Catalogue 2024

Santiago in the shimmering summer heat. High-res images undergo a digital zoom which transforms spaces into surfaces and houses into textures. In between, there are the small gestures of everyday urban life as two women in search of a place for their love.

Pascal Viveros is a filmmaker intrigued by digital image possibilities, exploring new ways to represent his surrounding landscapes. His work in Santiago's cinema theaters reflects a profound interest in programming and curation. His first short film, AL SOL LEJOS DEL CENTRO was selected at the Berlinale Shorts competition in 2024. Luciana Merino is a Chilean director and screenwriter. She is interested in a hybrid cinema, putting into tension the margins of reality and its deviations. Her first short film, AL SOL LEJOS DEL CENTRO was selected at the Berlinale Shorts competition in 2024.

Valdas is a talented architectural visionary who left his life unexpectedly ten years ago, and who did not fit into the standard architectural frameworks. As the architect of many of the Centre for Contemporary Art's exhibitions, he spent a large part of his life at the museum. It is here that the artist's daughter Elena walks, having to unload the artist's legacy from the museum. The visit becomes a tender farewell and a touch of her father's work, as well as the projects that were never realised. Dark matter is not only the title of the film, but also the title of the architect's last phase of work: a black as a hole in space sadness and Ozarinskas own words: "We haven't done anything more".

Graduated Russian Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography, directing. 1987m. 13 years as a director and producer for national TV. For many years worked in Lithuania as an executive producer for cultural events, film festivals, fashion days. Manager and shareholder of Impar reklama, advertising company, Commercial Director of radio station RADIOCENTER. In 2018 she founded Vegele Films. Lives in Europe.

While the fish as a living system is out of normal in the error condition, it can also demonstrate amazing resistance. When glass breaks, the resulting crystals retain some kinetic energy and continue moving for some time, then, due to inertia, this movement fades to zero. During a highly challenging vulnerability rability test: ?n the “Alive” side there is a sense of fragility with so many possibilities for destruction of the complex’s system. But alongside the vulnerability there is also a super-ability for restoration, recovery and even development. On the artificial side, in contrast, we are left with a diminishing kinetic impulse. on the "Alive" side there is super-effort of restoration, recovery and even development, and on the artificial side, a diminishing kinetic impulse. According to Searle’s “Chinese Room” theory, we can call our vulnerability sensory - semantic, and AI's (non?)vulnerability syntactic. We see on the "alive" side the elasticity and flexibility of “semantics” and on the other side boundless but predetermin?d possibilities of “syntax”. Should we pose “semantic”, ethical, legal and psychological questions-to ask to AI? Shall we expect deep answers from AI, as for now, our semantic, human grounding filters are necessary and inevitable since “semantic” values ultimately determine development, creativity, discovery. Do we desire the emergence in the near future of an equivalent consciousness in AI? Do we still retain control over this dimension? Shall we increasingly prize our different vulnerabilities especially the creative ones, cultivate and test them more and more?

Russian born, Paris based artist. Nataliya Lyakh has always been passionated about painting, sculpture and photography. Later on, she developed a strong interest in science and graduated with a Ph.D. in neuro-linguistics, brain asymmetry and speech processing. During the last couple of years, Nataliya Lyakh devoted her full-time attention to video, short films, photography. She now lives between Paris and NY. Her works has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums worldwide.

Das VR-Projekt Olympic Vertigo läßt uns in eine Parallelwelt eintauchen, welche der realen Situation im Münchener Olympiapark nachempfunden ist, diese aber musikalisch wie narrativ erweitert. Die Besucher:innen werden überrascht von einer eigentümlichen Atmosphäre und bizarren virtuellen Gästen, menschengroße Gottesanbeterinnen. Der User hat durch seine Bewegungen die Möglichkeit dieses belebte Panorama und dabei fünf musikalische Zeitphasen der letzten 5 Jahrzehnte ausgiebig zu erforschen. Olympic Vertigo trägt gleichermaßen Züge einer halluzinatorischen Erinnerung und einer Zukunftsvision. Innerhalb ihrer musikalischen Ebenen, aber auch in einer unerklärlichen Bedrohung schwingt die Geschichte des Olympiaparks mit. Dieser Ort ist durch Ausgelassenheit bei Sportereignissen und Konzerten geprägt, aber auch durch eine unterschwellige Angst vor einer Zäsur der Gewalt, wie sie sich durch das terroristische Attentat von 1972 in unser kollektives Gedächtnis eingeschrieben hat.

M+M steht für die film-künstlerische Zusammenarbeit von Marc Weis und Martin De Mattia seit 1994. Das Duo lebt und arbeitet in München, Deutschland. Der künstlerische Schwerpunkt von M+M liegt auf narrativen Mehrkanal-Filminstallationen, die durch die Aufhebung linearer Erzählung ein komplett neues Zeitgefühl entstehen lassen. Diese Installationen wurden in einer Vielzahl internationaler Ausstellungen gezeigt. Aktuell arbeiten die Künstler an einer Makro-3D-Trilogie, in denen die Protagonistinnen von Gottesanbeterinnen und Stabheuschrecken dargestellt werden. Teilweise stößt das deutsch-luxemburgische Duo auch kooperative Prozesse an und lädt KünstlerInnen ein, auf aktuelle Fragestellungen zu reagieren. So entstand mit dem kollektiven Filmprojekt „The Scorpion’s Sting“ eine Neuinterpretation des politisch motivierten Buñuel Films „L’Âge d’Or“ (1930).

A group of skaters take refuge in a shopping mall, making it their playground. As they spend time skating the empty hallways the stillness creeps in. It's a dead end.

Mário Macedo is graduated in 2010 in Sound and Image by the Portuguese Catholic University of Porto (UCP). In 2011 finished the film course at the European Film College in Denmark. Two of his short documentaries, ’Tio Rui’ (2011) and ‘Maria Sem Pecado’ (2016), premiered at DocLisboa Festival, having the latter won the National Grand Prix at FEST 2017 and consequentially shown at RTP, the Portuguese public television. Both films were also part of the New Visions of the Portuguese Cinema at the Portuguese Cinematheque in 2017. His first fiction short film ‘Terceiro Turno (Skin River)’ premiered in 2021 at Curtas Vila do Conde IFF in the National Competition and it won the award for Best Director. It also made its international premiere at Cairo Film Festival 2021. Has two new short films to release, 'Cul-de-sac' and 'Takvog Te Volim', co-productions between Croatia and Portugal. Right now, he's developing a new short film together with Dornaz Hajiha, part of Factory and will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival 2023. Also, he's preparing a feature film in Berlin, 'Purple Milkweed', together with Christian Tranberg, and finishing writing his first solo feature film 'The Robbery'. Will soon release his first photobook 'Running Away Into You' by the publisher Lebop. At the moment, he divides his time between Copenhagen, Zagreb, Berlin and Portugal. Vanja is a Croatian director with a BFA in Film and Television at Savannah College of Art and Design (USA). He directed several short films: Insomniac (2002, Cannes Film Festival/ Director's Fortnight), Wayking (2003), Carver is Dead (2012, Zagreb Film Festival) and Lora Wears Black (2019, Zagreb Film Festival). Vanja is experienced in directing TV commercials for leading brands such as T-Mobile, Vodafone, as well as for international clients such as Sony Asia Pacific. He participated in Berlinale Talent Campus and Sarajevo Talent Campus. He is developing his first feature film, Blok 62 (Ekran+, Connecting Cottbus).

Quote: "While I was watching you, exotic words drifted across the mirror of my mind as summer clouds drift across the sky". Unquote.

Sandro Aguilar (1974) studied film at the ESTC. In 1998 he founded the production company O Som e a Fúria. His films have won awards at festivals such as La Biennale di Venezia, Locarno FF, Gijón, Oberhausen,Vila do Conde, Indielisboa FF and shown in the most relevant festivals worldwide. Two times nominated for the EFA – Best european short film. Retrospectives of his work have been programmed at Rotterdam IFF, BAFICI, New York Film Festival, Arsenal-Berlin and Oberhausen FF.

Blinded by Centuries navigates the evolution of consciousness in a speculative ??post-human landscape. A generation adrift, existing between earthly and mythical realms, traces history to imagine a future before transformation. Inspired by short-format contemporary music videos, it is an auto-fictional retelling of the Buddhist folktale rooted in Southeast Asia called “Phra Ros Meri” (‘Twelve Sisters.’)

Parinda Mai, like many of her generation in Thailand, grew up with the story Twelve Sisters, communicated across platforms, from oral history to soap operas and cartoon animations. The project 12 Kalpas Tales is the artist’s personal search and reinterpretation of the moral of this story and its implications for the interconnected humanity. Blinded by Centuries emerges from this project, and is intended to capture the core energy of this myth that involves invading, exploiting, and destroying something, then leaving it behind to later try to rescue it with one’s ethics. In Blinded by Centuries an esoteric folktale is played out globally in contemporary terms. Project website: https://the12kalpastale.online/

There is Portugal, there is the Portuguese language and there is a Ukrainian filmmaker who learns the language and approaches the role of the potential migrant. Between languages, between images from here and those from a country at war, a voice tries to put into words the state of longing.

Daryna Mamaisur is a visual artist and filmmaker, born in Kyiv, Ukraine. In her practice, she combines theoretical research, filmmaking and photography. Her main focus lies in the transformations of landscape and public spaces in relation to visual culture, memory and political ecology. Daryna’s two recent films were a personal journey around distance, migration and fragility within the language when it comes to describing the shocking reality of the war. In 2022, she graduated from the DocNomads, a joint master’s program in documentary filmmaking, based in Lisbon, Budapest and Brussels. Her films and video works were screened in art exhibitions and participated in international film festivals such as Visions du Réel, FIDMarseille, Kassel Dokfest, DOK Leipzig, RIDM and others.

Filmed between dusk and dawn, Liquid Skin was filmed with nine women, who all perform night-time labour, across a wide variety of professions, including a baker, pole dancer, care worker, nightclub owner, cleaner etc. These women take us on a tour of night-time working environments, linked by history, economics and events shaping the post-industrial landscape of the Ruhr region in Germany. Through this choice of locations, the work links the nocturnal with questions on the subterranean, which is so present across this region with its thousands of kilometres of quiet tunnels underneath. The video consists of long, mostly single shot sequences each guided by one protagonist. Filming in black & white Infrared gives both the locations and the people a slightly abstracted and ghostly appearance, calling into question the specificity of each situation. Sound is integral to this work as it references industrial, technological, subterranean sounds of coal mining histories. The soundtrack is constructed from field recordings captured in each location but used in a non-diegetic way that consciously avoids synch sound. Visually the work aims to cross the dreamlike counter-logic of Lynch with urban spaces that may evoke Tarkovsky, Lang’s Metropolis or drawings by Escher.

London-based artist/filmmaker Melanie Manchot employs photography, film, video and sound to form sustained enquiries into our individual and collective identities. The work interrogates and employs acts of care, resistance and communality to engage in discourses on social and political urgencies of our societies. Her films investigate innovative forms of storytelling with an acute understanding of the power of filmmaking to speak to urgent issues and have profound impact. Manchot’s first feature film, STEPHEN, commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, addresses gambling, substance misuse, recovery and mental health through narrative fiction and documentary. It had its cinematic release through Modern Film in 2024 and continues to be shown in exhibitions as a multi-channel installation. Manchot is working towards her second feature film: Mount Makalu. She is shortlisted for the Jarman Award, UK. Her work is held in many public collections and was presented in a major survey show at museum MAC/VAL, Paris 2018. Selected solo exhibitions: STEPHEN, The Exchange, Penzance, 2024; Alpine Diskomiks, Parafin, London, 2022; Black Snow White Out, Museum Lumen, Italy, 2021; Mountainworks (Montafon), InnSitu, Innsbruck, Austria (2019); Open Stage/Back Stage, Kunsthaus Pasquart, Switzerland (2019); She completed her MA in Photography at The Royal College of Art in London in 1992.

Un personnage inepte entreprend la tâche impossible de traiter la mémoire de l'invasion de l'armée turque en 1974 à Chypre et ses conséquences.

Charalambos Margaritis est diplômé de l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Beaux Arts de Paris. Il vit et travaille à Paphos; Chypre, où il a fondé Kimonos Animation Studio en 2015. Il enseigne l’animation et l’histoire de l’art dans le Département des Arts Graphiques et Multimédia de l’Ecole de Beaux Art et Arts Appliqués de l’Université Technologique de Chypre. En même temps, il poursuit sa recherche doctorale sur les techniques narratives expérimentales dans le film d’animation.

In search of traces and imprints of an absence, this film examines the coexistence between nature and man-made structures or artifacts, to deliver a formal object of commemoration. An obscure celebration of the surface of a fractured and exhausted world, what could have been a city symphony evokes instead the feeling of a mausoleum for our present existence.

Pablo Marín is a filmmaker and writer. As an independent researcher and curator, he has presented programmes on Argentinean cinema in the United States, Canada, Spain, Austria, Finland and Switzerland. He has translated books by Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage and John Waters, among others, and his volume on Argentine experimental cinema, Una luz revelada. El cine experimental argentino, was published in both Argentina and Spain by La Vida Útil in 2022. His film Resistfilm (2014) won the best Avant-Garde Film at Filmadrid, and his latest, Trampa de luz (2021), was awarded the Principal Online Prize of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

Shot over a period of three years in a single interior space, this film explores sensory perception through the textural surface of expired film stock, light and layered images. Ephemeral moments meld into voids of grain.?

Ryan Marino is an New York-based artist working with film, sound, and collage. His 16mm films have screened at a variety of film festivals and venues including: Anthology Film Archives, New York Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, Uplink (Tokyo), Venice Biennale, Fracto Experimental Film Encounter, Spectacle Theater,? and Pacific Film Archive. In addition to creating the soundtracks for his own films, his sound work includes original compositions and commissioned soundtracks for short films and theater productions. By day he works as an audiovisual archivist.

Like a glass vault that contains traces and gifts from distant countries, the headquarters of Energoprojekt, the former Yugoslavian construction company merges geographically distant places. Walls are pannelled with faded photographs of Energoprojekt’s conscturctions in fellow Non-Aligned countries, from 1960's until late 1980’s. Across Africa, South America, the Middle East and South Asia, the distinctive modernist constructions built by Energoprojekt formed an independent post-colonial architectural identity, beyond the Eastern and Western Bloc polarity. Abundant plants and trees, different species brought from afar 50 years ago, still grow together under the glass roof. The space is gradually revealed in choreographed sequences of the people who take care of the plants, forming an inseparable sense of belonging.

In his films, photography and video works, Ivan Markovi? observes space and the relationship between labour, architecture and ideology. With Linfeng Wu, he co-directed the short film “White Bird”, that had its premiere at Berlinale 2016. His experimental documentary “Centar” had its premiere at Doclisboa in 2018, won the “Best Newcomer” award at Dokufest. “From Tomorrow on, I Will”, a feature he co-directed with Linfeng Wu, had its premiere at Berlinale Forum 2019. The film received the Grand Prize at 2019 Jeonju IFF. It was shown in numerous festivals, including Belfort, Viennale, Zinebi and Mar del Plata. As a cinematographer collaborated on several feature films including “You Have the Night” by Ivan Salatic (Venice Film Festival), “Landscapes of Resistance” by Marta Popivoda (IFF Rotterdam) and “I Was at Home, But...” and “Music” by Angela Schanelec (Berlinale). His work was shown in numerous solo or group exhibitions internationally, in institutions including Institute of Contemporary Arts London, Bethanien in Berlin, Austrian Kulturforum Berlin, Museum of Contemporary arts Belgrade. Since 2020, a member of the European Film Academy.

Un dialogue entre le mont Ararat et le Mont Analogue de René Daumal interroge le paradoxe de leur présence visible mais inaccessible en tant que montagnes intérieures. Ce dialogue reflète comment les montagnes, au-delà de leur rôle de repères physiques, agissent également comme des constructions métaphysiques qui façonnent notre perception de nous-mêmes. À travers ce prisme, les frontières entre biographie personnelle et géographie s'effacent, révélant les liens profonds entre nos identités et les paysages que nous habitons. Le mont Ararat, avec son sommet volcanique de 5 137 mètres visible à l'horizon, se dresse comme un symbole poignant—toujours à portée de vue, mais inaccessible en raison des forces géopolitiques intractables.

Dans sa pratique filmique, Gohar Martirosyan examine les ensembles d'influences qui participent à la construction d'une personne ou d’une identité, qu'elles proviennent d'événements historiques, de pratiques culturelles, de liens sociaux ou de relations avec différentes formes du vivant. Par le biais d’images d’archives et de procédés technologiques, son installation vidéo fait dialoguer des géographies devenues inaccessibles, autrefois habitées par l’activité humaine, prenant naissance dans la biographie de l’artiste. Gohar a étudié au Le Fresnoy, elle est née à Gyumri (Arménie) et est actuellement basée à Paris.

The seemingly extraterrestrial camera eye floats upside down through a palm grove planted in a strictly rectilinear manner. Nature is literally upside down and existing in an artificial order as a business game. Only at the crescendo of the strange, vibrantly smoldering soundtrack by Jung an Tagen does the gaze slowly turn clockwise. Then, cut: quietness, open space. At some point the logo “Valley Pride” can be read in the middle of the California desert, on oversized corrugated iron sheets, designating one of the most important commercial areas of US industrial agriculture. It’s an inhospitable place, whose increasingly bizarre unnaturalness is conveyed through Lukas Marxt’s unmistakable approach. Visually stunning, the monocultural agrarian symmetry and its ballet of irrigation testify to man’s self-extinction in the service of constant profit orientation – even if the necessarily anonymous workers return to the picture in this, Marxt’s fourth visual examination of the Imperial Valley. Under the sword of Damocles of unclear residence status and a US immigration policy that ranges from rigid to ignorant, the personal destinies and stories behind them must remain untold. The people are the smallest cog in the wheel of work in the gigantic agricultural machine trimmed for optimization, as it buries ecological and ethical standards under the relentless shoveling and plowing equipment. In front of endless rock formations and dancing mirages caused by the heat, they fertilize, harvest, and pack lettuce in a quasi-automated routine. In near-astonishment, the camera eye observes this hustle and bustle as it occurs in a leafy place where no greenery was intended. This is a place where fertility and death collide mercilessly and the threatening catastrophe – social, economic, ecological – is inscribed in every image, no matter how innocent. Here, beauty meets decay and exploitation as a man-made dystopia. That, too, is Valley Pride – a pride with an expiration date. (Sebastian Höglinger)

Lukas Marxt (*1983, Austria) is an artist and a filmmaker living and working between Cologne and Graz. Marxt´s interest in the dialogue between human and geological existence, and the impact of man upon nature was first explored in his studies of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Graz, and was further developed through his audio visual studies at the Art University in Linz. He received his MFA from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, and attended the postgraduate programme at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. Marxt has been sharing his research in the visual art environment as well as in the cinema context. His works have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, most recently at the Torrance Art Museum (Los Angeles, 2018), at The Biennial of Painting, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Belgium, 2018), and at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka (Croatia, 2018). His films have been presented in numerous International Film Festivals including Berlinale (Germany, 2017 and 2018), Curtas Vila do Conde (Portugal, 2018), and the Gijón International Film Festival where he receiced the Principado de Asturias prize for the best short film (Spain, 2018). Since 2017, Marxt has spent a considerable amount of time in Southern California, where he has researched the ecological and socio-political structures surrounding the Salton Sea.

Between 9 May and 11 June 1943, the island of Pantelleria was violently bombarded by the Allied troops in the first operation to reconquer Italian soil. Residents recall that, after the surrender, some of the buildings were blown up for the cameras of a propaganda combat film. Pantelleria traces the memories of this event in the local collective consciousness and looks at the contemporary implications of an episode that took place in the shadow of official history. Through a two-years long participatory process with the residents, the film explores the tension between the truth and its ideological distortion, and between the reality of the bombs and their telling through images. The Nervi hangar, a symbol of Mussolini’s militarisation of the island, is now shown empty and inhabited by a magical animal presence. Extracts from the combat film are projected onto the buildings of today’s Pantelleria, while the camera travels through the bunkers dug by the Italian army. The voiceover, written and read by writer Giorgio Vasta, gives expressive form to the island’s stories, while the sound by GUP Alcaro and Davide Tomat distorts the recordings of the local orchestra Spata, finding in dance music a space for the reactivation of the past, and liberation in the present.

MASBEDO is an artistic duo formed by Nicolò Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni. They have been working together since 1999 and they currently live in Milan and Piacenza (Italy). Different artistic languages such as video, installation, cinema, performance, theater, and sound design coexist in their work. They are interested in emotional and intense narratives that delve into the depths of human relationships and the complex subjectivity of the contemporary individual. They have identified the relationship between cinema and art as a preferred area of investigation, which they approach with an attentive gaze to both socio-anthropological elements and the most intimate and poetic ones. MASBEDO’s works have been exhibited in international institutions such as: Manifesta 15 Barcelona; Centre Pompidou-Metz; CCCB Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona; Fondazione ICA Milan; MAMM Multimedia Art Museum Moscow; Manifesta12 Palermo; Hong Kong Arts Centre; Fondazione Merz; Leopold Museum Wien; MAXXI Rome; Centre Pompidou/Forum des Images Paris. Among others, their short and feature films have been shown at: Venice International Film Festival; Locarno Film Festival; CPH:DOX; FIFA – Festival International du Film sur l’Art Montréal; Villa Medici Film Festival Rome; Sharjah Film Platform; Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York; Lo schermo dell’arte, Florence, IFFR-International Film Festival Rotterdam.

A flow of images, each from a different movie, connected to each other based on certain criteria. Insert shots that were born to be mere appendages of more important ones. Anonymous images that now have a second chance and create another narrative. One that has no plot, no characters, no motive, but still runs irresponsibly to nowhere. A stream of pure moving cinema.

Ignacio Masllorens is an independent Argentine film director, producer and editor. He graduated from the University of Buenos Aires, where he currently works as a teacher. His films have been shown at Anthology Film Archives, Cinémathèque Française, Filmmuseum München, ArcoMadrid Art Fair, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Fundación Fortabat, Fundación Klemm and many international film festivals.

Nodes is a project analyzing spells as an example of control over another being. I focused on the violence of persuading somebody to fall in love. I have been considering casting a spell as an influential but not direct act for which specific tools or gestures might be needed. I chose orchids whose roots were used to influence another person, both when it comes to feelings and sexual activity. In the areas of today’s Poland and Italy, dried wild orchid roots were hidden under somebody’s clothes, or an orchid-based powder was added to goat milk which was supposed to help sexual arousal. On the contrary, nowadays, in a huge industrial space, hundreds of almost identical orchids run through a commercial line. Although the production is highly mechanized and managed by technology, the final sculptural touch on every flower goes through the working hands of females — they manually shape this organic material by adding artificial backbones and cutting off the rotten parts. The women use this intimate act to fit the normalized aesthetics. With Nodes, I am bringing attention to the powerful operations both in private and industrial environments by looking at the human element in them.

Female visual artist based in Warsaw. Graduate of the Studio of Spatial Activities by Miroslaw Balka at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (BA, MA, 2018), former student of Candice Breitz and Eli Cortiñas at the HBK in Braunschweig (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Scholarship for 2019/2020), and a guest by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin at the HFBK in Hamburg (2017/2018). She also obtained her BA in Cultural Studies at the University of Warsaw (2013). Currently participant of the Autumn Intensive at the Malmö Art Academy. She exhibited with Catinca Tabacaru Gallery at the Goethe Institut in Bucharest (2024), NS-Dokumentazionszentrum in Munich (2023), MOCAK – Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Manifesta 14 Prishtina, eastcontemporary gallery in Milan (2022), Fabbri Schenker Projects in London, MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome, Center for Contemporary Art Luigi Pecci in Prato (2021), Wschód gallery in Warsaw (2020), Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Starak Family Foundation in Warsaw (2019), Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Fondation Hippocrène in Paris (2018), Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2017 – laureate of the Hestia Artistic Journey Competition), and TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin (2016). Art fairs include NADA Villa Warsaw (2024), Artissima, and Arco Madrid (2021). Agnieszka Mastalerz was a resident of Hospitalfield in Scotland (2022), Muzeum Susch in Switzerland, the Artist Development Program at the EIB Institute in Luxembourg (2021), and Futura gallery in Prague (2020, Visegrad Fund). She participated in the Lucy Art Residency public program in Kavala (2022) and in the School of Expressions in PLATO Ostrava (2019). She is a laureate of M?oda Polska scholarship for 2024. Works of her are in Fondazione in Between Art Film by Beatrice Bulgari, Ergo Hestia Group, European Investment Bank, and Warsaw Ghetto Museum collections, as well as in private ones. Since 2021, Mastalerz is represented by eastcontemporary gallery in Milan.

A curator, an archivist, an art dealer, a relative: in staged situations, four people discuss their relationship to an artist who, by means of a fictionalised biography, has pretended to be a Holocaust victim.

Maria Mayland (*1988) is a visual artist and filmmaker. She obtained her MFA from Basel’s Art Institute, taught by Chus Martínez, and took part in KKH Stockholm's postgraduate program Philosophy in the Context of Art, taught by Peter Osborne. Her short film works have been shown in various contexts across Europe. Screenings include International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, European Media Art Festival Osnabrück, IDFA Amsterdam, Hamburg International Short Film Festival, transmediale, Edinburgh Film Festival and Sharjah Film Platform. She won the German Short Film Award in 2022, the EMAF-Media Art Award of the German film critics association (VdFK) in 2021, and the award for the best entry in the NRW competition of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in 2018, as well as in 2022.

Sanctuary Station traces a series of encounters with women and youth who have cultivated intrinsic attachments to the various life forms that inhabit the redwood forests and remote terrains of northwestern California. Oscillations between the desire for solitude and the need for collaboration recur through an album-like progression of personal stories and actions. These encounters are framed through the poems of Mary Norbert Körte (1934-2022), an ex-nun who built her own cabin deep in the forest, adjacent to a former logging railroad. Körte’s life and work bear witness to the daily phenomena of internal and external experience. Depictions of ongoing forest defense movements, collective and personal rites of mourning, and intimate everyday routines evoke cycles of life unfolding within this intricately interwoven environment.

Brigid McCaffrey is a Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker whose work documents environments and people in states of flux. Her films explore extremes of autonomy and coexistence experienced by individuals who have distinct relationships with the land. Often taking shape as nuanced portraits, the films respond to the physical and emotional changes of their subjects while fusing representations of self and place. She has exhibited at venues such as the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Harvard Film Archive, the New York Film Festival - Projections, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and the Whitechapel Gallery in London, among others. Her work was presented by Ballroom Marfa for the 2015 edition of Artists’ Film International and she was a featured artist at the 2016 Flaherty Seminar. McCaffrey was named a Guggenheim fellow in Film & Video in 2019.

Media performance artist Dayna McLeod asked ChatGPT to write an increasingly snarky and heated dialogue between Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault about The Death of the Author, inspired by Barthes' famous essay. This script is performed by AI actors of the theorists, with Dayna’s AI doppelgänger, DaynAI, acting as host to their debate.

Dayna McLeod is a queer performance-based media artist. Her work often uses humour and capitalizes on exploiting the body’s social and material conditions. Her video and performance work have been presented at the Impakt Festival in Utrecht Netherlands, the Mardi Gras Festival in Darlinghurst Australia, MIX Brasil Festival Of Sexual Diversity in São Paulo Brazil, the Modern Art Museum in Warsaw Poland, Le Centre d’art contemporain in Paris, the PHI Centre, OFFTA, and Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois in Montreal, the Summerworks Theatre Festival in Toronto, Sporobole in Sherbrooke, and Performatorium, Queer City Cinema’s performance festival in Regina. www.daynarama.com