WHAT MAKES US HUMAN? Alexander Ponomarev’s Statement

Russian artist Alexander Ponomarev painted in bright colors in 1996 a Russian submarine, making out of a war machine a work of art. ikonoTV is launching a "What makes us Human?" campaign, a Call for Artists to express alternatives to war. Check ikonoTV’s Facebook page soon.

Duration : 1m
Maturity Level : all

Part 1 - Accountability

The earth is our home and the home of many other animal species and plants. It is our responsibility to see the damage that we caused to the water, air and the earth.

Duration : 3m
Maturity Level : all

Part 2 - Transformation

What are the main factors for climate change and air pollution and how we can change and make an impact on them.

Duration : 3m
Maturity Level : all

Part 3 - Action

What we can do about climate change already today.

Duration : 5m
Maturity Level : all

Alexa Velez-Of the Air (2021)

WINNER: Of the Air is a short film that examines our disconnect from the natural world, engaging with the element of air from a physical and emotional perspective. The film is a reaction to the climate crisis in the form of a duet between a living, breathing body and the air. The piece takes place in a small apartment kitchen, where the main character finds herself relying on an air conditioner for relief in the middle of a heat wave. The air conditioner is one of many machines humans have created to harness the forces of the natural world. However, on a grander scale, we are at the mercy of these forces. -Alexa Velez

Duration : 0s
Maturity Level : all

Anna Rotty - Solastalgia (2020)

“I’m interested in how new colors appear in our perception of the world we live in and what emotions color can stir within us. I’ve started to see this work as an archive I’m building, in response to what I see now, but also as a record of this time as I think about the future. I want images of water and land to be seductive and dynamic so that we feel the need to preserve it as best we can. I want the viewer to question their gaze of the Earth, see themselves as part of the landscape, both real and constructed, to generate empathy. With my constructed sculptural pieces, I hope people make the connection that these are built, and not found, as a reminder to not take our planet for granted.” –Anna Rotty 

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all

Brian Patterson - Intermission for Deleted (2018)

“The aim of this piece is to present the implications of the imminent mass extinction at a pace that the viewer can integrate without overwhelm or despair. While making this piece I contemplated the objective fact that 99.9% of all species to ever live on Earth have gone extinct. Such a premise may instill despair or surrender, but it also reveals the beauty of humanity’s power both to destroy the planet but also save and serve her as well. I strongly believe the courage and focus that a calm mind and compassionate heart allow is our only hope of survival.”

Duration : 5m
Maturity Level : all

Char Jeré - We Were Water (2022)

“I hope to emphatically express the issues that marginalized communities are facing globally so that those in power begin to listen more intently. I want to create an intergenerational and multi-racial movement wherein Black, Brown and Indigenous people’s voices are not only heard but amplified. It’s essential that we include different perspectives on the issue of climate change so that we can see how impactful it is to not just a few of us but all of us. Artists should be working within their communities to elevate and mediate the issues and concerns of the ecology around them.” –Char Jeré

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all

Douglas Tolman - Last Gesture (2021)

WINNER: An inland sea disappears before our eyes. Coastal wildfire smoke drifts into the basin, mingling with dust particles from a dry lake bed. We are downwind, with an economy reliant on poor land-use practices which cause ancestral forests to burn and inland seas to dry up. The land has offered so much to us, a gesture that has allowed our species to flourish around the planet. When will we offer something in return? Though this work is specific to the place I call home, lakes and forests around the world are facing similar problems and require similar solutions. –Douglas Tolman

Duration : 3m
Maturity Level : all

Linnéa Gad - Lime (2021)

Lime examines how CO2 levels and the acidification of the sea is intertwined with the lifecycle of the mineral lime. I’m currently investigating limestone, oyster shells and lapis lazuli, which are all different forms of calcium carbonate. In order to get better acquainted with the material, I issued myself a challenge: to sculpt only in lime, endorsing its diversity and its willingness to bind with different versions of itself. I see my sculptures as a locus for the compressed narratives embedded in the material, able to stand on their own as curious openings for inquiry and ready to surface discussion. –Linnéa Gad

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all

Kathy Sirico - Floating Chronologies (2022)

Floating Chronologies investigates dendrochronology—the study of mapping tree-rings—and its role in how we impose human power over nature, to the cost of climate devastation. Scientists use the term “Floating Chronology” to describe a tree-ring history whose beginning and end dates are not known and cannot be fully mapped. Here, I offer an alternative viewpoint which will reorient viewers out of a societally imposed state of mind, and towards one of empathy and climate justice. The primary sculptural element of my project is a large- scale, circular mixed media collage which stands in place of the museum tree. It is an empathetic monument which serves as an abstract alternative to patriarchal models of narrative art. –Kathy Sirico

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Maurício Chades - Pyramid, Urubu (2019)

WINNER: By understanding art as an aesthetic-political tool, I see experimentation as a state of becoming in which we can think of ways out of the infinite socio-environmental crises generated by capitalism. Mostly grounded in environmentalism studies, my work usually relates to a place or a system that I perceive as a microcosm within a global situation. Three interconnected subjects mark my production: decomposition, death rituals, and frictions between forest and city. –Maurício Chades

Duration : 5m
Maturity Level : all

Melanie Bernier - The Popcorn Game (2021)

Will future generations view us as monsters for not doing more to avert catastrophe? How will we explain ourselves? Combining a cherished story from my childhood with sparse, folksy imagery, I comment on the absurdity of my lived experience. I envision where this moment will lead us. In The Popcorn Game , I’m cast as my future self, an anxious and lonely woman with many regrets. Under shelter one dark, stormy night, the Crone is called upon to entertain. –Melanie Bernier 

Duration : 3m
Maturity Level : all

Sue Montoya - Change Atlas (excerpt) (2019)

Development perpetuates the seemingly endless cycle of modernity and gentrification at the cost of local communities. The geopolitics and history of places emerge throughout my work in the form of photographs, sculptures, videos, and zines. My research draws on architecture, feminism, ecology, and labor (physical and emotional) as means to investigate multiple paradigms and their contribution to the production of places. I hope to create actionable plans, conversations, imaginaries for tackling the climate crisis with new imaginaries in light of the catastrophic imagery already found in the public psyche around climate change. –Sue Montoya 

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all

Tiare Ribeaux & Jody Stillwater - Cyanovisions (2020)

Cyanovisions as a video project explores our relationship as humans to Cyanobacteria in an age of climate collapse. Cyanobacteria are one of the most ancient life forms, a species that was responsible for first creating oxygen on our planet through photosynthesis. In an alternative narrative to the dominance over nature that we have been living in as a global society, Cyanovisions posits potentials for biological hybridity and indigenous knowledge that recognize the inextricable relationship of human lifespans to those of other organisms. –Tiare Ribeaux

Duration : 5m
Maturity Level : all

Vivian Vivas - Elision (2022)

The micro pace of the film forces the audience to see and observe a single phenomenon, to use their senses in a hyper-aware state, in which they become conscious of empty, unfamiliar space in a formerly unseen experience. The diver, dressed in toxic green, is constantly exhaling but never inhaling - forcing the viewer to reflect on their own existence. How does the shifting environment affect our psyche? In what ways do melancholy and mourning enter our daily emotional lives? Will we choose to rescue ourselves? –Vivian Vivas 

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Armed and Happy by Fantastic Little Splash

Fantastic little splash — is a collective comprising journalist/artist Lera Malchenko and artist/director Oleksandr Hants. Collective combines art practice and media studies. a fantastic little splash is interested in utopias and dystopia, the collective imagination and its incarnations, projections, delusions, and uncertainties. The video "Armed and Happy", is one of the episodes of the series Armed and Dangerous, focuses on the emotionality of social media and its role in the militarization of Ukrainian society

Duration : 5m
Maturity Level : all

Circulation (2020) by Oleksiy Radynski

Duration : 11m
Maturity Level : all

Letter to a Turtledove (2020) by Dana Kavelina

One of the crucial sources for this work by Dana Kavelina is the anonymous five-hour documentary To Watch the War (2018), a piece of found-footage filmmaking in its own right. Letter to a Turtledove is thus a second-degree artistic appropriation of amateur footage shot during the war in the Donbas region of Ukraine, recombined into a surreal anti-war film-poem. The war videos are interspersed with Kavelina’s own animated segments, staged mise-en-scènes, and archival footage of the Donbas from the 1930s (when the region became a hotspot for Stalinist industrialization of the Soviet Union, and of heated class warfare) onwards. There’s an actual poem at the film’s center: a monologue spoken off-screen, authored by Kavelina herself. This piece of writing encapsulates the multitude of traumas, grievances, horrors, dreams, and hallucinations that have descended upon the Donbass region since its invasion by Russia in 2014. Still, numerous elements of this multitude originate from long before the war had actually broken out.

Duration : 20m
Maturity Level : all

Notes from underground (2016) by Uli Golub

The film is depicting the daily life of a character who’s running away from frustrating reality. Deceived by social roles and human relations, frightened by riots and military unrest in the country, this man lives cloistered in his apartment, resembling a Noah’s Ark, but instead of animals, stuffed with all kinds of objects and belongings. Step by step the viewer gets sucked into this world, where objects reign and are the only salvation in this constantly changing precarious world. This is a collaged narrative, composed of real events, personal stories, media propaganda, and imagined doomsday nightmares. Thus, through a very personal narrative, the current trauma and distress of contemporary society are revealed.

Duration : 13m
Maturity Level : all

HOW ARE YOU?

Ukrainian Artists answer this question with their visionary works. Discover their dedicated "How Are You?" channel on ikonoTV curated by Kateryna Filyuk. Thanks to our Partners the Ukrainian Institute in Kyiv and Momentum Worldwide in Berlin showing the videos also at the Zionskirche in Berlin. And please support Ukrainian Artists [https://linktr.ee/ikonotv.how_are_you]

Duration : 20s
Maturity Level : all

What makes us Human? by Nikita Kravtsov

Ukrainian artist Nikita Kravtsov is sharing his statement on "What makes us human" in times of war. With his drawing practice, we meditate with him and reflect on the actual dramatic situation in his homeland. This original drawing is for "The War of the Mushrooms", a book launching in English and very soon in German. Together with writer Andrei Kurkov, they were inspired by the eponymous folk tale, a popular classic in Slavic cultures. They both reimagine the tale with scenes from Russia’s current war on Ukraine. The revenue from the book’s sale will be sent to support the defense of Ukraine.

Duration : 15m
Maturity Level : all

Angela Lyn, On the Edge of Time by Michael Schindhelm

Film director Michael Schindhelm features the work and life of Angela Lyn, a Swiss artist of Anglo-Chinese origin, in the advent of her major exhibition held at Villa Arconati-FAR, a baroque palazzo situated on the outskirts of Milan. The artist’s journey weaving past and present, east and west, art and life - unfolds within the time-worn rooms focussing on what connects rather than what separates us as human beings. Camera and editing Yawen Yeo. Post-production Stefano Cravero. Text and voice Angela Lyn.

Duration : 15m
Maturity Level : all

What makes us Human? by Vadim Zakharov

In “BAFF BAFF! What Are The Politicians Talking About”, Vadim Zakharov reads out loud more than 1000 non-verbal words, most of which have been found in the magazines “Mickey Mouse” (German editions) and also taken from the books “Tintin The Mysterious Star” and “Asterix & Obelix The Laurels of Caesar”. The words collected in the non-verbal vocabulary have no meaning, but only phonetically reflect certain events: someone has fainted (BLIEP!), a glass has broken (CRACK! CLIRR!), a helicopter has crashed into a cupola (KAROMMS!), a museum has collapsed (CRACK! THUNDER! CRIME!). The Reader (Vadim Zakharov), wearing a white shirt and a tie, recites these words seriously and forcefully. The image of a politician is created, a public figure who professionally and convincingly is ready to say something on any occasion. At the same time, we see that these are just empty words - bubbles that float away as soon as they reach our ears. The film highlights the absurdity of what we see and hear every day on television and the internet. At the same time, reading non-verbal words can be perceived as reading poetry… The original Exhibition version is 65 min long.

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all