Catalogue > At random

This film introduces an alienating yet familiar landscape of satellite images, tracks and sound. We follow the minute by minute movements and sounds of animals and machines, the chatting of people in Philadelphia. Although we constantly hear reality, we experience the movements within an abstract, two dimensional world of satellite photography. Without any crew present, the protagonists recorded their trajectories, sounds and private readings of the streets, allowing the filmmakers to access their experiences only afterwards. The film positions the audience as unwitting voyeurs. The meditative approach questions our contemporary techno-society, where social connectivity and eavesdropping coexist and balances between empathic co-traveling and voyeurism. The film resulted from a 7 month “Art in Public Space/Percent For Art” residency of Dutch visual artists Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum in Philadelphia.

Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum work together under the name PolakVanBekkum. Their work focusses on landscape and mobility. Routed in the history of the Dutch realistic landscape depiction, they engage with new technologies like GPS and data collection, to express individual experiences of spaces like the contemporary city and countryside. They search for changing ways to be in landscapes and how this influences the human understanding of space and the stories we tell to explain our lives. Besides the digital and technological innovative, they use very concrete means of visualisation, like drawings in sand or light, which makes their work very tangible and direct. Their projects are often informed by collaborations with participants, be it humans, objects, or even the rays of the sun. They have worked and exhibited internationally, at Transmediale Berlin, Ars Electronica Linz, ZKM Karlsruhe, London, IMAL Brussels, Rento Btattinga | Gallery Amsterdam, Museo for Image and Sound Sao Paolo, Nairobi, Lagos, Marrakech, Paris, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. In 2005 Esther Polak did receive a Golden Nica for interactive Art at Ars Electronica together with Ieva Auzina, for their MILKproject. Esther Polak is educated at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. Ivar van Bekkum is educated as journalist.