schedules subject to change
all shows are pay what you can / suggested donation of $10
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Fri 2/14
7:45-9:00
VLX6 Program 1
Mason Eubanks – I Don’t Watch TV Anymore
Naama Freedman – Sometimes It’s Just Not Your Day
Matt Mullins – Beatnik Sermon
Tom Bessoir – You Can’t Find Love
Adam E. Stone – Bridge
Mark Franz – Bears Ears
Yannick Mosimann – Come out of your shell
Sofie Lebow – Lost Pieces of Her
Yann les Jours – kindergarten
Dina Kelberman – It Was Me But It Wasn’t Me
Rowan Martin Mikolic-O’Rourke – 16-9 PN
Hüseyin Mert Erverdi – Sea of Shadows
Barry Gerson – Mexico
Vasco Diogo – Anima # 1-4
Hannu Nieminen – Are You Here?
Paul Echeverria – That Bolex Thing
Susanne Layla Petersen – Chaos
Roger Horn – Questioning the Existence of Alec
Vivien Forsans – Bedroom People
Peter Whittenberger – To Hold
Mélissa Faivre – The Becoming
Toni Mitjanit – Dawn & Dusk
Sat 2/15
7:45-9:00
VLX6 Program 2
featuring Tommy Becker performing Elective:ART
along with short films:
Nathan Cordova – Gold and Glitter
Susanne Layla Petersen – Untitled
Hong Zhou – Spring Is Coming
Steven Woloshen – Orbiter
Yvette Granata – Exo Gestus #2
William Thinnes – A Cacophony of Scales
Billy Palumbo – Billy Billy
Frédéric Moffet – Goddess of Speed
Cherie Sampson – Substance of Venom
Georg Koszulinski – Chronotope Earth 1985 to Future
Tommy Becker – A self-described “poet trapped in a camcorder,” Becker’s art rock films take a collagist approach to thematic investigation by combining original songwriting, spoken word, performance, costuming, animation, direct 16mm, glitch art and in-computer design. Educational preludes, historical footage, and thematic lyrics lend a documentary component to his work that balances meaning with personal, often humorous, poetic expression.
Fri 2/21
7:45-9:00
VLX6 Program 3
featuring Michael Mersereau LIVEscoring The Nightmare Project: Recurrence
along with short films:
Laura Iancu – Wishfulweed
Josh Weissbach – a film with sound (take three)
Martin Del Carpio – Fragments of an Echo
Samy Benammar – Kauaʻi ʻōʻō
Jonathon Stearns – Cascade
Shaun Clark Brixton Bustle
Panu Johansson Who Has Seen the Wind?
KJ Edwards – future ready: cusp
Maxime Corbeil-Perron – Visions
Pamela Falkenberg & Jack Cochran – Cancer Alley
Konstantinos Koukoudis – Is There Anybody Out There?
Sat 2/22
7:45-9:00
VLX6 Program 4
LIVEscore to be annouced
Susanne Layla Petersen – Zone
Mariano Ramis – Broadcasting from home
Muriel Paraboni – Fine Grain
Peter Litwinowicz – Glimpses
Giorgio Gerardi – Driving
Virginia L. Montgomery – Moon Moth Bed
Yanina Gruden – The Heart of the Tongue
Valeryia Naboikina – Mindscapes
Scott Turri – My Black + White TV
Eric Souther – Deep Time of Latent Space
Fri 2/28
7:45-9:00
VLX6 Program 5
featuring LIVEscores by Threadbare Artistocrats
Soyeon Kim – tête-à-tête
Bridget Sutherland – Seeing War
Martin Gerigk – Torii
Alicia Mujynya – Forgetting French #1: Eight Years From Nadia
Charlie Klarsfeld – נפלה : Falling
Ly Bolia – Doubt
Nicolas Brault – Entropic Memory
Irina Tempea – In My Head
Wheeler Winston Dixon – Postmodern Romance
Simonetta Barbon – Before AL arrives
Wilson Stiner – Furor Agendi
Paul Long – Paint To Pixel VR
David Witzling – A Random Walk Through the Latent Space
Javier Fabregas – Grimoire 11: A Servant’s Quest
VLX6 film and artist details
16-9 PN | 16-9 PN follows the inner violence between paradoxical thoughts, questioning where the line between impulse and reality lies (especially those kept in the recesses of one’s mind, where even their existence is questionable), and the cyclical turmoil/transformation that follows. | Rowan Martin Mikolic-O’Rourke | Rowan Mikolič-O’Rourke (he/him) is an Ontario based multi-medium artist, focused on the creation of video-art/short films – both as a tech and a creative. His interest lies in examining the formation of identity in relation to physical/social environments, often through the use of strong graphical elements and re-purposing of personal home videos/photos. |
A Cacophony of Scales | Music scales, weigh scales, and industrial scales converge to warn of the disasterous effects we are having on butterfly scales. | William Thinnes | I have always had an interest in the designs on the wings of butterflies. Making a movie of my collection was bound to happen. |
a film with sound (take three) | A father and daughter make a new movie after the daughter requests to make a film with sound after making a silent one the previous year. | Josh Weissbach | Josh Weissbach is an experimental filmmaker. He lives in a house next to a once abandoned village. His films and videos have been shown worldwide in such venues as Ann Arbor Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, European Media Art Festival, Mono No Aware, Chicago Underground Film Festival, 25 FPS Festival, First Look at Museum of the Moving Image, and Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival. He has won jury prizes at Videoex, ICDOCS, $100 Film Festival, Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, Berlin Revolution Film Festival, and Haverhill Experimental Film Festival. He is the recipient of a 2021 Artistic Excellence Award from the Connecticut Office of the Arts, a 2020 Moving Image Fund Early Development Grant from the LEF Foundation, a 2018 LightPress Grant from the Interbay Cinema Society, a 2015 LEF Fellowship from the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, a 2013 Mary L. Nohl Fellowship for Emerging Artists from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, and a 2008 Cary Grant Film Award from the Princess Grace Foundation-USA. |
A Random Walk Through the Latent Space | Two artificial intelligences compete to mingle truth with its statistical representation, giving birth to a generative adversarial network. Thinking machines will eat your future. In the end, all will be well in the Disney-verse. Also featuring: the Myanmar Coup Dance Routine, industrial policy recommendations from Elon Musk, and other highlights from Pandemic social media. | David Witzling | David Witzling is an artist, educator, and amateur mad computer scientist based in Milwaukee. His films have screened regionally, nationally, and internationally. His recent publications and conference presentations have centered on diminishing returns in industrial societies and anonymity’s role in the Western political tradition’s development and articulation of citizenship. He is best (or least) known for his anonymous web art project LHOHQ. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for over a decade; his studio instruction has spanned 16mm film production, sound design, and digital video practice; he also lectures on Modernist cinema, social themes in narrative cinema, and open source culture. |
Anima # 1-4 | Anima # 1-4 is a mash up of four different experimental animations that finish a cycle of creative work by Vasco Diogo. The film explores interior sensations and emotions from intra-uterine memories to growing shadows, ghosts and chaos that emerged in a context of generalized anxiety. Instead of trying to give solutions to problems the film expands a space of mystery through screen awareness. |
Vasco Diogo | Vasco Diogo was born in Lisbon in 1970. He has a degree in Sociology by Universidade Nova de Lisboa, a master degree in Social Sciences by Universidade de Lisboa and a PhD in Communication Sciences by Universidade Nova de Lisboa, with the thesis: “Video: specificity, hybridity and experimentation”(scholarship by FCT, 2008). |
Are You Here? |
“Our perceptual experience is a controlled hallucination, which our brain builds anew every moment. “Self” is also a perception that our brain constructs. The self is a bundle of observations and memories, the form of which is not permanent but shifting.” (Anil Seth). “Are you here?” is a short experimental film about self-perception and the fragile nature of perception. Who is watching whom, where and why? |
Hannu Nieminen | Hannu Nieminen has been working with audio-visual art since 1990’s. He first worked with music videos for Finnish bands and later with experimental films and audiovisual installations. He has created more than 100 experimental films or music videos. His films have been shown in several film festivals around the world. |
Bears Ears | “Bears Ears” is an experimental animated short film that weaves together imagery from Bears Ears National Monument. Through a fictional documentary structure, it blends interpretive visual poetry with messages of public awareness. Drawing inspiration from animation pioneers like Norman McLaren, the film utilizes experimental motion design to engage viewers in the challenges faced by public lands like Bears Ears. It is a simple gesture aimed at drawing further attention to the challenges faced by public lands in redefining their geographical boundaries, asserting their identity, and shaping the narrative surrounding their history and significance. “Bears Ears” invites audiences to explore the intersection of art and advocacy and the preservation of natural heritage. | Mark Franz | Mark Franz’s work focuses on the intersections of UX/UI, Motion, and Data, where each field converges to create dynamic visual experiences. With an M.FA. in Art + Technology from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago and a M.A. in Electronic Art and Animation from Ball State University, Mark’s academic background serves as a solid foundation for this practice. |
Beatnik Sermon | All things are one thing, and that’s something. | Matt Mullins | |
Bedroom People | A man searches through documents of an unknown USB key and discovers a strange series of recordings. | Vivien Forsans | |
Before AL arrives | EXPERIMENTAL DOCUMENTARY. “Before AL Arrives” originated from director of photography Francesco Giacomel’s desire to document the illness of his mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He is assisted by director Simonetta Barbon, who tries to interpret his wishes and suggest a new point of view. The protagonist is Katia (dop’s mother), who disarms the viewer by interpreting herself, becoming art. |
Simonetta Barbon | |
Billy Billy | The myth of Billy the Kid echoes into and out of unknown oblivion. | Billy Palumbo | |
Bridge | Impressionistic nightscapes punctuate this two-minute poem film about illness and wellness. Directed, written, filmed, edited, narrated, and produced by Adam E. Stone. Filmed with an iPhone 13 mini in Huntsville, Alabama (USA) and Toronto, Ontario (Canada). | Adam E. Stone | Adam E. Stone’s latest feature film is the poetic essay film “Atmospheric Marginalia” (2022). His films have been featured at over 200 prominent, well-curated festivals worldwide, and have won numerous awards. |
Brixton Bustle | A journey through the energy, rhythm and culture of life in Brixton, a district of South London with an African-Caribbean soul. | Shaun Clark | Born in Beverley, United Kingdom. Independent filmmaker Shaun Clark has worked as a director and animator since 2005. His work has been BAFTA nominated and won prizes at Clermont Ferrand Film Festival, London short film festival, Imagine Film Festival and the British Animation Awards. Shaun has held retrospective screenings of his work both in Greece and South Korea and has created films for the BBC, Discovery Times USA and Arts Council England. He currently resides in London where he works as a director at www.flickermill.com |
Broadcasting from home | Broadcasting from home, was created while reflecting about the perplexity of loss and the human desire to communicate with the afterlife. The video was manufactured using frame-by-frame analog transfer technique and digital post-production. |
Mariano Ramis | Born in San Pedro, Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1979. Image and Sound Designer from the Faculty of Architecture and Design of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, preparing thesis on video montage through Artificial Intelligence. As an artist he specializes in frame by frame experimentation on moving image recording, mixed image transfer techniques and music. His work has been exhibited in festivals, museums and salons in Argentina, America and Europe. |
Cancer Alley | Our newest collaboration with renowned poet Lucy English combines footage shot on location In Cancer Alley with images of nature, especially cypress groves, which are as fragile and as threatened as the Cancer Alley communities. The visuals are accompanied by a poem about what it is like to live in the small towns near the Mississippi River, between East Baton Rouge and New Orleans, which are now dominated by more than 200 chemical plants and oil refineries, sometimes literally located in residents’ back yards. The cypress trees can live for more than 1000 years, if they are not chopped down for cypress mulch or their habitat destroyed. Human lifespans are much shorter, but we may not survive as a species unless we stop living as if all that matters is today, and learn to think on the time scale of the trees. | Pamela Falkenberg, Jack Cochran |
Pam is an independent filmmaker who received her PhD from the University of Iowa and taught at Northern Illinois University, St.Mary’s College, and the University of Notre Dame. She directed the largest student film society in the US while she was at the University of Iowa, and also ran films series for the Snite Museum of Art in South Bend, IN. Her experimental film with Dan Curry, Open Territory, received an individual filmmaker grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as grants from the Center for New Television and the Indiana Arts Council. OT screened at the Pacific Film Archives, as well at numerous film festivals, including the AFI Video Festival, and was nominated for a regional Emmy. Her other films include museum installations, scholarly/academic hybrid works shown at film conferences, and a documentary commissioned by the Peace Institute at the University of Notre Dame. She is an occasional contributor to Moving Poems Magazine (http://discussion.movingpoems.com/) and Liberated Words (http://liberatedwords.com/). Jack is an independent filmmaker who has produced, directed, or shot a variety of experimental and personal projects. As a DP he has extensive experience shooting commercials, independent features, and documentaries. His varied commercial client list includes BMW, Ford, Nissan, Fujifilm, Iomega, Corum Watches, and Forte Hotels. His features and documentaries have shown at the Sundance, Raindance, Telluride, Tribeca, Edinburgh, Chicago, Houston, and Taos film Festivals, winning several honors. His commercials and documentaries have won Silver Lions from Cannes, a BAFTA (British Academy Award), Peabody Awards, and Cable Aces. Some notable credits: Director of Photography on Brian Griffin’s Claustrofoamia, Cinematography for Antony Thomas’ Tank Man, Director/Cinematographer of Viento Nocturno, and Cinematographer of Ramin Niami’s feature film Paris. Jack was trained at the University of Iowa Creative Writers Workshop as well as the University of Iowa film studies program. |
Cascade | Cascade is visceral document of the surrender of Self to Nature. Through a freefall of meticulously collaged, mirrored, and refracted natural images, filmmaker Jonathon Stearns offers a visual counterpart for an improvised track by esteemed South Korean musicians – guitarist Jean Oh, vocalist Minyoung Kim, and flutist Aram Lee, and American Stearns (on trumpet and piano) . Recorded at Coyote Run Studio in Joshua Tree, CA in January 2024. Recorded live without overdubs, the music is an offering to the natural majesty of the desert environs and the Quadrantids meteor shower occurring at the time. Constructed from original video footage without the use of animation or AI, Cascade floods and redistributes the concept of identity through a non-linear narrative in which the spectator’s imagination is invited to flow in and out of symmetry as the barriers between sound-image and human-environment give way and ultimately erode. |
Jonathon Stearns | Los Angeles Based Filmmaker and Musician www.channelb4.com https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1086627/ https://soundcloud.com/channelb4 |
Chaos | Film inspired by chaos, the science of surprises, of the nonlinear and the unpredictable. | Susanne Layla Petersen |
Susanne Layla Petersen is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her works include video, digital art, collaborative installations, web projects, photography, texts and sound. Petersen’s works have been screened and exhibited at Simultan Festival, XOR Space, VASTLAB Experimental, FilmArte Festival (Berlin), CICA Museum (South Korea), Kunstrum Fyn (Denmark), LA Art Show, Fox Yard Studio (UK), Streetlight (Chicago), Intervals Festival (Nizhny Novgorod), The Wrong Biennale, DELETE TV, ArtX Gallery (Silicon Valley) and elsewhere. |
Chronotope Earth 1985 to Future | In 1938, the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin coined the term ‘chronotope’ to describe the role time and space plays in literature. In 1985, the American astronomer, Carl Sagan testified before congress on the threat of climate change to life on Earth and the need for the world’s governments to work together to address the issue. What if Bakhtin’s literary theory applied to scientific discourse, and the natural environment from 1985 into the future were the time and space of the story? | Georg Koszulinski | Georg is a multimodal filmmaker who has been creating films and videos since 1999. His work spans a wide range of forms and styles, from feature-length fiction films and social justice documentaries to short form experimental works. Georg’s recent work engages issues of the Anthropocene and explores his hybrid approach to fiction & non-fiction storytelling. His Anthropocene Cycle of films engage the climate crisis in its deep time/historical contexts while also imagining future worlds based on present trajectories. His award-winning works have been presented at hundreds of film festivals, museums, and microcinemas around the world, and his films are available through a variety of distributors and streaming platforms, including Tubi, ProQuest, Docurama, Gravitas Ventures, Fandor, and Amazon Prime. |
Come out of your shell | The lovingly compiled collection of shells, the life’s work of Maria Cândida Consolado Macedo, comes to life in a rhythmic ritual of hand-processed 16mm footage and trancelike sounds of capiz shells. | Yannick Mosimann |
Yannick Mosimann is a filmmaker, sound artist, and photographer from Berne, Switzerland. Mosimann`s body of work encompasses films, video/audio installations and collaborations with various artists as a filmmaker and musician. His artistic focus lies in intuitive processes, sensorial experiences and the reimagining of narratives. Themes explored in his work include the anthropocene, nature, cosmology, darkness and human perception. |
Dawn & Dusk |
Dawn & Dusk (2023) is an abstract exploration of the temporal space between dawn and dusk and how the dual nature of light varies on a microscopic scale through the vibrations of photons, oscillations of electromagnetic waves, and refraction and reflexion light properties. Through creative programming (Processing, Java, OSC, Chuck) Dawn & Dusk (2023) uses experimentally color gradients (cosine gradients) in abstract geometric shapes that vary dynamically to the sound of generative music that is fed back by certain visual aspects. The piece is divided into two parts: the first one (Dawn) where the perception of color, shape and rhythm is explored through the vibration of photons in different geometric fields, and the last one (Dusk) where electromagnetic waves oscillate and dance to the sound of music, generating a reactive audio choreography. Dawn & Dusk (2023) is a generative study of the interplay between color gradients and musical scales as performative elements in abstract experimental animation through the use of creative programming. In the first part (Dawn) the musical piece explores the musical scales in a rhythmic and percussive way through pseudo-random melodies. On the other hand, the second part (Dusk) uses various sinusoidal waves (SinOSc, TriOsc, PulseOSc, SqrOsc, SawOsc) with frequency, amplitude and phase parameters that vary dynamically over time. The music has been generated by creative programming (Chuck) where the frequencies, amplitudes, phases and oscillations in the audio synthesis are decided from the visual properties (position and 3D transformation) of the abstract geometric shapes. |
Toni Mitjanit |
Toni Mitjanit was born in Manacor (Spain) in 1977. He is Bachelor in Computer Science in 2002 by UIB, Ph-Degree in Computer Graphics on Internet in 2002 by FUEIB, Master in Multimedia Production & Creation in 2007 by UOC, and Degree in Photography in 2010 by ESD. He works at the level of media, video art, computational art, generative design and experimental animation regularly since 2010. He explores new audiovisual expressive ways through creative coding using data visualization, human/machine interaction, autonomous agents and randomness. His works are focused on the creation of amazing animations, graphics and sound through creative coding. All his audiovisual creations are produced by coding in different programming languages (Processing, Java, C++, SuperCollider, ChucK). |
Deep Time of Latent Space |
Deep Time of Latent Space relates the strata of human activity within large language models as another layer of the Anthropocene, which places AI into the realm of geological thinking that spirals into deep time and broadcasts into the future. The AI narrator takes us through the most incomprehensible moments of our history starting with the big bang, creation of earth, and the start of life. It uses its generalized knowledge to resolve our grasp of these moments into data-visualized images. It does so with confidence and a little bit of attitude, however, it tends to hallucinate. These hallucinations shine a light on what is needed to create a more ethical and accurate AI. |
Eric Souther |
Eric Souther (b.1987, Kansas City) holds an MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and an BFA in New Media from the Kansas City Art Institute. His creative research draws from a multiplicity of disciplines, including new materialism, anthropology, ritual, deep time, and toolmaking. These areas are read through one another and coalesce in technological assemblages that form emergent systems or software for exploring relations. I instrumentalize these systems so that they can become performative ways to navigate unexpected images/meaning making. My work takes many pathways, which include interactive installation, audio-visual performance,single-channel video, and software. |
Doubt | A gardener’s poetic perspective on self doubt in motherhood told through metaphors of gardening. | Ly Bolia | |
Driving | I filmed with a GoPro during a nighttime car journey. | Giorgio Gerardi | I live in Italy, in Favaro Veneto (Venice). Around the age of twenty, I approached the study of the History of Art, as an autodidact, and I began my personal photographic research. I got fascinated by the artistic Avant-garde of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, because they focused on the analysis of the visual medium, than to the staging of reality and its representation, as the history of Art had instead accustomed us. In recent years, I have focused on some details of the environment around me: clouds, leaves and everyday objects that you daily have under your eyes. I have also produced some videos, which have been screened at video mapping festivals and participated in film festivals. I’m also interested in the use of AI. I have exhibited my works in many art exhibitions, both online and offline, and have been published in national and international magazines. |
Entropic Memory | This photographic exploration of family photo albums ravaged by water evokes hazy and indistinct memories, poignant witnesses of a fragile past. | Nicolas Brault | An Nicolas Brault is a multi-award winning filmmaker and Professor teaching the art of animation at Université Laval. In 2000, he won the National Film Board of Canada’s Cinéaste recherché(e) competition. His film Antagonia (2002) won an award at the Cinanima International Animated Film Festival, and The Circus(2011) was nominated for Best Animated Film at the 37th César Awards. In 2012, he developed a series of short non-narrative films and immersive projections around the human body. Of this series, Foreign Bodies (2013) won the Off-Limits Award at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, and Squame (2015) received several international awards. The series’ newest entry is Entropic Memory (2024). |
Exo Gestus #2 |
Exo Gestus #2 is an experimental animation exploring the way that motion capture sensors incorrectly track my body. It is an amalgamation of the glitches that occur from tracking my movements while wearing a MOCAP suit that is too big for my body. The suit is designed for a bigger body than mine. My body is too small even for the smallest size that the company makes – pointing to the way that small bodies are not accounted for in the tech industry. Because of this, my body size by default creates glitches within the MOCAP data tracks. Rather than correct it, I embrace the glitches of a body that cannot be fully captured. I embrace the glitches and dance for the sensors. The sound is a recording of my feet dragging across the floor. |
Yvette Granata | Yvette Granata is a media artist and filmmaker. She is Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the Department of Film, Television, and Media and the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan. She creates immersive media installations, video art, VR films, interactive environments, and builds hypothetical technological systems. |
Seeking context and comprehension around his own father’s suicide, Klarsfeld began interviewing friends and family members, discovering how the intimacy of family trauma intersects with historic ebb and flow of antisemitism, leading back to the Holocaust and beyond. The resulting work is a surrealist tour de force, dissecting taboos and prohibitions through references to sacred texts and rabbinical law. Ultimately, the viewer is challenged to revisit their own subconscious relationship to the cultural stigma around suicide. |
Charlie Klarsfeld |
Charlie Klarsfeld is a French-American multi-disciplinary artist and creative director. After studying under Les LeVeque and Bob Bielecki at Bard College, he made a series of experimental films exploring the transformative nature of self and the collective unconscious. In the decade since he’s executed a range of innovative surrealist work in mixed media. |
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Fine Grain | In July 1969, man set foot on the moon for the first time. The event was broadcast live on television to more than 600 million people worldwide. Starting from digital images found on the networks, Fine Grain rehearses an oblique path: the fine grain that the astronaut reports on the lunar soil is the grain that vibrates in the visual remains of the original expedition. | Muriel Paraboni | Muriel Paraboni is a multimedia artist. Trained in visual arts and cinema, with a master’s degree in the field of Art and Technology, his production involves supports such as film and video, installation, photography, painting and objects, which often appear combined in environmental and sensory proposals. Has been exhibiting regularly, in solo and group shows, in various parts of the world since 2010. |
Forgetting French #1: Eight Years From Nadia |
Nadia gently cradles me in her arm as she washes my newborn body. She kisses and smells my sister’s cheek. Max films her lying still so she does not wake her children again and again. All these moments blend into one another. Her tenderness and labor repeats itself again over the course of eight years and three children. *Contains flashing imagery* |
Alicia Mujynya | Alicia Mujynya (she/they) is a mixed-race Swiss-American filmmaker and painter raised in Santa Fe, NM. She currently focuses on the deterioration of preexisting media and visual/auditory mistranslation. |
Fragments of an Echo | The film is largely made up of fragmented static shots evoking a sense of nostalgia and abandonment of a medical facility soon to be no more. | Martin Del Carpio |
Born in Venezuela but raised in New York, where he currently lives, Martin Del Carpio is an artist marked by experimentation, the search of new concepts, sounds and visuals, by a fascination with visuals and the journey that art takes us on. Martin’s desire to bend the rules and explore reaches a peak in recent years with his creative works. |
Furor Agendi | AXBYDOTHERWAYS. There’s the problem. Now you lost it. There you have it. Now you found it. All together now. | Wilson Stiner | Gifted with unusual sight, Wilson Stiner has navigated this world through audiovisual expression. Focusing on themes of identity and the line between fantasy and reality, his work as a multi-hyphenate creator spans diverse categories and genres, continually looking to expand by plumbing depths and pushing limits. As one half of the LA-founded Stiner Bros. he currently operates from Atlanta, Georgia. |
future ready: cusp |
A temporal observation of nature, reflecting on the relational: the tethering of animal, earthly and human energies through moments of connection, both calm and chaotic, moving toward a shared future shrouded in uncertainty as the planet warms. The central screen is made from phytograms where the artist placed plants in an eco-developer, then left the film strips in the sunlight for an hour. The artist then fixed the emulsion in place for three days in a salt bath. All B&W film was shot on a bolex and eco-processed with caffenol by the artist. |
KJ Edwards |
KJ Edwards is a Kanien’kehá:ka, mixed-settler filmmaker and media artist. Their family is from Kahnawa:ké and Longueuil, Quebec, Canada; while KJ was born and raised in Treaty 6 Territory, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Holding a BFA in Film Production from the Toronto Metropolitan University, KJ is trained in narrative, documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques, using both analogue and digital workflows. She is a 2023 MFA graduate from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where her thesis work involved eco processing analogue film, reflecting on the unpredictability of the medium as that of a collaborator, and the ways that dreams and memory can offer creative pathways toward content creation. |
Glimpses | Joyously bright, colorful, and animated panels are sewn together to accentuate moments of life viewed through windows and doorways. | Peter Litwinowicz | Pete Litwinowicz has a long history of combining choreography and filmmaking. As a visual effects software developer and artist for the motion picture and video industries, Pete has won several awards including an Academy Award©; an Emmy®; an Ars Electronica Golden Nica (Austria); and an Imagina Award (Monaco) for Best Visual Effects and Visual Innovation. As a dancer and choreographer, Pete worked as co-artistic director of Dance Continuum SF from 2007-2012, and danced for Company Chaddick from 1996-2006. He has served as Lizz Roman and Dancers’ filmmaker since 2017. His previous dance animation,”Shelf Life”, played in 26 festivals over 10 countries. |
Goddess of Speed | A film titled Dance Movie (or, alternatively, Rollerskate) appears in many Warhol filmographies, but no work with this title has been found in the archive. The lost film, starring dancer Fred Herko, was shot in 1963. A year later, Herko leaped out of an open window while dancing to Mozart’s Coronation Mass in C Major. Inspired by descriptions of the missing film, Goddess of Speed poetically re-imagines the last days of the young performer. | Frédéric Moffet | Frédéric Moffet is a media artist, educator, video editor, and cultural worker. He was born in Montreal but now lives in Chicago where he works as an Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His films explore the slippery territory between history, lived experience and fantasy. |
Gold and Glitter | Gold and Glitter considers the potential of friendship and offers a pointed critique of institutions and our consumption of their products. Reclaiming agency over our bodies and desires is a fundamental step toward liberation, contributing to a more empathetic society that questions rigid authority and embraces the beauty of uncertainty. | Nathan Cordova | Nathan Cordova is a multidisciplinary artist who works primarily with photography, video, sound, sculpture and performance. He received his MFA in Photography, Video and Imaging from the University of Arizona (‘24). Nathan has received grants and fellowships such as the Medici Scholar Award, Helen Gross Award, Mellon-Fronteridades Fellowship, GPSC Travel Grant as well as a fully-funded residency at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. He’s independently published four artist books and his commissioned work has appeared in WIRED. Nathan’s current project, Ghosts and Shadows, is an audio/video artwork that aims to uncover a common auditory and visual language between humans and the US/Mexico Border as immaterial/material-entity. He is a member of Southwest Photo Collaborative, whose group show, Land, Body & Archive, visited the cities of Phoenix, Albuquerque and Tucson in 2023-2024. Nathan spoke as a student-presenter at the Society for Photographic Education’s Annual Conference, New Realities, in St. Louis, MO in the spring of 2024. He was named to the 2024 Lenscratch Student Prize Top 25 Photographers to watch. Nathan currently works as an undergraduate lecturer at Stanford University in the Department of Art and Art History. |
Grimoire 11: A Servant’s Quest | Second chapter of an Arcade-madness mythical trilogy. Grimoire 11: A Servant’s quest tells the story of the eternal race-war between landlords and servants. A meta cultural genesis that precedes the dawn of humanity. With the appearance of goblin cops and mutated royalty. | Javier Fabregas | And artist biography: Javier Fabregas is a visual artist from Bogota-Colombia, currently working in Helsinki-Finland, his work focuses on animation, independent publishing and video. His main interest is to produce incisive comments about marginal cultures, millennial misery, ancient disruptions in a globalized modern world, and the confluences between epic fantasies and suburbia monotony. Materialized and put into circulation through both digital and printed means. contact: https://castlevanitas.com |
I Don’t Watch TV Anymore | Based on writer and filmmaker Sal Bardo’s poem “Roll & Tumble Blues,” “I Don’t Watch TV Anymore” is an animated jazz poem about what happens when you tune out the noise. | Mason Eubanks | Mason Eubanks is an artist and educator whose work has shown at galleries around the country. He owned and operated a bar and restaurant in rural Oregon for eight years before selling it and moving to Los Angeles for the weather. |
In My Head | In my head is an experimental short film about the disease I’ve had for just over seven years, multiple sclerosis: Through my magnetic resonance images, cervical slices and jerky sounds, everyday life unfolds. Life goes on. I’m fine, I’m not so fine. Today, I’m opening up about this tentacular disease. This film diary is part mourning, part sweetness. | Irina Tempea | Irina Tempea is a filmmaker and cultural worker of Romanian origin based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her diary-like artistic practice revolves around the analog process she uses to reveal herself. She questions the materiality of film while filming her daily life and those close to her. She has just completed her first short film, IN MY HEAD, about her multiple sclerosis. She is currently working on her second film. |
Is There Anybody Out There? | In 2019, humanity faced an unprecedented pandemic that led to quarantine, isolation, and social issues worldwide. “Is There Anybody Out There?” is a narrative virtual reality experience that invites the user to enter the narrator’s world and relive the situations of the pandemic period by listening to their stories and interacting with various objects. | Konstantinos Koukoudis | 3D Generalist from Greece VR/AR experience & video game creator |
It Was Me But It Wasn’t Me | It Was Me But It Wasn’t Me is an experimental audiovisual film by Dina Kelberman, drawing from the raw, hypnotic memo recordings of musician Ed Schrader. Schrader’s cryptic vocal beats and serene retelling of a dream are transformed into a dynamic soundscape using synthesizer audio patches, creating an otherworldly atmosphere. The visuals weave together a stream of found imagery, generating unexpected connections between dream states and waking life. In it’s original online incarnation this nocturnal work is available exclusively between midnight and 6 am, inviting viewers to explore themes of rhythm, resonance, and the subtle interplay of sound and image as they unfold in the liminal space between sleep and consciousness. | Dina Kelberman | |
Kauaʻi ʻōʻō | In 2000, the International Union for Conservation of Nature declared the Oʻō of Kauai officially extinct. All that remains of this endemic bird of the eponymous Hawaiian island is a recording of its song by ornithologist David Boynton. | Samy Benammar | Filmmaker, photographer and critic, Samy Benammar holds a master’s degree in film studies from the Université de Montréal,. His Algerian and working-class origins are central to his experimental work, which questions the socio-political stakes of archival and current images. His practice is as much interested in film (super 8, 16mm or 35mm), digital and analog media. This hybridization tends to question the interactions between technicality and politics of images. |
kindergarten | Valeriya was born in Kazakhstan. She sits on a chair, in the dark, a mirror on wall is hanging behind her. She tells Yann a story of her childhood in Balkhash, while Yann is giving her directions, filming her. What we hear is her story, what we see is her silence. | Yann les Jours |
Yann les Jours was born in Lyon (France), he lives and works in Berlin (Germany). He studied History of Arts and English literature at Lyon II Lumières University. He attended the Documentary Summer School at Locarno Film Festival and Ji.lhava IDFF Academy. |
Losing Touch |
Searching for life in daily rituals, Losing Touch undertakes a shift in perception and presents the city as an ugly yet ecologically rich landscape. The film depicts the internal dialogue on coping with the grief and fear of ecological degradation, using the local streets of Berlin as a means to materialise and confront these emotions. As both the body and mind begin to wander, encounters with the landscape over a 24 hour period are transformed into an overstimulating and emotionally charged journey. Varied media create sensational and playful depictions of the surroundings, entangling creatures of metal and flesh through image and sound, both within and between the frames. Subverting the nature-culture dichotomy, a new image of nature is formed, not only as a romantic, distant place, but rather a dirty, omnipresent force. Against the fast current of the city, nature is brought closer to home and diminishes the distance between self and land. Reaching out to what remains, comfort can be found amongst what has been lost. |
Charlie Black | Charlie Black (she/her) is a filmmaker, animator and illustrator from the U.K. who has just completed her Master’s studies in Creative Film Production in Berlin. Her practice focuses on the ecology of lived spaces, documenting the complex relationships between humans and the rest of nature that manifest in our daily lives. Using both research and imagination, her work values emotionally driven documentary, blurring the boundaries between subjective and objective truths. To her, the medium is as important as the subject, and she embraces the material quality of moving image by working with both analogue and digital materials. |
Lost Pieces of Her | An experimental short film shot on 16mm about a young woman chasing after lost pieces of herself. | Sofie Lebow | Sofie Jo Lebow is a filmmaker, artist, and poet living and working in Prague who uses dream-like logic to explore our inner worlds, demons, and the evolution of the self over time. She is passionate about pushing the boundaries of cinema through experimentation with form and the integration of fine arts, including analog and 2D animation. Her work emphasizes collaboration with other artists to create pieces where the creative process itself becomes a crucial element of the film’s emotional impact. |
Mexico | A new experimental work by a legendary experimental filmmaker, shot while starring in a feature film about his life, incorporating the sounds and colors of Guanajuato, Mexico in a decidely lyrical way. | Barry Gerson |
It has always been about the Light. Just as Barry Gerson is a noted experimental filmmaker whose work gained renown for exploring the spiritual elements of light starting in the 1960s. Those films, alongside his paintings with photo elements, sculptures and film/light boxes, have been shown in galleries and installations ever since, including several Whitney Museum of American Art biennials and retrospectives in major cinema centers and museums around the globe. Gerson has taught filmmaking at a number of key institutions including Rhode Island School of Design, The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Bard College and SUNY-Buffalo. |
Mindscapes | The notion of escapism refers to the proclivity of individuals to migrate from the customary challenges of life into the comforting, yet deceptive, embrace of fantasy. Through a multidimensional exploration, this film maps out a journey that encompasses the transformative phases of a departure, an immersion, and a return. |
Valeryia Naboikina |
Valeryia is a multidisciplinary artist from Mogilev, Belarus, currently residing in Quebec. With an approach grounded in the psychological narrative and social commentary, she stretches the bounds of her mediums by blurring the lines between the physical and digital, fabricating stories that transcend the limitations of the tangible world. |
Moon Moth Bed | Moon Moth Bed is a surreal, symbolic, and eco-feminist art-film about destruction, rebirth, and collaborative consciousness. Inspired by Dr. Donna Haraway’s ecofeminist writings and panpsychic philosophy, this live-action, lens-based film investigates the idea that all matter is conscious and interconnected. Moon Moth Bed depicts real luna moths hatching from their cocoons amidst an ethereal video dreamworld set with bells, a miniature moon, and a small moth-scale bed. The film is cocooned in an atmospheric soundscape of rumbling thunderstorms, textured sounds, and twinkling temple bells. In Moon Moth Bed’s culminating visual sequence, a deus-ex-machina device enters the film to conjure chaos. In response, the video dreamworld comes alive with sensual flows of honey to restore peace. The video concludes with circle-shaped imagery to symbolize rebirth and conjure hope. Moon Moth Bed was directed, edited, produced, sound-scored, and performed-by multimedia artist Virginia L. Montgomery alongside her hand-raised luna moth collaborators. | Virginia L. Montgomery | Virginia L. Montgomery (VLM) is a multimedia artist working across video, performance, sound design, and sculpture. She is known for her unique, synthesia-esque, surrealist works that unite elements from mysticism, science, and her own lived experience as a neurodivergent individual. Her artwork is surreal, sensorial, and symbolic. It shifts in subject matter from stones to moths and machines, as VLM deploys an idiosyncratic visual vocabulary of repeating gestures and recursive symbols like circles, holes, and spheres. Her artistic efforts are characterized by material experimentation, somatic sensitivity, and her unusual studio practice of hand-raising the moths and butterflies appearing in her videos. VLM’s diverse artistic movements interrogate the complex relationship between physical and psychic structures via gestures of agency, intimacy, and empathy. |
My Black + White TV |
The starting point for this piece was a poem I wrote in the 1980s with the same title. I selected this poem based on a strategy I have used previously. I mine my written, visual, or musical archives and repurpose them in a contemporary context. This poem was written during the Reagan years and expresses an existential crisis through a metaphorical romantic relationship with my black and white TV. While looking through my archives, I stumbled upon it and thought it was relevant to how I felt about the world around me. TV becomes the world. It replaces human contact, much like the internet, social media, etc., and has replaced human-to-human contact today. I chose a black and white TV (signals old) because it also mirrors the binary world we live in now. Social media has fanned the flames, and the echo chambers have reinforced this duality by cementing the differences and, in the process, have created an even more polarized public. You become a part of these things once you get attached to them. It is a meditation about the war between Russia and Ukraine, the conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, the police brutality/killings, the mass shootings, and how we all become collectively responsible as humans. |
Scott Turri |
For the last 20 years, Turri’s process has entailed exploring the relationship between digital and analog, providing a treasure trove of material with which to work. An avid collector and maker, having amassed a substantial archive of photographs, drawings, and digital imagery, he mines this archive when making his paintings and animations. His work engages cycles of behavior by embracing the repetitive nature of existence. It shifts between external and internal stimuli, focusing on imagery and ideas about home, place, and ritual within a nonlinear framework. Hailing from suburban Philadelphia, where he spent his formative years, Turri now calls Pittsburgh home. Along with his art-making habit, he is also a self-taught drummer and has written for New Art Examiner, BOMB Magazine, and Afterimage. Turri also holds a Teaching Associate Professor position in the Studio Arts Department at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently represented by James Gallery. |
Orbiter | A short visit to the surface of a desolate planet, or an inspection of a damaged film print. | Steven Woloshen | Steven Woloshen was born in Montreal, Canada in 1960. For more than 40 years, he has passionately created over 50 award-winning, abstract films and time-based installations for festivals, galleries, and museums. He has received numerous research and creation grants and, most recently, was awarded the 2016 René Jodoin lifetime achievement award, 2015 Wiesbaden Lifetime Achievement Award. Woloshen is a teacher, film conservationist, animator, craftsman, and the author of two books, Recipes for Reconstruction: The Cookbook for the Frugal Filmmaker (2010), a hands-on manual for decay, renewal and other handmade, analogue film techniques, and Scratch, Crackle & Pop! A Whole Grains Approach to Making Films without a Camera (2015). Under his own banner, Scratchatopia, Woloshen has hosted solo retrospectives and taught handmade filmmaking techniques in Argentina, Morocco, USA, Slovenia, Australia, France, Great Britain, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, Poland, Mexico, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Canada and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. |
Paint To Pixel VR | Paint to Pixel is a virtual exhibition that charts the history of UK graffiti. It features interviews and photo archives that cover 5 decades of graffiti writing, alongside original artwork by some of the UK’s most influential artists. In this VR film, audiences hop aboard a virtual train and are take through five distinct galleries. From the origins of graffiti in 1970s New York to its contemporary resurgence in street art and urban festivals, the film explores diverse themes within this vibrant cultural movement. |
Paul Long | Paul Long is founder member and Creative Director of MBD. MBD is a UK based arts organisation that produces high quality immersive experiences with a focus on stunning visuals, beautiful storytelling and the use of cutting edge technology. Since 1997 Paul has led the company in delivering creative experiences that share untold stories to inform, entertain and inspire people from all walks of life. Paul has created immersive and interactive experiences across theatre, visual art and XR in a career that spans more than twenty years. MBD’s multi award winning creations have been shown across the world. Paul’s work in VR demonstrates a continued drive to deliver socially important stories through accessible and emotionally driven narratives. MBD’s core competencies are: Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, 3D Animation, Projection mapping, Immersive design. |
Postmodern Romance | “Postmodernism represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.” – Gilbert Adair | Wheeler Winston Dixon | Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and, with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, editor of the book series Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture for Rutgers University Press, which has to date published more than twenty volumes on various cultural topics. He is the author of more than thirty books on film history, theory and criticism, as well as more than 100 articles in various academic journals. He is also an active experimental filmmaker, whose works are in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art. His recent video work is collected in the UCLA Film and Television Archive. He has also taught at The New School, Rutgers University, and the University of Amsterdam. |
Questioning the Existence of Alec | “Questioning the Existence of Alec” is comprised of found footage utilizing stop motion and additional in camera effects recorded on the beaches of South Africa during the 1940s. In this dreamlike journey, two or three friends, one of whom may be Alec are presented from adolescence through adulthood. The surreal journey blurs the boundary between the past and present, reality and fantasy, and invites viewers to question for themselves the nature of reality, dreams, and the existence of the protagonists on both sides of the camera. | Roger Horn |
Roger Horn is a filmmaker, anthropologist, and film professor. He has over 25 years of moving image experience in Berlin, Cape Town, Los Angeles, and Nashville. He obtained his PhD at the University of Cape Town in Cultural Anthropology and holds an MA in Visual & Media Anthropology. His films have been showcased at almost 300 film festivals and conferences worldwide. These include IFFR International Film Festival Rotterdam, Aesthetica Short FIlm Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, where he was nominated for the International Competition category, the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, and the 21st, 22nd, & 24th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. |
Sea of Shadows |
“Sea of Shadows” is dedicated not only to my mother but to all souls who found their final harbor in the embrace of the sea. The film translates personal grief into a contemplation of the human condition, establishing a dialogue between the personal and the universal. It acknowledges individual grief while resonating with the shared human experience. It is a study in finding peace amidst pain, strength amidst fragility, and beauty in the raw, it serves as an ode to the cycles of life, a testament to the perseverance of human will. Beneath its overarching imagery is also a quiet recognition of countless refugees and migrants whose journeys for safer lives ceased amidst the sea’s relentless expanse. Their tales are subtly etched in the ceaseless motion of the waves, forming an undercurrent to the film’s acknowledgment of lives lost in the pursuit of hope – a quest fraught with risks, compelled by desperation, and tragically ended in the unforgiving arms of the sea. “Sea of Shadows” is a tribute to the transient nature of life, captured through the dance of waves. It delves deep into the microcosm of these waves; each shot, an intimate meditation, captures the waves crashing, flowing, and splashing – mirroring the undulating rhythm of life and death, joy and sorrow, beginnings and ends. In its visual verse, the film personifies the sea as a paradox: the bearer of life and harbinger of death. It paints a portrait of the passing of my mother, who was claimed by the sea two decades ago, while also chronicling my journey through loss, grief, acceptance and ultimately, reconciliation. |
Hüseyin Mert Erverdi | Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Hüseyin Mert Erverdi is an award-winning experimental filmmaker and new media artist. His work explores the convergence points between art, science and nature. In addition to communicating his vision through various art forms, Erverdi is deeply involved with philosophy and media theory. He received his B.A. degree in Visual Communication and Design from Bilkent University in 2008. A year after his graduation Erverdi was admitted to the M.A. program in Cinema and Television Studies at Bilgi University, which he graduated two years later with high honors. |
Seeing War | Seeing War is an experimental short film. It focuses on the emotional lives of horses at the front in WWI, engaging in an abstract language that explores the perspective of animals and their vulnerability. It is a hand-painted experimental film using text from a poem by the young World War One soldier Wilfred Owen, archive from New Zealand and other filmed and painted material. In this work the internal life of the animal is foregrounded, with a focus on the animal gaze and other more unconscious ways of communicating their knowing, their seeing and their fear. The film is concerned with the way in which the treatment of animals and destruction of the environment through World War One is symbolic of our ongoing war against animals and nature in the name of economic and industrial progress. | Bridget Sutherland | Bridget works in experimental film and has directed feature documentaries on the New Zealand musician David Kilgour and on the British sculptor Anish Kapoor. She co-produced the film ‘Don Driver Magician’ and is currently working with director Paul Judge on a film about art and animal sentience. She has just completed the documentary ‘Night Piece’ on the artist Peter Roche – ahead of his time in confronting issues relating to war and nuclear themes. |
Sometimes It’s Just Not Your Day |
“The best stories are already out there, you just need to find them.” The voiceover recalls an incident originally told by Richard “The Iceman” Kuklinski. Juxtaposed with visuals shot around the artist’s home, the female narrator unveils new meanings in the gruesome story, while the visuals give rise to questions about guilt, repentance, and the possibility of absolution. Developed and shot at the artist’s home in April 2020 during lock down due to COVID19. |
Naama Freedman | Naama Freedman is an artist, musician, and performer based in Hamburg and Ansterdam. After Earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and history from Tel Aviv University and a diploma in theater, she performed in various stage productions ranging from musicals to orchestral concerts as well as experimental performance art pieces. As a visual artist Naama creates language and performance based sound and video installations and earned her master’s degree of fine art and design at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. Her works have been exhibited all over the world. As a musican Naama has collaborated and released music with various musical projects, regularely hosts radio shows, and has performed all around Europe as an independent DJ. In her latest project, “Performing With Words – Artistic Vocal Workshop”, she shares more than 20 years of experience to help people gain confidence with performing and working with text . |
Spring Is Coming | This mini-short film tries to capture the sense of urgency and anxiety that comes with the sudden onset of Spring and its fleeting nature. | Hong Zhou | Hong Zhou is a teacher, filmmaker and media artist. He has created a body of work including several award-winning shorts and screenplays. He’s interested in experimenting with different forms of visual storytelling in non-traditional ways. |
Substance of Venom | The home gardens, prairies, orchard, woodlands where the artist, Cherie Sampson, lives set the mise-en-scène for a series of self-administered honeybee “stinging rituals” over a period of several months in 2021. A team of Australian researchers recently discovered that the active substance in honeybee venom, melittin, has demonstrated a capacity to induce cell death in two types of aggressive breast cancers: triple-negative and HER2. As a survivor of TNBC, Sampson engaged this symbolic act, calling attention to the need for more natural or other forms of cancer therapy that may one day offer alternatives to toxic treatments. Footage of the foraging patterns of honeybees and other native pollinators of the Midwest that illustrate the diverse life in healthy ecosystems are juxtaposed with images of the stinging rites. | Cherie Sampson | Cherie Sampson has worked for thirty years as an interdisciplinary artist in environmental performance, sculpture, video art and dance. She has exhibited internationally in art-in-nature symposia, video/film screenings and exhibitions in many countries, with site-based solo performances presented in the U.S., Finland, Norway, Cuba, Spain, South Korea and in the Netherlands (in a performance attended by the Dutch Queen in 2003). In 2018, the Pori Museum of Art in Pori, Finland acquired photographic and video documentation of Sampson’s site-based installations and performances created over a 20-year period in Finland for their permanent collection. Recent exhibitions and public presentations include “The Quality of Being Fleeting” at the Currents 826 Gallery for the Currents New Media Festival 2022 in Santa Fe and the theatrical reading of “every.single.one,” one of the featured full-length plays for the 2022 Mizzou New Play Series. Her current performance work depicts an experience with hereditary breast cancer exploring topics of science, genetics and integrative healing from a patient’s perspective of modern medicine. An upcoming solo exhibition is in the planning for the Smith Center for Healing & the Arts in Washington D.C. in the summer of 2023. In addition to her creative work, Sampson serves as a patient advocate in several organizations: the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO), Facing Our Risk Empowered (FORCE) and the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (BCRP). |
tête-à-tête | Tete-a-Tete is a lyrical exploration of human connection, where the language of movement and abstract visuals replace words, inviting viewers into a dance of emotions that unfolds across a 360-degree canvas. | Soyeon Kim |
Soyeon Kim is a filmmaker, illustrator, and educator. Soyeon has been producing independent films since 1993, as well as working on projects in advertising and film production as a director, art director, character designer, visual development artist, storyboard artist, and animator. Her independent films and commissioned works have been showcased in film festivals worldwide, aired on broadcast television, displayed in the museums and galleries, and have won prestigious awards. She runs her own design and animation studio ‘Yellowshed’, while teaching filmmaking at the California State University Long Beach. |
That Bolex Thing |
The Bolex is a Swiss-made film camera that played a pivotal role in the development of independent and avant-garde filmmaking. Introduced in the 1920’s, the camera’s lightweight and portable design made it an accessible choice for filmmakers who wanted to break away from the constraints of large studio productions. The affordable price point democratized the filmmaking process, enabling filmmakers to explore new creative avenues and push the boundaries of the art of cinema. The aesthetic look produced by the Bolex is equally unique and significant. The 16mm images display a textured and grainy image quality. The resulting visuals are synonymous with the visionary and poetic aesthetic of artist inspired filmmaking. In addition to its iconic status, the Bolex contains a recurring and noticeable quirk. In order to initiate or conclude the filming process, the hand-cranked camera relies on a complex harmony of mechanical design. As the gears get up to speed, the internal mechanism ramps and fluctuates. This technical operation produces a distinctive oscillation that is noticeably imprinted on the film plane. For the span of several seconds, the film captures an ethereal canvas of color and light. Through this process, the Bolex successfully envisions the random crystallization that is inherent within the motion image. That Bolex Thing highlights this fleeting occurrence of visual abstraction. The source footage is composed of brief instances containing the filmic “thing”. Within this tapestry, the subject matter offers a contrast between current and earlier devices of image capture. There is little doubt that modern camera technology provides unprecedented levels of efficiency and convenience. However, amidst the dependence on new technology, the Bolex maintains a timeless allure and magnetism. This glorious machine provides a genuine reminder that technological progress is underscored by nostalgic obsolescence. Ultimately, That Bolex Thing contextualizes the ongoing interplay between innovation and tradition. |
Paul Echeverria | Paul Echeverria is a filmmaker, digital artist and educator. His research and creative practice examine the formative dynamics between childhood, parenthood and the family structure. In addition, he produces work that contemplates the inevitable collision between humans and technology. Echeverria works with multiple forms of media, including film, video, performance, augmented/virtual reality, social media, data manipulation, podcasting and e-literature. |
The Becoming | The Becoming is a dynamic, fast-paced collage of animated photographs of ink paintings as well as video material of extinct and living species of fish, reptiles and birds. The juxtaposition and superposition of fragments of different life forms, together with cold or blooming nature expresses the idea of regeneration. This somehow hallucinatory collage evolves into a succession of increasingly vibrant patterns reminiscent of biological cells and ends with an explosion of shapes and colors. Quite an intense trip. |
Mélissa Faivre | Mélissa Faivre, born 1989 in France, is an experimental video artist based in Berlin. Her rhythmic and mesmerizing work seeks to provoke questions on the nature of perception. The images she creates present blended and distorted realities that test the temporal and spatial coordinates foundational to the perceptive experience. Influenced by analogue films and working only in digital format, she often questions the aesthetic boundaries between film and video. |
The Heart of the Tongue | Two sisters get lost in the San Francisco Botanical Garden and a camera accidentally records their voices, their footsteps, the sound of birds, their fascination with plants and the weather. | Yanina Gruden | Yanina Gruden is an actress and playwright. As an actress she worked in alternative, official and commercial theater. At cinema and television she worked with Carlos Sorín, Adrián Israel Caetano, Constanza Novick, Leticia Dolera, and Vincent Macaigne. She starred in “La utilidad de un revistero”, which won Best National Film at the Mar del Plata International Festival 2013 and for which she received the Centinela Award for Best Actress. The heart of the tongue is her first audiovisual creation. |
The Nightmare Project: Recurrence | “The Night-Mare Project: Recurrence”: A mysterious figure manifests in a dream, endlessly repeating the commands “Go,Back, Stop, Back to your place.” The project is theatrically staged with minimal aesthetics, drawing inspiration from Dario Argento’s *Suspiria*. The pivotal moment occurs when Susie Bannon, played by Jessica Harper, backs into a crystal peacock statuette, causing it to fall and awaken Mater Suspiriorum. Shot on Super 8 and 16mm film, the footage is digitally scanned and edited in real time using MaxMSP, capturing the terror sparked by curiosity and clumsiness. | Michael Mersereau | |
To Hold | To Hold is a metaphorical self-portrait that follows a lone figure searching for normalcy, while navigating the aftermath of loss. | Peter Whittenberger |
Peter Whittenberger is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker whose work explores how the nature of the landscape serves as a continuous network of time and history, containing the data of all Earth’s species. Whittenberger has presented his work at the FILE Festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Digerati Emergent Media Festival in Denver, CO, the Future Visions Festival in Tokyo, Japan, the 2-Minute Film Festival at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburg, PA, and many others across Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, South America, and Australia. His work has also received funding from the Puffin Foundation and the Reno-Tahoe Artists Award for Best in Digital Media. Growing up in Southeastern Montana, Whittenberger received his BFA from the University of Montana, Missoula in Printmaking and his MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno in Interdisciplinary Art. Currently, Whittenberger lives and works in Reno, Nevada with his wife, three dogs, two ferrets, and a cat. |
Torii | Torii |
Martin Gerigk | Martin Gerigk (*1972) is a composer of contemporary music. His repertoire includes compositions for orchestra and chamber music, as well as several solo concertos. His compositions are performed nationally and internationally including in Korea, Japan, USA, England, Finland, Austria and Switzerland. In this context he works together with renowned international soloists and ensembles . In addition to his compositional work he is known for his remarkable audiovisual art and experimental films which focus on inherent synesthetic connections of sound and visual perceptions. Besides creating interwoven aural and visual landscapes of music, nature sounds and video sequences one important aspect of his art is the illustration of the hidden poetry of nature phenomena and sciences. |
Untitled | “…the Valley of Astonishment and Bewilderment, where one is a prey to sadness and dejection. There sighs are like swords, and each breath a bitter sigh; there, is sorrow and lamentation, and a burning eagerness. It is at once day and night. There, is fire, yet a man is depressed and despondent. How, in his bewilderment, shall he continue his way? But he who has achieved unity forgets all and forgets himself. If he is asked: ‘Are you, or are you not? Have you or have you not the feeling of existence? Are you in the middle or on the border? Are you mortal or immortal?’ he will reply with certainty: ‘I know nothing, I understand nothing, I am unaware of myself. I am in love, but with whom I do not know. My heart is at the same time both full and empty of love.’ “ – Farid ud-Din Attar, (English translation by C. S. Nott) |
Susanne Layla Petersen | Susanne Layla Petersen is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her works include video, digital art, collaborative installations, web projects, photography, texts and sound. |
Visions | Created shortly after going through a harrowing and transformative personal experience, Visions is a fragmentary work whose elements are interconnected by threads of light. Emerging from a variety of dreams, memories and visions lived under heavy doses of opioid analgesics during a hospitalisation, Visions is a meeting between the natural and the synthetic, dreams and reality, a poetic exploration of the thin line between transience and permanence. | Maxime Corbeil-Perron | Maxime Corbeil-Perron (he/him) is a Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal-based artist whose practice unfolds in a multiplicity of mediums: audiovisual performance, experimental cinema, electroacoustic composition, improvisation, sound art and installation. |
Who Has Seen the Wind? | How does it feel to live next to 170 year old creatures? This short impressionistic film documents an old forest area called Mortin männikkö in Rovaniemi, Northern Finland. As an array of glimpses and moments the film tries to summarise a decade of life next to this vivid & forested tableau vivant. | Panu Johansson |
Panu Johansson is a media artist and an experimental filmmaker from Finland. He works with moving image, photography and sound. His works have been exhibited in various festivals, exhibitions and microcinemas since the year 2000. Reoccurring themes in Johansson’s work are memories, landscape, the history of experimental film and cultural history. When working with moving image he prefers analogue film, though he is open to all materials. Johansson collects images and sounds eagerly and also likes to use “found footage” materials whenever possible. His works could be described with terms such as landscape film, diary film or personal film. |
Wishfulweed | A short film about the botanical lore of Wishfulweed. | Laura Iancu |
Iancu is a visual artist working primarily in experimental video forms and immersive 3D animation & gaming, with an expanded practice of installation and photography. Originally from Romania, she has been teaching, and making images in the US for more a decade. Currently Laura is an assistant professor of film production at Virginia Tech, School of Performing Arts. Thematically she works around issues of ecology, ethnography, civic resistance under oppressive regimes of power and forms of humor as subversion mechanisms for prescriptive discourses and representations. Her work originates from puzzling together all the hints of the world, the gestural intertextuality, the perceptive and surface qualities of objects, geographical mappings, aspects of sound art, poetry, magic realism, pop/internet culture, gardening, and the mutations of emerging moving image technologies, including the rise in Generative AI technologies. |
You Can’t Find Love |
After attending The Nova Convention in New York City in 1978, I was inspired by Brion Gysin to write a few permutation poems. This experimental film based on a permutation poem I wrote in 1979. The poem is read by Ann Marie Guidry in 2024. |
Tom Bessoir |
Tom was born and raised in the Astoria section of Queens in New York City in 1957. From there he commuted by subway to attended The Bronx High School of Science. Tom studied mathematics and electrical engineering at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. While attending the Engineering School, he took advantage of Art School classes, focusing on film theory and studying experimental filmmaking with Robert Breer. In the late 1970s, he started photographing the downtown music scene. His photographs have appeared on dozens of records as well as in films, books, magazines, and newspapers. Tom Bessoir’s experimental films often use mathematics and randomness to explore perception and the structure of cinema. In the arts, Tom Bessoir is best known for Microfilm (1979), Digits of Pi (2019), and his photography documenting downtown NYC. |
Zone |
A zone is defined as an area, especially one that is different from the areas around it because it has different characteristics or is used for different purposes. The code in the film is by AI, the examples cover some fundamental principles of quantum mechanics: superposition, Schrödinger equation, and quantum measurement. |
Susanne Layla Petersen |
Susanne Layla Petersen is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her works include video, digital art, collaborative installations, web projects, photography, texts and sound. Petersen’s works have been screened and exhibited at Simultan Festival, XOR Space, VASTLAB Experimental, FilmArte Festival (Berlin), CICA Museum (South Korea), Kunstrum Fyn (Denmark), LA Art Show, Fox Yard Studio (UK), Streetlight (Chicago), Intervals Festival (Nizhny Novgorod), The Wrong Biennale, DELETE TV, ArtX Gallery (Silicon Valley) and elsewhere. |