Berlin 2022 Programme

Watch out for false artists. They come to you in artists' clothing, but inwardly they are lifeless algorithms.

Igor Štromajer – "le Pavarotti du HTML" (Libération) – researches tactical media art, intimate guerrilla, and traumatic low-tech communication strategies. He has shown his work at more than two hundred fifty exhibitions in more than sixty countries (transmediale, ISEA, EMAF, SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica Futurelab, V2_, IMPAKT, CYNETART, Manifesta, FILE, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Hamburg Kunsthalle, ARCO, Microwave, Banff Centre, Les Rencontres Internationales, The Wrong – New Digital Art Biennale and in numerous other galleries and museums worldwide) and received a number of awards (in Frankfurt, Moscow, Hamburg, Dresden, Belfort, Madrid, Maribor, Podgorica). His projects form part of the permanent collections of the prestigious art institutions, among them Le Centre national d'art et de Culture Georges Pompidou – Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, France; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Computerfinearts – net and media art collection, New York, USA; Maribor Art Gallery, Maribor, Slovenia. As a guest artist he lectures at universities and contemporary art institutes.

The film Genesis (The Other Shapes of Me) is simultaneously a part of the installation rs548049170_1_69869_TT as well as a stand-alone art film. The film documents a year-long performance during which a large piece of fabric that codifies and contains all of my genetic information is woven by my mother on one of the first computers of history, the Jacquard loom. In the tension between the loving gestures of a mother and the automatic movements of a mechanical loom, Genesis gives form to my reflections on technical reproducibility, the materiality of information, and on the interplay between biological, mechanical and computational life. The series The Other Shapes of Me is based on the translation of my genetic code into fabric. This stratified series of interrelated works is the result of my research into the origin and current applications of binary technology: from weaving to programming, algorithms, software, automation processes, up to the complete computerization of a human being.

Emilio Vavarella is an Italian artist working at the intersection of interdisciplinary art practice, theoretical research and media experimentation. His work explores the relationship between subjectivity, nonhuman creativity and technological power. It is informed by the history of conceptual art, digital and network cultures, and new media practices. Vavarella moves seamlessly between old and new media, and exploits technical errors and other unpredictabilities to reveal the logic and the hidden structures of power. Esteemed venues that have exhibited Vavarella’s work include: MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo; KANAL – Centre Pompidou; Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg; MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna; Museum of Contemporary Art – Zagreb; Museu de Ciències Naturals of Barcelona, The Photographer’s Gallery of London, Museo de Arte de Caldas; Museo Nacional Bellas Artes in Santiago; Museu das Comunicações of Lisbon, National Art Center of Tokyo; Eyebeam Art and Technology Center and Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina. His artworks have been exhibited at film festivals such as Toronto’s Images Festival; Torino Film Festival, and the St. Louis International Film Festival, and at many international media art festivals, among which: EMAF – European Media Art Festival; JMAF – Japan Media Arts Festival; Stuttgarter Filmwinter – Festival for Expanded Media; BVAM – Media Art Biennale; and NYEAF – New York Electronic Arts Festival. Vavarella has been awarded numerous art prizes and grants, among which the Exibart Art Prize (2020); Italian Council award (2019); Premio Fattori Contemporaneo (2019); SIAE – Nuove Opere (2019); the NYSCA Electronic Media and Film Finishing Funds grant (2016); the Francesco Fabbri Prize for Contemporary Art (2015) and the Movin’Up Grant (2015). He has been invited to present his work at: Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative; Istituto Italiano di Cultura – New York; ISEA – International Symposium on Electronic Arts; Goldsmiths University of London; the University of East London; the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and SIGGRAPH. His academic writings have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Leonardo – The Journal of the International Society of the Arts, Sciences and Technology (MIT Press), Digital Creativity (Routledge), and CITAR Journal – Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts. His writings have also appeared in Behind the Smart World: Saving, Deleting and Resurfacing Data produced by the AMRO Research Lab and in exhibition catalogues like Low Form: Imaginaries and Visions in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (MAXXI and CURA Books); That’s IT! (MAMbo), and Robot Love (Niet Normaal Foundation). His work is regularly discussed in art magazines, academic books and peer-reviewed journals, and has been covered by all major global media outlets. His most recent artist book, published by Mousse, is entitled rs548049170_1_69869_TT. Vavarella is currently working toward a PhD in Film and Visual Studies and Critical Media Practice at Harvard University and is the artist in residence of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He holds an M.A. cum laude in Visual Arts from Iuav University of Venice, with study abroad fellowships at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Tel Aviv and Bilgi University of Istanbul and received a B.A. cum laude in Visual, Cultural, and Media Studies from the University of Bologna.

The installation consists of two black and white video images, one video projector and two thin (2 mm) illuminated fibre lines. A large projection shows images of moving objects or people that are fixed in one place on the wall by means of a sophisticated tracking technique. This technique continuously shifts the frame of the video image in a way that the chosen object stays in one place. Thus, all movements are neutralized. Directly behind the projector a very small 4,7 inch screen shows a close-up of a moving eyeball, of which the pupil is fixed in the middle of the screen. A luminous wire is stretched across the exhibition room, between the fixed point of the projected image and the centre of the small eye pupil. The wire is a physical and stationary element in the exhibition room.

Peter Bogers’ (Netherlands, 1956) work engages the interplay of sound and image to create installation works dealing with questions around the understanding and perception of sound. Working with the themes of music, speech and sound Bogers questions the boundaries of these fields and their limits and access to communication. Through his constant interaction with sound, Bogers also examines the visual, spatial and conceptual understanding of the human body and its place within the moving image and experiential installation. Bogers was one of the first artists in the Netherlands to integrate moving image into his work. He began working with video in the 1980’s as a methodology to accompany and assist his performance work and has since developed a keen approach to the medium that functions as a tool to illuminate the otherwise imperceptible. Peter Bogers studied at the sculpture department at St. Joost Academy, Breda. He has exhibited widely and had solo exhibitions both in The Netherlands (at the Netherlands Media Art Institute and the Central Museum Utrecht, among other places) and internationally (including solo shows in Bremen, Marseille, Osnabrück, Pittsburgh and Stuttgart).

An invisible audience of software robots continually analyze content on the Internet. Political trolls and YouTube celebrities gain visibility because social media ranking algorithms promote addictive videos to the top of search and recommendation rankings. What the Robot Saw is a continuously-generated livestream film that uses contrarian algorithms to constantly curate some of the least attention-grabbing videos recently uploaded to YouTube. These videos, and their creators, are rendered largely invisible by social media algorithms. Their primary audience may be the robots that rank them. What the Robot Saw uses computer vision algorithms to curate videos and study their subjects. It focuses on first-person, camera facing narrators. The robot continually assembles its film and labels its “talking head” performers in a robo-fantastical cinematic style. The Robot titles its human subjects according to the demographically-focused feature set of Amazon Rekognition, a popular facial analysis system. In a robot-centric world, attributes like presumed age, gender, and emotion might better identify us than our names. The title is a reference to early 1900s What the Butler Saw “peep show” films. Both the butlers and the Robot got a superficial glimpse of a seductive “show;” they could not really understand the objects of their obsession.

Amy Alexander is a professor and hackernaut who has been making computationally-based art projects since the 1990s. Amy is a Professor of Computing in the Arts in the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego. She is an algorithmic filmmaker and performer who has focused throughout her career on the fuzzy borders between media and the world. Amy’s work has frequently addressed algorithmic subjectivity in digital culture by creating transparently biased, sometimes funny alternatives. Her latest project returns to this theme — this time taking on the attention economy and social influence of algorithms used for social media rankings and facial classification. Using computer vision and machine learning-based methods of curation and production, What the Robot Saw, is a perpetual live stream that depicts the cinematic fantasy of the surveillant AI robots who “see” the social media content few humans get to experience. Amy’s art practice has spanned net art, software art, computationally-based installation, audiovisual performance, and film. Her research and practice over the years has focused on how contemporary media – from performative cinema to social media – changes along with cultural and technological shifts. Amy’s projects have been presented on the Internet, in clubs and on the street as well as in festivals and museums. She has written and lectured on software art, software as culture, and historical and contemporary audiovisual performance. She has served as a reviewer for festivals and commissions for new media art and computer music.Her recent lectures span topics including algorithmic bias and subjectivity, cultural anthropologies of gender roles in 20th and 21st century computing, and systems and disruption in 20th and 21st century media.

3050 K is an AI/Neural Net project which utilizes imagery of stage lighting (floods, spots, footlights, gels) sourced from 70 concerts and performances of rock music from the 1970’s. These images are in turn used as primary material for a Neural Net and provide the training model for the resultant imagery. The images which are generated from this process are visualizations of emergent forms and tableau which are the offspring of the original material. These images are then re-processed and provide the individual frames for a video representation of the GAN’s procedural and generative algorithmic creation. The hypnotic and somnambulant visuals are accompanied by a score I created, composed of a number of heavily processed aural artifacts from the era. The title ’3050 K’ is in reference to the average number of Kelvins used in stage and theatrical lighting.

Brad Todd is an artist whose works span several fields of inquiry, principally involving the research/creation of responsive environments which implicate technology as a mirror, filter and catalyst for experience writ large in both an individually embodied sense and its attendant broader socio-political context. Recent and past projects have focused on issues of visualizing and conditioning invisible, abstract and liminal material such as EMF, infrasonics, aggregate data and microclimates, while in other works the content is more explicit and political. Having received an M.F.A. from Concordia University (Montréal), he began playing music in the post-punk band Sofa, which released the inaugural album and single on the Constellation Records label. From the generative and reactive to the composed and performative, audio and sound design continues to play a key role in his works. Brad has received numerous grants and awards and has exhibited his works in galleries and media festivals in North America, South and Central America, Asia and Europe. Presently he is an instructor in the Design and Computation Arts program at Concordia University in Montréal.

In GAME Engine (Orange Bulletproof Kids) we are invited to an exclusive press meeting at an undisclosed location. Here, the spokesperson of a notorious game developer, presents a brand new game engine. A game engine that promises revolutionary in-game experiences, the layout of which are never fully disclosed in protection of its intellectual property value. This oral evasive manoeuvre leads the spokesperson into complex landscapes in which game and reality, body and avatar, the sensorial and the informational, blend together. Parallel to this fiction scenario, a group of CS:GO athletes are recreating their game experiences, using their bodies as vehicles for motoric and visual memory.

Soren Thilo Funder is a visual artist working primarily with video and installation. His works are mash-ups of popular fictions, cultural tropes and socio-political situations, projections and histories. They are narrative constructions insisting on new meaning forming in the thin membrane negotiating fictions from realities. Invested in written and unwritten histories, the paradoxes of societal engagement, temporal displacements and a need for new nonlinear narratives, Thilo Funder proposes spaces for awry temporal, political and recollective encounters. Soren Thilo Funder’s previous exhibitions include solo presentations at Turku Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Tranen Contemporary Art Center, Overgaden – Institute for Contemporary Art and Den Frie - Centre for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen. He was furthermore represented at the 19th Biennale of Sydney, eva International Biennial of Visual Art - “After The Future”, 12th Istanbul Biennial, Manifesta 8 – Parallel Events and 6th International Liverpool Biennial. He is currently doing a PhD in Artistic Research at The Art Academy - Department of Contemporary Art, University of Bergen.

Dust is a story about two women living in an old district earmarked for demolition. Since their building is due to be demolished soon, all the neighbours have already left. Yet, the women decide to stay in their flat. The protagonists spend time in the abandoned multi-storey building and observe through the window bulldozers working around. Four out of five films were made in collaboration with Ms. Zou and Ms. Huang from Daguan in Taipei. When the project was in production, their houses in Daguan were bound for demolition while Ms. Zou, Ms. Huang together with their neighbours kept fighting against the evictions in the district. The first two films are a fictive story staged with Ms. Zou and Ms. Huang in an empty building awaiting demolition in central Taipei. I entered the building, cleaned up and furnished one chosen flat to turn it into a friendly liveable space and used it as a film location. Another two films are a conversation between Ms. Zou and Ms. Huang, Ms. Huang singing a sad song which reminds her of home and an image of a Daguan streets. The last film is a documentation of the demolition of the house where the first two films were made. One month after the films were done, Ms. Zou and Ms. Huang were forced to move away and Daguan was demolished.

Karolina Bregu?a (b. 1979) is a visual artist, a graduate of the National Film School in ?ód?. She creates films, photographs, installations and performance. Her work explores the problems of the status of the artwork and the materiality of art objects. She critically scrutinises contemporary art and its reception. She creates stories about art and architecture, which are a field of her anthropological and sociological observations. She is interested in the connection between art and reality – the favourable and detrimental effect of artists’ work, the remedial and destructive force of artistic activity, rituals connected to art and art’s social role. Many of her works are co-created with their protagonists and participants, blurring the border lines between professional and amateur artistic activity. Her works have been exhibited at institutions such as National Museum in Warsaw, Jewish Museum in New York and MOCA Taipei and at international events such as Venice Art Biennale and Singapore Biennale. She is the winner of the second prize in the Views 2013 Deutsche Bank Foundation Award, the third Samsung Art Master 2007 award and the 2016 Golden Claw at the Gdynia Film Festival. Her works are included in collections such as Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Zach?ta National Gallery of Art, Wroclaw Contemporary Museum and ING Polish Art Foundation. She is an associate professor at Academy of Art in Szczecin, she collaborates with lokal_30 Gallery. She lives in Warsaw.

Paris is not necessarily the first choice as the setting for a ghost story. The excessive romance of the French metropolis’ cultural symbols renders them simply unsuitable as backdrop for horror stories. But that’s not the case in Ella Raidel’s four-minute short film, which arose in the course of her extensive research project Of Haunted Spaces and refers to an upcoming feature film project. In We’ll always have Paris, the Eifel Tower, Champs-Élysées, magnificent fountains, and trimmed hedges stand as faux French in the hazy rain of Tianducheng. The residential complex located in the suburbs of the Chinese megapolis Hangzhou is one of the countless, largely unpopulated pop-up sites that sprung up overnight through high-speed real-estate speculation. In Raidel’s film, the Eifel Tower is the anti-gravity center of a phantom zone furnished with stark high-rises, parking areas, and gardens—an urban proposition that amounts to nothing. As the camera focuses on the building clone and its surroundings from various perspectives, the film suddenly changes tone. A woman who at first is visible only from behind enters the urban planning remake. Through a construction site corridor, she enters a conference space, improvised by partition walls, from which the view of the tower’s base condenses to an image of the uncanny. Like the pastiche in Tianducheng, We’ll always have Paris also contradicts the logics of representation; the film itself becomes a simulation of an architecture film, of a capitalism critique, of a ghost story: as they say in the film classic Casablanca, "We’ll always have Paris." But what do we have here? (Esther Buss)

Ella Raidel, is an Austrian filmmaker, artist and researcher who has lived in Taiwan for the past 20 years. In her interdisciplinary works – films, videos, research and discourses – she focuses on the socio-cultural aspects of globalization, urbanization and the representation of images. Her hybrid practice is to create a discursive space for filmmaking, art and research. She is currently Asst. Professor at NTU Singapore, lives and works in Singapore. In recent years, she has been concerned with China’s unprecedented growth and rapid urban changes, in experimenting with new documentary modes, narrations and methods. Raidel’s works has participated in international biennials, exhibitions, conferences, and presented at numerous International film festivals.

A laid-off worker pretends to go to work as usual but goes on an excursion to the mountain by his own.

Zhouanqi Liu 8/30/1994 Director/Screenwriter/Production Designer/Photographer 346 West 84th St #2F, New York, 10024 NY zl2734@columbia.edu (929) 319-6622 Education ? Beijing Film Academy Screenwriting 2012-2016 ? Columbia University Directing 2018-2021 (thesis film shooting year stage) Experience ? 2013.8-11 Chinese post-rock band ’48V’ 8-city China Road Show as photographer ? 2014.10/2015.10 13&14st ‘ISFVF’ International Student Film and Video Festival of Beijing Film Academy as subtitle translator ? 2015.6-2015.11 Chinese rock band ’Omnipotent Youth Society’ 13-city China Road Show as photographer ? 2016.2 Peking University ‘Preparation for Entrance’ Campus Activity Feature Film (No.5 the Summer Palace Road) as screenwriter ? 2016.4-2016.8 Musician prof. Guo 9-city China Road Show as photographer ? 2017.2-5 Info&Updates Studio China First Exhibition ‘Grand Coupes’ as curation&music production in Beijing&Shanghai ? 2017.6 Beijing 1st ‘Vintage Fair’ advertising video as art director ? 2017.8-10 The Door music company experimental advertising video as screenwriter ? 2017.11-2018.4 School of Visual Arts graduate student thesis documentary ‘The Wanderer’ as the self ? 2018.4-2018.8 Jing Wang photo exhibition on Beijing Three Shadows Art Center ’Goodbye, Paris’ as technician( darkroom film processing&hand coloring)

In and around the historical ruins of Fustat in Old Cairo, tensions simmer between the site’s government-appointed guards and residents of a nearby informal settlement, al-Izba. The guards chase away looters and confiscate their equipment, while locals infuriate them by taking shortcuts through the site, occasionally stopping for a smoke. For the guards it would be easiest to keep the site closed until further notice.

Ahmed El Ghoneimy, born in 1986 in Alexandria, Egypt, is a filmmaker and artist currently living between Alexandria and Cairo. His work revolves around interpersonal tensions between the different protagonists presented in his films, such as sons and fathers (Tripoli Tide, 2018), victims and perpetrators (Bahari, 2011), bullies and friends (The Cave, 2013). Alternating between fiction and documentary, his films follow associations and use moments of collision as an opportunity to investigate notions like victimhood, power, and masculinity.

Off the coast of a world in reconstruction, a voice whose source is unknown overhangs the city and sounds like an injunction. In resistance to this authoritarian diction, a new voice emerges. Cheikh Morad Djadja makes his way through this universe, he must go to the Taxiphone and leave his own encrypted message. "Appel masqué" is a song composed by Cheb Abdou in 1993, during the period of the black decade in Algeria. Like many of his songs, Cheb Abdou wrote and performed them under constant threat. Through his music, he opened a field of identity expression and gender affirmation, the etymology of the word Raï takes all its meaning. By returning to the traces of the birth of raï, Oran, I met Cheikh Morad Djadja a personality of this environment and successor of Cheb Abdou, it was a real immersion in the community of singers and musicians raï.The film was built around the taxi-phone representing this non-place of anonymous telecommunication and the impossibility of maintaining a message, an opinion within a contemporary society. Echoing the lyrics of the song ''Appel masqué'' by Cheb Abdou, "#31# (Unknown call)" is an approach somewhere between documentary, fiction and performance, where Cheikh Morad Djadja leads us on an existential quest, in a world in perpetual reconstruction, where this non-place allows him to leave a masked vocal message about his trans-identity.

Ghyzlène Boukaïla is a multimedia artist and director born in 1993 in Algiers. She lives and works between Algiers and Lille. Her artistic approach and sensitivity crystallizes in the breasts of a family of Algerian revolutionaries. Exploring certain issues related to post-colonialism, her approach explores new narratives related to socio-political and digital (re)evolutions by situating her practice at the interface of documentary/performance and post-human digital narratives.

‘So Settler, Are You a Pioneer?’ captures the structures of a rapidly changing peripheral neighbourhood: material remains of an obsolete infrastructure, luxury apartments, and piles of bricks that once used to house people. The work re-assembles and digitally preserves sites that are often overlooked in tales of linear progress. The piece is a journey through distorted urban landscapes, an assemblage of partial perspectives. By adapting the cartographic technique of photogrammetry, Wouter aims to question the authorities who decide what is and what is not in focus.

Through unravelling tales of linear progression I seek to map out the blurriness of our world. By adapting and appropriating modern contemporary cartographic techniques, such as photogrammetry, and the use of aerial and satellite imagery. I aim to question the authority that decides what is and what is not in focus to re-orient and ignite curiosity. Currently I am active as an artist and graphic designer. Besides my individual practice I collobarate in communal projects, one being OUTLINE; a collective and publishing platform consisting of one other graphic designer and two photographers. Another one being Radio Voorwaarts which is a platfom for underground culture in Amsterdam. More recently: Verdedig Noord, an activist group fighting against gentrification in Amsterdam Noord.

A man, inside his kitchen, is preparing his packed lunch. He has decided to visit The Brion Tomb, a monumental funeral complex, designed and built by the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa, commissioned by Onorina Brion Tomasin, to honour the memory of the deceased and beloved relative Giuseppe Brion, founder and owner of the Brionvega company, located in the small cemetery of San Vito, in the hamlet of Altivole in the province of Treviso. Placed the food inside a polka dot plastic bag, we will find it walking inside the cemetery, observing with meticulous care the details designed by the Venetian architect, while in its silent head will resound the precious words pronounced by the architect in a conference held in the summer of 1978.

Luca Ferri (Bergamo, italy, 1976), self-taught, since 2011 has been dedicating to the writing, photography and direction of films presented to italian and international festivals, such as atlanta film festival, biografilm festival, curta cinema, documenta madrid, fidocs, filmmaker, gent international film festival, indielisboa, queer lisboa, punto de vista, pesaro film festival, cinemambiente, poff, taipei film festival, thessaloniki documentary festival, vilnius short film festival, filmer le travail, videoex and in museums and art galleries, such as spazio forma meravigli (milan), mambo (bologna), macro (rome) and schusev state museum of architecture (moscow). In 2013 the national film library of Rome organizes a restrospetictive of his works. his first feature film abacuc, released in 2015, was presented at torino film festival and mar del plata festival de cine. In 2016 colombi was presented at 73rd venice festival in the orizzonti section. In 2018 his work dulcinea was selected at 71st locarno film festival in competition in the section signs of life while pierino was presented at 61st dok leipzig. In 2020 the house of love is presented at 70th berlinale in section forum, selected to take part in the competition berlinale documentary award and receives the mention to 34th teddy awards; his work sì is presented at 77th venice international film festival, orizzonti section. In 2021 his last work a thousand cypresses was presented at 67th international short film festival Oberhausen and at the 57th mostra internazionale del nuovo cinema di pesaro. won the award for best film at the 46th laceno d'oro in the section "eyes on the city."

Created in collaboration with IRCAM, « So Blue » represents a false documentary on the trip of Elvis Presley to Minsk, Belarus in the 1960s. The basis and the main element of this video is a song created by me using the sound collage technique. I used a dozen fragments from different Elvis songs, changing the key, working with tempo and harmony to recreate his « unreleased song ». The lyrics were composed by the same method, using archetypal words and phrases, typical for songwriting of the 50 - 60s. The video also presents a collage made from fragments of the fictional film "I'm 20" by Marlen Khutsiev and from frames of documentary films about Minsk. This technique allowed me to create a video mystification about Elvis’s fictional travel to my hometown (Minsk). The cross between fictional and documentary cinema, between a sound collage and a false composition generates a hybrid work that provokes feelings of strangeness, deceiving the viewer about credibility of this work. This confusion gives place to the questioning from the part of the viewer concerning the documentary representation.

Lina Filipovich is an artist and musician based in Paris, France. Her works explore the relationship between audio and visuals and span a variety of media, including found footage films, experimental electronic music, painting, silkscreening and performance. Working with samples and loops, Lina Filipovich uses techniques of sound collage, musical montage, cut-up and appropriation.

Katja’s generation was an experiment for the new Republic of Estonia. She was born in 1992 in Narva, in the Eastern part of Estonia bordering Russia. Her birth coincides with the creation of the new Republic of Estonia and she received Estonian citizenship. Katja's mother tongue is Russian, but her grandfather was Estonian and taught her the language at home. The film suggests several metaphors to describe the trauma of this generation - from Little Red Riding Hood to the keyword of experiment.

French-Estonian, born in 1970 in Paris Eléonore de Montesquiou’s work revolves around the articulation between private and official histories, personal and national identities. It tackles the intricacies and ambiguities of living in the margins, based on her personal experience of up rootedness. Eléonore is primarily working with video, she tapes testimonies, creating prosthetic memories of repressed histories. In her documentary-informed works, her camera becomes the voice of these voiceless people. Her work is based on a documentary approach, translated in films, drawings and texts; it deals mainly with issues of integration/immigration/meaning of a nation in Estonia, giving voice to the Russian community. A few years ago, she started working with asylum seekers from French speaking countries in Estonia.

It opens in the dark, in a corridor; water is flowing ... Voices echo in these sewer tunnels; it is the abyss of Munich, under the river Isar. The voices tell fragments of stories: about vanished people, violence, memory loss—while the camera is now above ground, scanning the city’s façades, including those of the “Third Reich.” The city appears as a body winding its way through time, past and present. Like a thread through memories, a spiral runs through it: a shell, a whirlpool, the turn of a staircase, the ever-recurring voices of the past. The film is a collage: it jumbles traces of history and forms of nature, bringing images, voices and sounds from different sources to the same level. A story of living beings and living environments, of fossils which challenge our perception of time.

Born in Paris, she studied art and art history in Aix-en-Provence (1995-1998), moved to Berlin in 1998 and worked for a year as an assistant for artistic projects in Küntlerhaus Bethanien. From 1999 to 2002, begins art studies at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig and continues in early 2003 in the class of Lothar Baumgarten at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she received her postgraduate studies degree (Meisterschülerin Abschluss) in 2007. Schweizer works with different media, with a particular focus on experimental video works. She has had numerous solo exhibitions (including Westfälischer Kunstverein Münster 2010, Frankfurter Kunstverein 2011, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden 2014, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 2016, Kunstverein Leipzig 2018, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, 2020/21, Double Feature, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2021) and has shown her work in group exhibitions and at biennials (including Berlin Biennale, 2006, Centre Georges Pompidou, 2007, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, 2013, Kunsthaus Dresden, 2016, Anren Biennale 2017, China, Manifesta 13, 2020, Neuen Berliner Kunstverein e.V., Berlin 2020, Heidelberger Kunstverein, 2022, Forum expanded exhibition, Silent Green, Berlin 2022). Her videos have already been selected for numerous festivals and events, including Forum expanded during the 67th (2017) and the 72.nd (2022) Berlin International Film Festival, the Vancouver International Film Festival (2017, 2020), Gli Incontri Internazionali del Cinema, Sorrento, Italy (2019), at the 36. Kasseler Dokfest, (2019) and at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022), where L’étoile de mer was awarded the e-flux prize in 2019. Examples of grants, and artist residencies she has received include a grant from the Villa Aurora, Los Angeles (2008), Studio grant, Karl Hofer Gesellschaft, Berlin (2008–2010), Toni and Albrecht Kumm Prize for the Promotion of Fine Arts, (2009), Artist in Residence, Lieu d’arts contemporains 3bisf, Aix-en-Provence, France (2010), Košice Artist in Residence (K.A.I.R.), Košice, Slovakia (2011), Artist in Residence, Museum POLIN, Warsaw, Poland (2016),work grant from the Berlin Senate (2019), the Funding programme for women artists in film/video, (2021), the Research Grant from the Berlin Senate as well (2017, 2021). So far, four monographs on her work have been published: Voices, Stimmen (Walther and Franz König, Köln 2121), Where Ivy Cracks The Wall (Naima, Paris / Berlin 2019), Lieux de Mémoire and Desire (Archive Books, Berlin 2015), Maya Schweizer?The Same Story Elsewhere (Spector Books, Leipzig 2010)

Twenty years ago, the towers of the New York World Trade Center collapsed. The endlessly repeating television images of this event were preceded by manyfold stagings of the building, either as a highly symbolic icon, a speculative destruction fantasy or merely as a spectacular backdrop. In Misty Picture, such fictional motifs string together: city symphony, disaster movie and medial trauma therapy become one.

Christoph Girardet, born in Langenhagen, Germany, in 1966. Lives in Hannover. Studied at the Braunschweig HBK. Matthias Müller, born in Bielefeld, Germany, in 1961. Lives in Bielefeld and Cologne. Studied at the Bielefeld University and at the Braunschweig HBK. Collaborative works since 1999

An attempt on aesthetic-technological-ideological objectivity in non-objective reality. How can we see today, the monuments of the NOB (National Liberation War), what they represent to us in the context of the new division of fashion as well as changes in paradigm and ideology in the former Yugoslavia. Is a new reading possible without a nostalgic undertone? How to think about architectural and concrete structures in the 2000s? What is the relationship between monument and human, what is the relationship between monument and unbridled nature. What is the relationship between monuments and contemporary technology and contemporary art today? How much contemporary and how much tech addiction? How to reinterpret the artifacts of the anti-fascist struggle, but so that the monument of the NOB remains at the denotative level of meaning of the monument, that new meanings do not endanger the given basic meaning, the one that is. Creating narratives as a new reading and a new "seeing" and seeing of monuments and creating new visual realities.

Igor Bošnjak (b. 1981 in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia) lives and works in Trebinje (Bosnia & Herzegovina). He is mainly working within the fields of contemporary art: moving images, video, installation, objects, drawing & photography. From 2009 works as a professor at Academy of Visual Arts in Trebinje, University of East Sarajevo on courses Intermedia art, Video art, Digital art. From 2019 works as visiting lecturer on Faculty of Fine Arts, Cetinje, University of Montenegro.

Filmed on 16mm film, this visual expression is rooted in archival materials and based on a poem by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. It speaks of forgotten people, their lives and their deeds. These two Archives were found at a flea market in Zagreb. One is of a famous architect and the other of a famous composer. The film ponders on this occurrence, as well as on the vanishing and forgetfulness of humans.

Marko Tadic (1979) studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence. His artistic practice focuses on drawing, installation and animation. He has won numerous art prizes. His films have been shown at many international animation and experimental film festivals. His works have been exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions around the world. In 2017, he represented Croatia at the 57th Venice Biennale, along with Tina Gverovic. He participated in residential programs in Helsinki, New York, Los Angeles, Frankfurt and Vienna. He works at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia.

THE MOIST CABINET is inspired by the literary genre of climate fiction. Through the voice-over of the film, we encounter poems by Bettina von Arnim and William Shakespeare, each in the original language. Hanakam & Schuller view these poems from the 16th and 19th centuries a prequel to cli-fi. Both poets seem to be in dialogue with each other, yet testify to different attitudes: in Shakespeare, the description of nature serves as a catalyst of sexual desire; in Arnim, the physical encounter with nature triggers a need to preserve the source of erotic experience: “Your silence, nature, do not break.?/?Not on rustling leaf?/?With stylus wake thee.” THE MOIST CABINET thus also describes the influence of literary narratives on the relationships between nature and humans, and the consequential actions.

HANAKAM & SCHULLER is an artist duo living in Vienna. As artists and explorers, Markus Hanakam and Roswitha Schuller redesign the rules of fine arts and create unconventional arrangements and new world designs in videos and objects as well as applied artforms. Their works have been shown in Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; MAK, Vienna; MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles; and the National Art Center in Tokyo. In 2022 they will work with Current Interests on a spatial installation for MAK Garage Top in Los Angeles.

Musarion adapts the eponymous work by German writer Christoph Martin Wieland and transfers the love story into the present day. Phanias withdrew from the city of Athens to the countryside to leave his old life behind. But one day he encounters his former girlfriend Musarion who tries to bring him back to reason. The art film follows their struggle to find an enlightened form of love that can overcome philosophical and political fanaticism. Musarion was directed by a collective of five young artists and mixes elements of the original text, opera, theatre, video art and narrative film.

Vincent Hannwacker was born in 1997 in Munich, Germany. Since 2016 he studies Media Art at Julian Rosefeldt's class at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. Since 2017 he studies Screenwriting at the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF).

Un chant d’oiseaux nous, ouvrant sur une forêt verdoyante un jour de pluie. Une langue de brume s’insinue lentement dans l’image et s’enroule autour des arbres. Des silhouettes humaines la traversent, paisibles malgré les flammes qui lèchent leurs vêtements. Ces âmes errantes fuient-elles quelque catastrophe urbaine ou font-elles partie du bestiaire de créatures merveilleuses peuplant les forêts ? Sont-elles des messagers de l’Apocalypse ou des martyrs, après un geste ultime de protestation ? Le cheval qui les observe sans broncher, tapis dans les fougères, se contente de renforcer l’inquiétante tranquillité de la scène sans donner de réponse. Julie Chaffort connaît bien ce sentiment, pour avoir tourné dans les forêts nombre de ses vidéos, la figure animale y étant quasi omniprésente. Pour l’artiste, le cheval est le « témoin privilégié de quelque chose que l’on arrive plus à percevoir en tant qu’humain ». Un témoin dans une partition tragi-comique nous menant d’un univers « intemporel » et obscur propre aux contes.

Les vidéos de Julie Chaffort mirent le paysage, le toisent et le parcourent ; on y croise des hommes au destin tragique et des héros aussi beaux que les chants qui les accompagnent – peut être pour en donner la mesure. Les gestes accomplis sont tout à la fois drôles et absurdes, l’avenir toujours incertain et les paroles s’envolent, attrapées par les branches d’une forêt ou englouties dans les eaux d’un lac. Les plans fixent les branches ; ils convoquent les tableaux de l’école de Barbizon où les bruns apparaissent comme chargés de bitume et les lumières s’accrochent aux pâtes colorées. Les récits s’écrivent entre les longs plans-séquence et se devinent dans les détails que la lenteur permet d’observer comme l’on admire une nature morte. L’artiste ouvre des univers parallèles, atemporels et insituables, où le monde se signale à nous par ses infimes déplacements et l’infinité de ses signaux – étrangement menaçants. Pour Julie Chaffort, le cinéma est un médium dominant, naturel, qu’elle choisit très tôt de développer, à l’école des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux où elle étudie, puis auprès de Roy Andersson qu’elle assiste en Suède, et de Werner Herzog dont elle suit le séminaire à sa Rogue Film School à New-York. Elle expose en France et à l’international. Ses œuvres font parties de collections nationales et privées Julie Chaffort est née en 1982. Elle vit à Bordeaux et travaille partout.

Inspired by the children’s book About Two Squares created by El Lisstzky exactly 100 years ago, Transient Witness simultaneously merges and obscures the intimate from the public, in a story where the actions of collecting and stealing function as synonyms and inheritance and loss immerse. It is a fictional story of the transfer of the objects from the private house of avant-garde collector Egidio Marzona in Berlin to their new domicile – the Japanisches Palais, a Rococo building that belongs to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD). The plot is told through the eyes of three main characters: Christina, the manager of the collection; Maurizio, the art mover; and Präsens the collector’s dog. Fiction meets reality: the film takes place on 25 November 2019. On that day, priceless jewelry of immense cultural value was stolen from the Green Vault in Dresden in one of the biggest art heists in history, causing a national shock in Germany. The film unfolds a complex story, navigating between historical facts about the Baroque and the Avant-garde; art and its politics.

Assaf Gruber (b. Jerusalem, 1980) is a sculptor and filmmaker who lives and works in Berlin. The dialectical relationship between the individual and the establishment is at the centre of his work, which explores how political orientations of institutions impact the lives of individuals and how institutions choose to represent and communicate facts and artefacts. Gruber studied at the 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. His solo exhibitions include the Muzeum Sztuki, ?ód? (2015), the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2018), Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2018), among others. His films have been featured in festivals including the Berlinale Film Festival, FID Marseille (2019), and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2016).