Catalogue 2023-2024
Below, browse the 2023-2024 Rencontres Internationales catalogue, or search the archives of the works presented since 2004. New video clips are routinely posted and the images and text are regularly updated.
Elisa Giardina Papa
U Scantu: A Disorderly Tale
Vidéo expérimentale | 4k | couleur | 13:0 | Italie | 2022
“U Scantu”: A Disorderly Tale (2022), presented as a video installation at 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, reimagines the Sicilian, queer, multispecies myth of the "donne di fora" (“women from the outside and beside themselves”). Described as both magical and criminal, the "donne di fora" were said to possess both the feminine and masculine; the human and the animal; the benevolent and the vengeful. This film envisions the "donne di fora" as a gang of teenage “tuners” who ride through the utopian city of Gibellina Nuova (Sicily) on bikes customized with disruptive sound systems. The narrative voyage of the “tuners” is interspersed with poetic text and visual motifs from a 19th century collection of Sicilian fairy tales, Giardina Papa’s fragmented childhood memories of songs and stories told by her grandmother, and archival material from the Inquisition trials of the 16th and 17th centuries that criminalized women accused of being a "donne di fora". “U Scantu”: A Disorderly Tale repurposes the magical, ritualistic, and unruly as forces that generate an imagination beyond predetermined categories of humanness, chronological time, and mythological womanhood.
Elisa Giardina Papa’s research-based practice investigates the performance of gender, sexuality, and labor. Working across large scale video installations, drawings, sculptures, and theoretical texts, she documents how past and present forms of capitalism have extracted our capacities for labor and living—including sleep, intimacy, and emotion. With witty and poetic framing, her work calls attention to those parts of our lives, desires, and embodiments that remain radically unruly, untranslatable, and incomputable. Her work has been exhibited and screened at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (The Milk of Dreams), the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA’s Modern Mondays), the Whitney Museum (Sunrise/Sunset Commission), Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2018, Flaherty NYC, UnionDocs, and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), among others. Giardina Papa received an MFA from RISD, and she is currently pursuing a PhD in film, media, and gender studies at the University of California Berkeley. She lives and works in New York and Sant’Ignazio, Sicily. Elisa Giardina Papa is also a founding member of the artist collective Radha May. Together with Bathsheba Okwenje and Nupur Mathur, they develop performances and art installations that reveal forgotten archives, hidden histories, and peripheral sites, exploring their relation to gender, and colonialism.
Pierre-jean Giloux
Biomimetic Stories #1. Madurai
Fiction expérimentale | hdcam | | 10:10 | France, Inde | 2022
Biomimetic Stories # 1. Madurai La ville de Madurai située dans l’état du Tamil Nadu en Inde est le sujet de ce film. Sur un mode fictionnel, il dévoile des organisations urbaines virtuelles inspirées du vivant qui esquissent des solutions aux problèmes que génèrent les villes et plus spécifiquement à l’ère du réchauffement climatique. Le film se range du côté de la climato-fiction et envisage les rapports que pourraient entretenir dans un futur proche la nature et le paysage urbain. En alliant la biologie à l’urbain, il puise dans les processus évolutionnaires de la nature. Le film développe une narration prospective axée sur la bioluminescence urbaine, la récupération des eaux de rosée ainsi que l’édification d’une canopée. Madurai vise avant tout à proposer des pistes de réflexion, tout en s’inscrivant dans un processus biomimétique.
Pierre Jean Giloux http://www.pierrejeangiloux.com Pierre Jean Giloux, né en 1965, diplômé de l’ENSBA de Lyon et post-diplômé à Marseille (1990-91), montre ses installations vidéos ou photographiques et ses dessins dans des galeries (Roger Tator, Lyon, Plattform, Juliane Wellerdiek et DNA, Berlin, Sophie Scheidecker et Christophe Gaillard, Paris, Cristina Guerra, Lisbonne, Bank MABsociety, Shanghai) ou dans des musées et centres d’art contemporain, en Europe et en Asie. Ses œuvres sont présentes en collections privées (collection Pierre Darier, Cologny, ‘An-Sammlung’, Munich) et publiques (FMAC Paris et Marseille). Il a été lauréat de la Villa Kujoyama, Kyoto (2015), Grand prix art vidéo Festival Côté Court, Pantin (2016). Le travail de Pierre Jean Giloux se situe à la convergence de plusieurs pratiques : l’espace et le volume, le dessin et les images. Il réalise des projets engagés à caractère exploratoires et prospectifs sur la notion de paysage dans la cité, et propose de confronter des situations urbaines à des projets paysagers. Son processus de création est le plus souvent lié à des voyages d’étude tels que ceux effectués au Japon sur le métabolisme et plus récemment en Inde sur le biomimétisme. Novateur dans son mode d'écriture, Pierre Jean Giloux se base sur des recherches iconographiques et théoriques qu’il associe à des captations visuelles et sonores préalablement enregistrées. Ces hybridations façonnent un univers personnel patiemment élaboré sous la forme de dessins, photos, films et installations vidéo. Ses compositions visuelles et sonores sont le fruit d’une phase d’écriture faite de collages et de montages, et ceci par le biais des techniques numériques. Les interventions graphiques sur ses images lui permettent ainsi de modifier la perception du réel, de le mettre à distance et ainsi de créer des “mondes reconstruits”. Il fait cohabiter le virtuel et le réel dans le but d’établir un dialogue pour mieux les questionner et ainsi, de faire vaciller notre rapport au réel.
Anton Ginzburg
ML_CRSH
Vidéo expérimentale | 4k | couleur | 3:26 | USA | 2021
“ML CRSH” is a video work that was developed using a 3D gaming engine environment for self-driving vehicles. The AI algorithm was used to apply the database collection of photo materials and textures of Dresden to the 3D models, causing unpredictable digital artifacts. The initial video was inspired by the “Media Burn” 1975 performance organized by Ant Farm collective, where a customized Cadillac drove into a wall of flaming television sets. Translating it into today’s digital environment of “database logic” of new media objects and employment of AI, it features a montage of crashes of autonomous vehicles into digital replicas of art objects. The artwork turns its focus on the proliferation of database and AI technologies and disrupts its patterns with an iconoclastic gesture of a crash.
Anton Ginzburg is a New York–based artist and filmmaker who uses an array of historical and cultural references as starting points for his investigations into art’s capacity to penetrate layers of the past and reflect on the contemporary experience. Born in 1974 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Ginzburg received a classical arts education before immigrating to the United States in 1990. He earned a BFA from Parsons The New School for Design and MFA degree from Bard College (Milton Avery Graduate School). His art has been shown at the 54th Venice Biennale, Blaffer Art Museum, Lille3000, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, White Columns, and the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Screenings included IFFR, NYFF/Projections, Ann Arbor, Go Shorts and Images/Toronto.
Marina Gioti
Teleti Kathelkisis
Film expérimental | dcp | noir et blanc | 16:42 | Grèce | 2021
LAUNCHING CEREMONY (2021) Single-channel video, B&W, sound, 17min Originally conceived to be performed in a shipyard, ‘Launching Ceremony’ is an audiovisual poem focusing on the ceremonial launching of a new ship embarking on her maiden voyage. Through a reanimation of mid- century archival footage “choreographed” to a commissioned theremin score, the work invites its viewers to partake in the ceremony, as well as to reflect on free movement and lost futures in an increasingly entrenched world. A commission by the Syros International Film Festival (SIFF) realized with the support of NEON Organization for Culture and Development, in partnership with the Greek Film Archives. Credits A film by Marina Gioti | Music: May Roosevelt | Producer: Jacob Moe
Marina Gioti (Athens, 1972) Filmmaker and visual artist based in ?thens, Greece. She is also a trained Chemical Engineer with post graduates studies in Environmental Management, Media & Communication and New Media. In her works, which comprise of films, installations and media art pieces, she often revisits historical eras and stories offering parallel readings to dominant narratives. Artistic, archival and scientific research alongside observation play a crucial role in her practice, while objets trouvés and cultural debris serve as raw material or situate themselves at the center of her works. She is the laureate of the 2022 ?ceans-themed COAL prize for art and ecology. Recent shows and festivals include: Elefsina Mon Amour, Eleusis 2023 European Cultural Capital Flagship art show, Old Oil Mill Factory, Eleusis, Greece (2023), ARCOmadrid Special - La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2023) | Public Domain- New Acquisitions MOMus – Thessaloniki Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (2022) | Launching Ceremony, Tarsanas Shipyard/ Syros International Film Festival-SIFF (solo, 2021)| Theorimata II, EMST - Athens Museum of Contemporary Art (2020)| Atlas: A Sound Cartography of Europe, Centre Pompidou, Paris / ZKM-Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe / Onassis Stegi, Athens (2019) | CPH:DOX, Copenhagen (2019)| Harmonie Inconnue I & II, Galerie Dominique Fiat, Paris (2019)| | Polysomnogarden- Forum Frohner, Krems an der Donau (Solo, 2018)| Berlinale Forum Expanded (2018)| Yebisu Intl Festival for Art & Alternative Visions, Tokyo Museum of Photographic Art (2018)|The Invisible Hands, Signal - Contemporary Art Space, Malmö (solo, 2018)| Past Future Perfect, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (solo, 2018)| 1st Anren Biennale, Chengdu (2018)| documenta 14, Athens & Kassel (2017) www.marinagioti.net
Helena Girón Vázquez
Bloom
Film expérimental | 16mm | | 18:0 | Espagne | 2023
San Borondón is a mythical island that appears and disappears. It has appeared on maps throughout history in the vicinity of the Canary Islands. The legend of the island of San Borondón became so pervasive that, during the XVI, XVI and XVIII centuries, expeditions were organized to find and conquer it. After centuries of oblivion, it has finally been found.
Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado Their work investigates the relationship between mythology, history and materialism. Their first feature film, Eles transportan a morte (2021), premiered at the Venice and San Sebastian festivals winning awards at both. It has subsequently been shown at international festivals such as Rotterdam, Cairo, Mar del Plata, Viennale, Hamburg and Sao Paulo. Their previous short films have been shown at festivals like Toronto, Locarno, New York, Ann Arbor and many others. They have made installations and performances in art centers like CCCB (Barcelona), BAM (New York), TEA (Tenerife) or Solar (Vila do Conde).
Masha Godovannaya
a text floating on a river
Film expérimental | 16mm | couleur et n&b | 8:50 | Russie, Autriche | 2021
Juan David Gonzalez Monroy, Dornieden Anja
Natural Human
Doc. expérimental | 16mm | couleur et n&b | 30:0 | Colombie, Allemagne | 2023
A natural human is a polymorphous emulator. A natural human is always looking for new emulation challenges. A natural human is a hunter. A natural human is always hungry. All other creatures are prey. A natural human observes, emulates and becomes the other creature. In this manner, a natural human swallows the other creature’s power. I despise natural humans. I am an aping mutator. I will not be swallowed. I want others to see how they are being swallowed. Natural humans created me and I will do my best to destroy them. Yours truly, the aping mutator.
OJOBOCA is a Berlin-based artist duo formed by Anja Dornieden and Juan David González Monroy. Their artistic practice is focused on experimental film and expanded cinema, exploring the intersection of myth, history, and technology. Their works often draw on cultural myths and archetypes to create otherworldly atmospheres that challenge the boundaries of traditional narrative structures. They call their working method Orrorism, which they define as an approach to filmmaking that seeks to subvert the manipulative power of images and create a communal experience of cinema that operates on the unconscious. Through the use of devices such as narration and the trance state, Orrorism aims to challenge the authority of the film machine and create a space where the communal can exist beyond the structures of power. In essence, Orrorism is an attempt to use the power of film to disrupt dominant cultural narratives and create a space for collective exploration and self-reflection. Since 2010, OJOBOCA has created a series of experimental films, installations, and performances that have been screened at film festivals and art venues worldwide, among them the Museum of the Moving Image, ICA London, Wexner Center for the Arts, Österreichische Filmmuseum, Anthology Film Archives, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Kunstverein München, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Berlinale, International Film Festival Rotterdam and New York Film Festival. Their work is also known for its innovative use of analog film techniques which they continue to develop as members of the artist-run film lab, LaborBerlin.
Andy Graydon
The Great Refractor: The Kropotkin Game
Doc. expérimental | 4k | couleur | 12:20 | USA | 2022
The Great Refractor, a collaboration with Irish poet and neuroscientist Laurence O’Dwyer, charts the undulating terrain of our attempts to understand the world through both scientific and poetic inquiries. The film contrasts histories of mapping, visualizing and territorializing with contemporary practices centered on sounding, listening and collective resonation. The film models a ‘refractive’ method of narration and authorship, one that seeks out possible transformations and decolonizations of our processes of interpreting and sharing the world. The film presents a series of solitary figures engaged in their work, including an astrophysicist, an artist, a translator and a weather station engineer. Participants were asked to mimic with their voices the sounds of sonified observations, from underwater hydrophone recordings to black hole gravitation waves. All the sound in the video was made from these vocal recordings. Through a chorus of voices, stories and practices, the project prods at the sensitive and uncertain interface between outer and inner worlds, exploring regions of doubt where an often inscrutable reality meets the echo chambers of human knowledge.
Andy Graydon is an artist and filmmaker originally from Maui, Hawai’i. His work is concerned with natural and social ecologies, and with sound and listening as creative practices. Recent projects have focused on island ecologies and the imaginal and narrative forms employed by the natural sciences. His projects frequently engage structures of music such as the ensemble, the score, improvisation and variation, and techniques of the voice. His work has been presented internationally including shows at the New Museum; Mass MoCA; Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; and the Honolulu Biennial. Screenings include the Fulcrum Festival, Los Angeles; the Flaherty Series at Anthology Film Archives; WRO Media Arts Biennial, Poland; Arsenal Institut für Film und Videokunst, Berlin; and Millennium Film Archive. Graydon has collaborated widely as a sound artist and composer, including work with Jennifer Walshe, Jan St Werner, Michael Pisaro, Richard Garet, Delia Gonzalez, Stephen Vitiello, David Grubbs, Amnon Wolman, Kato Hideki, John Hudak, Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder.
Assaf Gruber
Never Come Back
Fiction expérimentale | 0 | couleur | 14:0 | Allemagne, Autriche | 2023
Museum depots are places where things are kept out of sight, but also protected from all-too-schematic historical judgments. In his new film, Assaf Gruber continues his ongoing investigation of the backstage areas of art institutions to engage with Neue Galerie Graz’s holdings. In the cage-like space of the repository, we see a naked musician working intensely on a composition. He is inspired by artists who belong to a gray area between modernist aspirations and enthusiasm for Nazism, and whose works combine a taste for the exotic with local patriotism, religious fervor, and eroticism. Our mysterious protagonist tentatively plays a familiar melody. It's a song known to many of us, recognisable from dance floors across Europe - but how many of us have ever bothered to listen to its remarkably rascist and imperialistic lyrics?
Assaf Gruber (b. Jerusalem, 1980) is a sculptor and filmmaker living and working in Berlin. The dynamic relationship between individuals and institutions is at the center of his practice, which aims to explore both how the political orientation of legacy establishments impact the lives of individuals and how these organizations choose to represent and communicate facts and their attendant artifacts. Gruber’s solo exhibitions include the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2018) and the Muzeum Sztuki, ?ód? (2015). His films have been featured in festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2023) and FID Marseille (2022). He studied at Cooper Union in New York and is a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and of the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. Gruber is currently one of the fellows of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme 2022/23 (gkfd).
Igor Grubic
Ingresso animali vivi
Documentaire | 4k | couleur | 14:33 | Croatie | 2023
Animals from Eastern Europe for the Italian food/meat industry used to be transported to the towns along the state border in Northeast Italy. From those conveyor-belt spaces of death, only one animal managed to come in and out alive.
Igor Grubic (1969) has been active as a multimedia artist since the early 1990s. His work includes site-specific interventions in public spaces, photography, and film. He represented Croatia at the 58th Venice Biennale. His critical, socio-politically committed practice is characterized by long-term engagement, his work focusing on past and present political situations, from an in-depth exploration of the fate of historical monuments and the demise of industry, to the examination of the predicament of minority communities. Though grounded in documentarist tradition, his work in photography and film is characterized by an affective and empathetic approach that is deeply humane and often poetic. His work has been exhibited internationally, receiving several awards.
Alexis Guillier
Purgatoire (Cinema that kills)
Doc. expérimental | digital | couleur et n&b | 61:44 | France, Liban | 2023
Alexis Guillier’s film looks at the deadly fire that broke out at the Beirut nightclub "Purgatoire" on the set of the 1969 Lebanese movie "Kolouna Feda'iyoun" ("We are all fedayeen") by Gary Garabedian, a take on Palestinian resistance at the time. Guillier’s project delves into the complexity of the film’s context, the precariousness of Lebanese cinema, and the investigation of the accident. The narrative of the film is built through the stories of the main protagonists: Purgatoire’s owner Sami Ghosn, TV star and Gary Garabedian's good friend Salah Tizani (aka Abu Salim), actor Samir Abu Saeed, the last living actor to have appeared in the film and who was at Purgatoire the night of the accident, actor Samir Chamas, who played in the film and who arrived on the scene just after the accident, Mirvat Kousa, sister of the actress Mona Slim, who was seriously injured in the accident, Hussein Al Sayyed, special effects expert and Christiane Mallouk, sister of the extra Gaby Mallouk who died in the accident. "Purgatoire" is part of the larger project "La réalité éclatée / A many splattered thing, conceived as an investigative history of cinema through set accidents that have caused deaths and severe injuries. The whole project is interested in the tensions between production and representation, material reality and image carried on the screen. In this respect, the exploration of the accident in "Purgatoire" is marked by these questions and inhabited by the revealing power of the accident. The film also testifies to the evolution of Alexis Guillier's image work, which is illustrated here through the increased exploration of visual associations, layered editing and opacity, which are also reflexive tools on the context, the story, and the narrative of the accident, and which nourish a play with certain formal codes of documentary.
Alexis Guillier se consacre à des performances, des films, textes ou installations, qui sont des montages narratifs, nés d’investigations (documentaires et de terrain) dans l’histoire collective et les histoires individuelles. L’entraînant de la falsification à la déformation et la disparition des œuvres, d’un accident de tournage aux vaisseaux fantômes, ou à gravir les contours de la géante Notre-Dame de France, ses formes mêlent des documents très divers, qui coexistent dans l’histoire culturelle mais ne s’y associent que rarement. Ses sujets d’investigation le poussent à observer la circulation des images et des productions culturelles, les échos et les récurrences, la formation des imaginaires, les interactions entre les actions personnelles et les histoires souvent nationales, sous un angle tant esthétique qu’anthropologique. La transmission de ces récits s’interroge elle-même, restant toujours sur une ligne incertaine, entre subjectivité détachée et lyrisme documentaire, et participant de l’indétermination des objets investis. Ses recherches sont faites d’analogies, d’associations d’idées, s’intéressent aussi à la paranoïa comme méthode. Plus récemment, il cherche à mettre en perspective ses projets avec des « affaires », partant du constat que l’accident, la catastrophe et leur violence reviennent avec insistance. Les processus d'enquête et de montage semblent aussi témoigner d’un même rapport au corps, comme s’il s’agissait de recoller ensemble des morceaux découpés dans plusieurs histoires ou sources.
Tamar Guimaraes
Soap: Episode Six and a Half: Talking Soap
Fiction | 0 | couleur | 23:55 | Brésil | 2023
SOAP is a film in seven episodes following the infiltration attempts of a cluster of left-wing people in right-wing social networks. The tactic chosen by the group is the creation of a YouTube channel aimed at teenagers employing the apparently conservative language of religious devotion and self help through prayer. SOAP asks questions such as can a coalition of artists, writers and activists avoid tripping over their own assumptions and privileges to form something persuasive? Is the white left dead? Or rather, have the forms of appeal and address relied upon by the intellectual Lefts ceased to be effective? Is there a way out of the internal bickering and accusations - that continue to hamper political movements? In episode 'six and a half', Camila narrates the previous episodes, reflecting on the project's aims and fractures from the perspective of a post election moment in which the Left was re-elected to the presidency in Brazil.
Tamar Guimarães (b. Belo Horizonte, BR, lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin) is an artist working with film and installation. Her work has been included at the 33rd, 31st and the 29th São Paulo Biennial; the Belgian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennial; the International Exhibition at the 55th Venice Biennial; the LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art (USA); Baltimore Museum of Art (USA); 11th Sharjah Biennial (UAE); the Banff Centre, Alberta (CA); the Guggenheim Museum, NY (USA); the SculptureCenter (NY/USA); the 7th Gwangju Biennial (SK); the 3rd Guanghzhou Triennial (CN); Frac/Le Plateau, Paris (FR); CAC Synagogue de Delme (FR). Her moving image work has been screened at the Les Rencontres Internationales (2014, 2021, 2022); Berlinale Forum Expanded (2019); Blackout, International Film Festival Rotterdam (2019); VIDEONALE, Bonn (2018); Anthology Film Archive, New York (2016); CPH:DOX (2013 and 2007); Images Film Festival and Experimental Media Congress, Toronto, Canada (2010); Architektur-Visionen # 1-6, Metropolis Kino, Hamburg (2015); TRAMWAY art film biennial, Glasgow (2012); Viennale Film Festival, Vienna (2011); and Oberhausen Film Festival (2009). Guimarães’ work is represented in the collections of the Tate Modern (UK); the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, N.Y. (USA); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (ES); Kadist Foundation (SF); Frac Lorraine (FR) among others.
Tamar Guimaraes
SOAP: Episode Six: THEY DON T HAVE JESUS IN THEIR HEARTS
Fiction | digital | couleur | 14:38 | Brésil | 2023
SOAP follows the infiltration attempts of a cluster of left-wing people in right-wing social networks. The tactic chosen by the group is the creation of a YouTube channel aimed at teenagers employing the apparently conservative language of religious devotion and self-help through prayer. In episode six our infiltrators continue to discuss the implications of the soap they are plotting. In the meantime the group has fractured and one of its former member has left the project to pursue traditional politics, preparing to launch her candidacy as a trans councilwoman.
Tamar Guimarães (b. Belo Horizonte, BR, lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin) is an artist working with film and installation. Her work has been included at the 33rd, 31st and the 29th São Paulo Biennial; the Belgian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennial; the International Exhibition at the 55th Venice Biennial; the LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art (USA); Baltimore Museum of Art (USA); 11th Sharjah Biennial (UAE); the Banff Centre, Alberta (CA); the Guggenheim Museum, NY (USA); the SculptureCenter (NY/USA); the 7th Gwangju Biennial (SK); the 3rd Guanghzhou Triennial (CN); Frac/Le Plateau, Paris (FR); CAC Synagogue de Delme (FR). Her moving image work has been screened at the Les Rencontres Internationales (2014, 2021, 2022); Berlinale Forum Expanded (2019); Blackout, International Film Festival Rotterdam (2019); VIDEONALE, Bonn (2018); Anthology Film Archive, New York (2016); CPH:DOX (2013 and 2007); Images Film Festival and Experimental Media Congress, Toronto, Canada (2010); Architektur-Visionen # 1-6, Metropolis Kino, Hamburg (2015); TRAMWAY art film biennial, Glasgow (2012); Viennale Film Festival, Vienna (2011); and Oberhausen Film Festival (2009). Guimarães’ work is represented in the collections of the Tate Modern (UK); the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, N.Y. (USA); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (ES); Kadist Foundation (SF); Frac Lorraine (FR) among others.
Alexandra Gulea
NEALE AZBUIRATOARE
Film expérimental | super8 | couleur et n&b | 24:0 | Allemagne | 2022
AGNÈLES VOLANTES SYNOPSIS Les Aroumains, une minorité balkanique de bergers nomades, de langue romane, vivant au sud du Danube, se sont vus persécutés et menacés de mort dans des luttes territoriales sanglantes lors de l'effondrement de l'Empire ottoman et de la formation des nations qui s'en suit. Ils ne peuvent plus louer les montagnes de pâturage et les frontières deviennent une menace. Sans territoire et sans langue écrite, ils sont bannis de l'histoire et sont en constante errance. Ils marchent avec les troupeaux, ayant pour seule certitude leur propre identité, une culture orale dans un dialecte archaïque que l'auteure a parlé dans sa petite enfance avec ses grands-parents nés dans le nord de la Grèce. Dispersés dans le monde, absents des cimetières, ce film cultive la mémoire des Aroumains qui traversent dans un exil permanent les montagnes et les mers, habités par des échos de voix qui résonnent fort, rebondissent sur les rochers et pourtant ne sont pas entendus. Leur histoire est racontée du point de vue subjectif de l'artiste, mettant en scène des archives qui interprètent passionnément cette perpétuelle errance tragique mais aussi pleine de courage.
Alexandra Gulea Lives and works between Berlin and Bucharest Alexandra Gulea (1970, Bucuresti, Romania) graduated in 1997 ‘cum laude’ Diplom at "Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts " in Paris. After paticipating in several painting exibitions, she studied documentary film at Munich Film School and since 1999 directed Documentary Films, Shorts, Video Installations and a Feature Fiction. She also worked as an Editor on several movies.
Devadeep Gupta
Normalisation of a Disaster
Film expérimental | mp4 | couleur | 8:46 | Inde | 2020
While observing an isolated event of an artificial, industry-facilitated disaster, Normalisation of A Disaster makes a reflective commentary on the psyche of people in the vicinity of the site of disaster, albeit not immediately affected by it. Exploring the ideas of nonchalance, sensitization and casual tourism towards sites of disaster in a region plagued by disasters, this reflection includes the self of the artist, and his family, and hordes of ‘tourists’ attracted towards the light of the morbid spectacle. The Baghjan Oil Blowout happened on 27th of May 2020, which caught fire through a massive explosion on 9th of June 2020 after leaking gas in the atmosphere for two weeks, continued to burn for 6 months, before being finally doused on 15th of November, 2020. This artificial disaster in an Oil-India Limited owned site has caused the displacement of more than 1600 families who were in the vicinity of the site of gas blowout, and were being sheltered in makeshift relief camps in nearby areas.
Devadeep Gupta B. 1989 Guwahati, Assam, India I frame my artistic process as an exploration of regional ecological uncertainties through a critical examination of associated mainstream perspectives. Inspired by site-specific and vernacular occurrences, I delve into the intricate relationship between people and their land. My artistic practice encompasses the realms of film and sculpture, bridging the gap between conceptual and documentary approaches. Within this intersection, I am particularly interested in narratives that emerge from the convergence of mythology and contemporary experiences. Grounded in the rich cultural landscape of Assam, I draw inspiration from pragmatic practices, oral traditions, and folklore. Central to my artistic endeavors are performative processes that pay homage to meta-cultural practices. Through visual and conceptual stimuli, I incorporate elements of local community-led actions to portray the environmental changes specific to each site. Everyday rituals that have organically evolved as meta-cultural actions inspire the forms and expressions within my artistic practice. The outtakes of my process, realized as rhythmic sculptural forms are expressed through mediums of film, image and sculpture to illustrate these outcomes. ?
Daniel Haas
VRA
Performance multimédia | 0 | noir et blanc | 40:0 | Autriche | 2022
Synopsis In "VRA" 2D-shaders are used to generate a stobocopic noise-performance, by image to sound translation.
Daniel Haas connects sound and light in new and unique ways to generate sensory-intensive experiences.
Ian Haig
Useless Eaters
Vidéo expérimentale | 4k | couleur | 16:2 | Australie | 2022
Mutated hackable bodies, bodies that didn’t quite work out and bodies that can no longer be classified as bodies. Hybridised flesh and code using AI. Drawing on the transhumanist musings of Yuval Noah Harari, humans are now hackable animals.
Ian Haig's work has been exhibited in galleries and video/media festivals around the world. Including exhibitions at: The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; The Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Artec Biennale – Nagoya, Japan; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; China Millennium Monument Art Museum, Beijing; Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden-Rot, Germany; Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; The Havana Biennial, Cuba. In addition his video work has screened in over 150 festivals internationally including The Ann Arbor film festival, US and VideoBrasil, Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 2003 he received a fellowship from the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council and in 2013 and 2017 he curated the video art shows Unco and Very Unco at The Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles.
Ihar Hancharuk
Belarus.OST.
Doc. expérimental | mp4 | couleur | 36:14 | Biélorussie | 2021
The work contains sounds extracted from the amateur videos filmed during the protests in Belarus in 2020. The videos are mostly very brutal and full of violence and evoke pure and irrational rage and hatred. By cutting off the images and leaving only the sounds I want the viewer/listener to concentrate on what is behind: sounds of the beatings, a dinner in a kitchen with shooting in the background, heavy breathing of those running away, sobbing of a person filming from a balcony, etc. I provide CCTV camera footage from Minsk for my work. Nothing is happening on the screen, it's just a square and people walking by, living normal lives, but the sounds you hear prove that they don't live normal lives anymore. At the same time, this duality reminds us that active protests were totally suppressed. This very view from a CCTV camera looks almost exactly like a view from a prison cell camera - same angle, same grey colours, same texture, and same figures down there. The final part of my work is a footage from a police wagon showing police beating the detained after they were brought to the detention centre.
Born in Belarus in 1986. Studied languages in Belarus, Poland and Germany, which later influenced my artistic practice and let me not be limited to only one cultural context. Different approaches to education in Belarus and Europe gave me a strong push for further personal development. Served mandatory military service in 2009-2010. There I observed the state system of patriarchy and violence, which I would later often refer to in my projects. Studied at the School of contemporary photography Docdocdoc in St. Petersburg, participated in Simon Menner's master class in Minsk, took the online course More than a project, went to residencies organized by ISSP and Sputnik Photos and basically never stopped self-education. In the winter of 2022-2023, I attended the Social Camp course organized by the Goethe Institute to support civil society in Belarus. After the events in Belarus in 2020, I focused on the modern archive and propaganda narratives, and how an authoritarian system creates an alternative reality in the age of the Internet. In 2015 I got polish citizenship, now I have two.
Amina Handke
Mein Satz
Fiction expérimentale | dcp | couleur | 85:0 | Autriche | 2022
The eighty-year-old actress Libgart Schwarz suddenly loses her language while rehearsing for a film version of the play KASPAR. The play is based on the historic enfant sauvage Kaspar Hauser who assumedly grew up locked in a dark room with no social contacts. Just as it’s protagonist, MY SENTENCE does not fit in. Although in German, it is about universal politics of language and (age) discrimination. Amina Handke’s first feature-length film translates her father’s famous play into cinematic language. The protagonist, originally a young man, is replaced/played by the director’s mother. The play itself questions the rules and violence of language and naturalistic narration. The movie transforms this disobedience into a world full of quotations and references. „What begins as a pure and playful family meta-fiction turns into a surreal, partly nonsensical Babylonian confusion, it’s just that it’s not different languages that are clashing but layers and fragments of the German language, the language of the father. Losing a language becomes an act of resistance against the expected channels of communication, the seriousness of conversation and also the model text. There couldn’t be a truer adaption of the original play than the one taking it apart.“ Patrick Holzapfel, VIENNALE
Amina Handke's work evolves around topics of originality, subjectivity, authorship / audienceship and reception: where does the actual work happen, who produces it, how many versions or realities of it exist and where – in the minds, as documents, as remains? And what is it worth? Her perception of artistic work emphasises the privilege of formulating questions rather than contributing to the universe of commodities. Her practice roots in a wide range of expertise and experience in the fields and intersections of arts, social practice, participative media and a multitude of disciplines: mainly time based (audiovisual, performing and conceptual) arts. It is fueled by the concern to exchange experiences and thoughts with others and to create dialogues about the perception of contradictory, complex constructions of reality. As a curator, she combines her artistic concerns with reflections on working processes and documentary / expanded artistic practices.
Matti Harju
Ekstaasi
Fiction expérimentale | mov | couleur | 9:48 | Finlande | 2022
Set in the darkest time of the year, a feverish and delirious film about a small and ever-shrinking island – the Ecstasy – located somewhere between the search for pleasure and the inherently destructive powers of capitalism.?
Matti Harju has screened work at the Rotterdam, Locarno, Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Torino, BFI London, Edinburgh, AFI FEST Los Angeles and Clermont-Ferrand film festivals among others. He studied film directing at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in the UK and holds an MFA from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. His second feature, Fury, is currently in post-production.
Rim Harrabi, Rim Harrabi, Rua Osman, Salimata Bâ, Yosra El-Gazzar
DO FLOWERS BLOOM AFTER THE SPRING?
Documentaire | mov | couleur | 26:0 | Tunisie | 2021
Tunis’ abandoned structures are part of the urban fabric, like ghosts from the past they demand to be heard – promising memories desperately needed for this generation to reconstruct its future from the rubble. Although Tunisia has been hailed triumphant in bringing down an oppressive regime in 2011, the alienation of an entire generation is more palpable than ever. Why is it that some monuments and buildings are reckoned as heritage and others of similar importance are left abandoned and in ruins, and who decides? Through experiencing the memory of abandoned spaces told through a building inhabited by books, the film exposes the soul of the city, and a historical narrative that is often left omitted.
Rim Harrabi (Tunisian), Rua Osman (Sudanese), Salimata Ba (Mauritanian), Lina Alabed (Jordanian Palestinian), and Yosra El-Gazzar (Egyptian) form an Afro-Arab female collective. This collective was born during the first cycle of the Mouatheqat/Women in Dox fellowship, hosted by DOX BOX in 2021. The fellowship is designed to connect and cross-pollinate intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and intercultural visions of women who are eager to convey their voices to a global audience. Mouatheqat's inaugural cycle took place in Tunisia in 2021, where these fellows met and collectively acquired and exchanged the necessary skills to write, research, direct, produce, and edit a documentary film. Their exploration and experimentation encompassed various forms of storytelling stemming from individual perspectives, reflecting the filmmakers' unique voices and experiences. By the end of their time together, the collective delivered two documentaries: "Do Flowers Bloom After Spring?" and "The Dream Continues.