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Antarctic Traces

Antarctic Traces

Michaela Grill Approaching the mysterious, inaccessible realm via the few traces that are currently available. At the same time, revolving around the desolation and devastation that humans have left in their treatment of it. Michaela Grill devotes herself to these two tasks in Antarctic Traces, a splendid, thoroughly composed study of the most mysterious of all continents, or rather, the supplements of it that are accessible. For one, there is the rough landscape of the coast of South Georgia, a group of islands located off of Antarctica, which Grill examines in what are mainly still frames. For another are the (largely black-and-white) archive images in which the thematic focus of the film, the history of whaling since the late nineteenth century, are historically embedded. And there is also a narrative elaborately woven from numerous literary sources, spoken from off screen and interlaced with subtle sound inserts, that allows this highly abject episode in humanity´s exploitation of nature to become present: the industrial slaughter of seals, sea elephants, and primarily whales until into the 1970s, which took its brutal course in the waters of the south Atlantic. In an alternating rhythm of still images, minimally moving pictures, and individual camera pans, Antarctic Tracess divulges a mosaic-like tableau of a "dead, chilly world": glaciers, skeletons, industrial ruins, and rusted ships bear witness to the uncompromising eagerness for power of the "whaling industry." Presently populating the landscape of "scarred" wasteland are penguins and seals as hangers-on who just won´t die. As a whole, Antarctic Traces creates a disturbing portrait of a deadly peace that humans have caused in a remote area of the earth and seas. Traces of a ruinous freedom, which is profoundly rooted in nothing. (Christian Höller)

Duration : 29m
Maturity Level : all

Litus Minor

Litus Minor

Oscar Valenzin Lio Piccolo is a town in the Venetian Lagoon, in the Municipality of Cavallino Treporti. It is sometimes referred to as an island, although it is rather a set of islets separated by narrow channels. Archipelagos rich in primordial life forms such as cyanobacteria, which in these waters find a prolific environment towards the end of summer where they can reach high concentrations, causing characteristic "blooms".

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Under the reefs orchestra - Sakurajima

Under the reefs orchestra - Sakurajima

In the south of Japan, a small town named Kagoshima faces the Sakurajima volcano. This volcano regularly erupts ashes and lava flows. The inhabitants of the city take out all their umbrellas, to protect themselves from the ash rain, while continuing their daily activities. This clip, entirely made from traditional collages, will turn around this motif: a civilization petrified in its daily life facing an agonizing nature. Will the demiurge artist manage to save humanity? By David Delruelle&Yoann STEHR (SUPER TCHIP)

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all

TREN-TREN Y KAY-KAY - Mapuche cosmogonic myth

TREN-TREN Y KAY-KAY - Mapuche cosmogonic myth

Camilo Rodriguez In this Mapuche myth, the powerful serpents TREN-TREN and KAI-KAI, daughters of the pillanes, protect the earth, highlighting the destructive relationship between human beings and environment. KAI-KAI reacts to the destruction of nature perpetrated by men. Faced with requests for help, TREN TREN confronts him to protect them and seek a new balance. This short film is part of the movie “Namunmu Zomo - Mujer de pie” about the life of Luisa Calcumil.

Duration : 3m
Maturity Level : all

The Frontier Is Everywhere

The Frontier Is Everywhere

Damodar Joglekar Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Duration : 3m
Maturity Level : all

Fleeting Moments

Fleeting Moments

This video work by Nina Sabnani and Srilekha Sikander is composed of moments. Each image represents a moment, or several moments that are really a single moment spread across 40 years. Each image is a scene from a season, from a monsoon descending over coastal lands and the sea. Every monsoon, the image returns. Every few moments, it changes. The artists are pushed to create multiple images to represent a single moment. And to put them all together on a single page. The cyclical nature of the work is part of its origin. It is based on journeys made to and fro, between Bombay and Murud-Janjira, by the artist, Srilekha Sikander over a period of forty years. Each journey is a repetition of another journey like every monsoon is a memory of another monsoon. Each season, the same scene, the same sea, repeats itself, but in a new form. Time stands still, even as it moves. Movement and stillness are blended together – separate and balanced. Perhaps this is what the Greeks called karyological time. The time that is momentary, both still and moving, like water in a lake.

Duration : 3m
Maturity Level : all

The Lost Lullaby

The Lost Lullaby

The Lost Lullaby is a vision of Fauzia Minallah for a better future for our world. We have to bring back the lost lullabies of our beautiful Mother Nature.

Duration : 1m
Maturity Level : all

Time God

Time God

Time God by Alexandra Mas is the indignation of Nature, that appears here to show the disasters produced by human activity and punish them. It is a breath, a divine spirit wearing the gold as an armor and as an ultimate try to make human see its furry and hallow pain. The gold, metal, supple raw material, carries here a double meaning of divinity and primitive being.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

Iconoplast

Iconoplast

Sara Bonaventura Imagine alien visitors arriving on Earth in the remote future.” Jan Zalasiewicz’s The Earth after us, and the seminal Lynn Margulis’ Microcosmos inspired this mockumentary (e.g. the voice over, a re-adaptation of them, where past tense verbs are turned into future tense, embedding the fantasy of a future already set as past). The idea that symbiosis, the living together and sometimes merging of different species of organisms, is crucial to the evolution of life forms on Earth, is the underpinning concept of this work.

Duration : 8m
Maturity Level : all

The White

The White

Ian Gibbins "At sea-rim, sky-base, afloat somewhere between head (bone-dense) and shoulder, between blink or flinch and occasional shrug: the thick inward draw and effort of gyre, draught, push, pulse, pull… gar, mako, kraken... under threat of claw, spine, barb... flensed to wind spume, brawn paled to cloud roll..." Moored at portside, we ponder the uncertainty of what lies ahead. We know there are dangers: the ocean, quiet for now; impenetrable fogs; beasts watching us, lurking in anticipation; perhaps only the monsters of our imagination, the destruction wrought by our greed and disregard for the natural world.

Duration : 3m
Maturity Level : all

ECO

ECO

Francesca Leoni A new species, aborigines of the future, guardians of a rebirth created by a post-pandemic and post-war period, who are once again trying to take care of an artificial garden. The cyclical nature and violence of nature require a last gesture of hope, which travels beyond the artificial barrier, dissolving in an ECO that will never end. Because "The earth will survive, but" perhaps "it will no longer be of the human species."

Duration : 3m
Maturity Level : all

Life is a two-way dream

Life is a two-way dream

The movie of Gjert Rognli shows the way in a world undergoing rapid change, with polarization and globalization going in many directions. We are in an age marked by adoration of youth, fixation on the present and extreme individualism. What we do today will affect the way people live in the future. The wisdom from the shaman’s worldview from The Old Sámi Religion helps weave together another interpretation and story. Original film title "Eallin lea guovttesuorat niehku".

Duration : 8m
Maturity Level : all

El Bosque Encarnado

El Bosque Encarnado

The other side of rising sea levels is drought. In this collaborative film, David Cass & Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar Romero see the aftermath of a forest fire in southern Spain. As the climate crisis worsens, scenes such as this will become ever more common, as arid regions become ever drier.

Duration : 7m
Maturity Level : all

Perpetual Snow: Chapter I

Perpetual Snow: Chapter I

‘Perpetual Snow’ is an ongoing project by Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar Romero that includes performance, video, photography, and installation. It highlights the ephemeral nature of our environment, particularly now, in the context of climate breakdown, where the concept of “perpetual snow” is being challenged by global warming. The piece is formed by multiple layers of snow collected in New York City in various moments in time, starting with the last snow of 2021 in NYC. Stored in the freezer, this snow becomes artificially perpetual and it lasts year after year. Perpetual Snow: Chapter I’ is the first film in the series and it documents the first stages of the piece.

Duration : 5m
Maturity Level : all

Where Once The Waters

Where Once The Waters

‘Where Once the Waters’, created for the 59th Venice Biennale of Art, is an evolution of Cass’ creative responses to the issue of rising sea levels. The final exhibition is formed of two installation artworks, one wall of 365 sea paintings upon antique tins & boxes; one wall of letters, written to people around the world, explaining changes in sea levels at the coasts closest to their birthplaces.

Duration : 7m
Maturity Level : all

The Studio

The Studio

Found objects into art: an up-close look around David Cass’ workspaces. Here is Cass’ first concern – that we must care for our resources, that we must recycle and repurpose.

Duration : 4m
Maturity Level : all

Aqua Man I

Aqua Man I

Katherine Boland lives on the southeast coast of Australia so, the ocean is for her a vital source of inspiration, recreation, rejuvenation, and discovery. This work, co-created with artificial intelligence, speaks to our connection to the ocean and I hope it encourages people to reflect on that connection and develop individual and collective actions to protect our precious oceans, and the life within them, for future generations.

Duration : 1m
Maturity Level : all

Sand Man

Sand Man

Katherine Boland lives on the southeast coast of Australia so, the ocean is for her a vital source of inspiration, recreation, rejuvenation, and discovery. This work, co-created with artificial intelligence, speaks to our connection to the ocean and I hope it encourages people to reflect on that connection and develop individual and collective actions to protect our precious oceans, and the life within them, for future generations.

Duration : 1m
Maturity Level : all

Rising Horizon

Rising Horizon

From the studio, to the gallery. Highlights of a talk between David Cass & Professor David Reay of Edinburgh University, offering two takes on Cass’ exhibition ‘Rising Horizon’: from a creative perspective, and a scientific one. ‘Rising Horizon’ introduces the topic of rising sea levels to Cass’ art practice.

Duration : 11m
Maturity Level : all

Here and There. Now and Then

Here and There. Now and Then

With Here and There. Now and Then Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar Romero explores the esparto grass. These extremely resistant grasses shape the Mediterranean landscape, from sun-up to sun-down. Esparto – a seemingly fragile fibre – has in fact been one of the building blocks of the area for millennia, as well as the human cultures where it is found. Its morpho-structural and physiological ability to adapt makes it able to cope with hydric-stress and increasingly hot temperatures – particularly in areas of southern Spain, the setting of previous video ‘El Bosque Encarnado’, where desertification is already taking hold. This grass aids production of mosses, lichens and cyanobacteria, all of them fundamental elements in every ecosystem.

Duration : 14m
Maturity Level : all

Island

Island

Island is an art film by Duda Carvalho where a girl reflects on strange new environmental forces.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all

31 Cubes

31 Cubes

31, π x π x π, cubes aligned, π distanced from each other by Moshe Vollach A long row of, 61 identical-size cubes, is stretched toward the horizon, composing a string of: matter cube – space cube – matter cube – space cube…. The cubes are made of ice, placed in the desert on a hot summer day on June 2016. The defrosting process is documented, from the air and from the ground, using 5 stills cameras in time-lapse mode. When the process is complete, a row of 61 identical cubes remains: space cube – space cube – space cube – space cube…. The art-work refers to the relationship between matter and space in the field of art in general and Sculpture in particular. The project accentuates – formative, climatic, physical, mathematical and geomorphologic - contrasts. This land-art project discusses: global warming, radical climate changes, icebergs defrosting and desertification.

Duration : 8m
Maturity Level : all

Ele

Ele

Magda Stützer-Tothova Two time travelers encounter each other in an abstract space and learn about their respective lives, unaware that their fates are interwoven. While the character from the past cannot yet guess that the actions of his society will have destructive consequences for nature and the future, the protagonist from the future does not understand the circumstances under which people existed in her own past. The catastrophe, which caused a huge devastation seems to be irreversible.

Duration : 14m
Maturity Level : all

déNATURE

déNATURE

Judith Lesur A small succession of scenes that mixes the worlds of the masters of Flemish painting with contemporary elements to illustrate the destruction of the living that takes place in the name of progress and comfort.

Duration : 2m
Maturity Level : all