film Editing at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb). Paolo's passion for filmmaking began early, leading them to create several short experimental films on Super 8. They spent several years in Bucharest, Romania, gaining experience in various roles on film sets and collaborating with many figures from the Romanian new wave. Paolo is the recipient of a scholarship for artistic merit from the German National Academic Foundation. Their film "A New Night" was produced independently, outside their academic studies.

Culminant à 3600 mètres d’altitude, le glacier du Rhône est devenu un objet d’étude scientifique et un important site d’affluence touristique des Alpes suisses. Indice éloquent d’une disparition anticipée, une partie de la zone d’ablation du glacier, sujette à la fonte, est recouverte de mosaïques géotextiles afin de le protéger des radiations solaires. Si ces couvertures réfléchissantes peuvent contribuer à diminuer l’accélération du retrait glaciaire, cette pratique demeure toutefois contestée par le milieu scientifique. Évocateur d’un décor énigmatique, de linceuls ou de refuges temporaires, le déploiement de ces bâches de survie représente une tentative de contrôle anthropique sur le paysage dans un contexte de bouleversements climatiques. Dans un travail immersif de l’image et du son, Fragile Monument explore les échelles de temporalité propres au glacier, à l’eau, à l’environnement minéral et leur enchevêtrement avec des rythmes humains. En s’interrogeant sur des modèles d’écologies futures, le travail s’attarde à nos rapports complexes avec une nature altérée, où se conjuguent des états d’hybridité, de vulnérabilité et du sublime.

Outre leurs pratiques individuelles, Virginie Laganière et Jean-Maxime Dufresne explorent dans leur collaboration artistique les transformations de nos territoires construits, naturels, technologiques et les réalités sociales qui en découlent. De nature anthropologique, leur démarche s’élabore par une méthodologie d’enquête développée lors de séjours et de résidences à l’étranger. La recherche et l’observation in situ alimentent un travail de l’image au confluent des approches documentaires et fictionnelles, comme objet d’investigation qui s’intéresse à différentes formes de narrativité et de visibilité. En témoignent leurs installations protéiformes où la vidéo, l’art sonore et la photographie interagissent avec des éléments sculpturaux et des dispositifs architecturaux. ??Soutenu par le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec et le Conseil des arts du Canada, leur travail a été présenté lors d’expositions, festivals et résidences au Canada et à l’international. Ceux-ci incluent le Festival International du Film sur l’Art, la Galerie de l’UQAM, le Musée d’art de Joliette, le Studio du Québec à Rome, Tokyo Arts and Space, le EXiS Experimental Film and Video Festival à Séoul, le Inside-Out Art Museum à Pékin et le Helsinki International Artist Programme. En 2021-22, ils ont poursuivi de nouvelles recherches intitulées La Montagne radieuse au Programme principal de résidence de La Becque, en Suisse.

Le film consiste en un nombre de plans fixes basés sur une légende qui décrit un combat entre un géant et un serpent de vase ainsi que l’impact de leur combats sur la météorologie et le climat. Le film met en scène une maquette de ville et des plans qui montrent un paysage où développement urbain, industrie et météorologie sont le cadre qui accompagnent le récit. Le travail met l’accent sur les liens entre maquette et cinéma par la projection d’images sur le paysage à échelle réduite. Un des buts du film est de faire se croiser les genres cinématographiques du réalisme, du fantastique et du film noir par une succession de plans relatifs les uns aux autres et qui cependant peuvent revendiquer leur autonomie comme tableau. Le film pause comme principe l'idée de la cité comme enjeu et comme endroit du politique, là où on organise, où l’on négocie, ou pas. L'idée d'un conflit évité, imminent ou qui advient est aussi présent ici, à travers le décor qui accueille le récit de géants, héritiers des Kaÿju.

Bertrand Lamarche En ayant recours à des distorsions d'échelles spatiales ou temporelles, Bertrand Lamarche construit un ensemble d'hypothèses sculpturales à la fois extatiques et conceptuelles. Son travail s'appuie sur l'amplification et sur le potentiel spéculatif de figures qu'il convoque régulièrement dans ses travaux depuis près de 20 ans : les paysages urbains et industriels, la météorologie, les ombellifères géantes, les vortex ou les platines-vinyles.  Une grande part de son travail se caractérise par un désir de subjectivation et d'appropriation de ces différentes portions ou figures du réel. Par un travail de modélisation, l'artiste réinvestit ces figures, et développe un ensemble de propositions, parfois vertigineuses dans le sens où elles procèdent de boucles, qu'elles mettent en scènes des abîmes et procèdent d'une perte de repères spatio-temporels et de distorsions d'échelles. Né en 1966, Bertrand Lamarche vit et travaille à Paris. Il est représenté par la galerie Jérôme Poggi. Il est diplômé de La villa Arson, à Nice. Son travail a été montré dans divers musées et centres d’arts en France, aux USA, au Brésil et en Europe, depuis 1997. Il fait partie de collections privées ainsi que de collections publiques telles que le musée national d’Art moderne - Centre Pompidou (Paris), le FRAC Île-de-France, Les Abattoirs (Toulouse), le MAC VAL (Vitry-sur-Seine) ou le Musée départemental d’art contemporain (Rochechouart). En 2012, Bertrand Lamarche a été nominé pour le prix Marcel Duchamp. Son oeuvre faisait l’objet de deux importantes expositions, au FRAC Centre (Orléans) and au CCC (Tours). Une monographie, the plot, a été publiée récemment en 2018 avec La Maréchalerie-centre d’art contemporain ENSA V, et inclue des textes de Nathalie Leleu et de Ingrid Luquet-Gad.

Two men measure the heights of pine trees. A woman listens to what the trees are saying. The children of the village set up the camp. A cloud of digital dots reveals the forest. The pines have said that we can ask. They always called this place “Paraíso”. Machines will come soon.

A quadruplet raised on a collie farm explores human-dog behaviors through queer “puppy play,” leading to nuanced discoveries of how people treat people “like animals.”

Lax’s films and video installations have screened and been exhibited at venues including Viennale (Austria), IHME Contemporary (Helsinki), MIX New York and MIX Brasil (São Paulo), table (Chicago), Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG), Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), REDCAT, Film Forum, Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, The Drawing Center (New York), and CROSSROADS (San Francisco), among others. Lax’s organizational projects include those held at Anthology Film Archives (NY), Fellows of Contemporary Art (LA), and Human Resources LA. Lax’s writing has appeared in print and online publications including MARCH Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), ArtPractical, and Texte Zur Kunst), as well a catalogue contribution with the Lawndale Art Center (Houston, TX) and a limited edition zine with Inga Books (Chicago).

CIVIC is a short film that follows Booker on his first trip back home to South Central, L.A. after several years of self-imposed exile. Without any clear motive, or even a warning, Booker returns to the place that holds his origins and the people who shaped him. Framed almost exclusively inside of his car, CIVIC tracks Booker’s fleeting and fragmented encounters around his old streets. Booker spends most of his time with his childhood best friend, Tee. They ride around to liquor stores and lingering in parking lots after closing time. Closeness and distance ebbs and flows between them as they talk about their lives, old and new. The repaved ground between them allows Booker to dive deep into the past, seemingly letting go of the tension in the present. However, we soon realize Booker is avoiding his responsibility to his family members across this trip. Just as he plans his disembark from L.A., he has an unexpected encounter that helps to reframe his perspective in the world. CIVIC is an introspective film, giving life to the wordless exchanges, the mundane and the familiar shorthand of unfettered Black life.

Dwayne LeBlanc is a Los Angeles based, first generation, Caribbean-American artist and filmmaker. Primarily self taught, his practice focuses on themes of migration, visibility and dual identities. His debut narrative short film, Civic (2022), an introspective short film about homecoming, was awarded a production grant from Ghetto Film School and Netflix while simultaneously developed at Berlinale Talents 'Short Form Station.' Civic has been screened and awarded at international film festivals around the world, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Clermont-Ferrand, New Orleans Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival and Indie Memphis. LeBlanc was also named as part of the "future of cinema" at the 2023 New Directors / New Films festival in NY where Civic was screened at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. LeBlanc is a MacDowell fellow and a member of the Writers Guild of America.

Suite au tournage d'un documentaire sur la mort de sa fille, une mère réfléchi à sa propre vie et surtout au temps qui passe.

Miryam Charles est une réalisatrice, productrice et directrice de la photographie d’origine haïtienne vivant à Montréal. Elle a produit plusieurs courts et longs métrages de fiction. Ses films ont été présentés dans divers festivals au Québec et à l’international. Son premier long métrage Cette maison a été présenté à la Berlinale, au AFI film festival en plus de faire partie du TIFF Top 10 en 2022. Elle a également lancé le court-métrage Au crépuscule au festival de Locarno. En tant que productrice, elle travaille présentement à la post-production de la série Après le déluge.

That night, a lady met a group of lovely beasts - gigantic slimy cheesy ones.

Äggie Pak Yee Lee is an audio-visual artist/ animation director from Hong Kong, graduated in Estonia. Her works draw inspiration from the playful relationship between the flow of sound and of images, with a tint of stupidity. Both of her experimental and narrative shorts were showcased in several festivals such as Sundance, Annecy, Goldenhorse and Interfilm.