Mons Pays (My Country) by Diek Grobler, South Africa
2018, 3 min, 36 sec,
Inspired by a poem in French by Ousmane Moussa Diagana of Mauritania. This was set to music by South African musician Laurinda Hofmeyr. The poet muses on the beauty and the secrets of his country. The animated poetry film was created through a process of automatism, and painted in gouache on board.
www.diekgrobler.co.zaPlastic Play by Pietertje van Splunter,
The Hague, The Netherlands
The Circle of life by Milan Zulic, Switzerland
2017, 3 min 29 sec
The animation, based on scans of a lace doiley made by his grandmother and his unwinding of this, is a choreographic recreation of her creative act. The sequence of images, and music by Melbourne based percussionist, Adrian Portia are a symbol for the circle of life in each of us.
Music: Adrian Portia, "Two tribes"
adrianportia.com
More about the multidisciplinary artist, Milan Zulic:
milanzulic.com
Inversion (the sound of isolation) by Petukhina Kristina, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2020, 1 min
An excerpt of her 4 min experimental music video made for the mobile phone (hence the vertical format),
Inversion (the sound of isolation) recorded during a 2020 covid lockdown in a high rise appartment building. Her neighbours, also in lockdown, used the time to make home repairs. She, a sound artist and musician, got out her mics, synthesizers, audio effects units, and her violin.
You can view this film on:
youtube or
instagram
This film of rich sonic textures has been shown in festivals all over the world (
listed here).
Making the Film: Inversion (the sound of isolation) by Petukhina Kristina, Saint Petersburg, Russia
2021, 1 min 41 sec
The backstage of the filming of the experimental documentary video "Inversion (the Sound of Isolation)"
showing her being imprisoned in a lockdown in a new building where the neighbours around were doing repairs. Each day the drilling into the walls seemed to go into her head, transforming her hearing.
So, "I took my violin, Octatrack, Korg, Kaoss Pad — and we played together like an industrial orchestra."
Petukhina Kristina is a sound artist, independent researcher, dj, and curator of the
media project Tonoptik.
She researches alternative ways to 'sound out' contemporary ecological crises. She also teaches music theory in action at
Music Shho school.
instagram.com/kristina.petukhina
music-art-sound-design.tilda.ws/
Pandemia
by Robert Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
2021, 1 min 47 sec
4 min 3 sec
This work was produced during the pandemic while isolating at home. The video follows a boy's response to COVID-19. The boy participates in his community's "isolate, test, treat and trace" initiative, marked by red crosses on their homes. This work reflects on COVID-19, our relationship with the environment and sustainability. The video features minor digital image manipulation where red crosses were added to trees and homes. Produced in Denmark and Canada, 2021.
Robert Hamilton is a media artist and Professor of Media Arts at McMaster University, Canada. His research primarily involves digital video, animation and interactive gallery installations. He has been the recipient of ten Canada Council Grants and two Ontario Arts Council grants. His work has been presented in numerous international festivals, galleries and museums. For example at the 2004 Transmediale (Berlin). His video work has won awards such as the German Video Art Prize and The Chicago Film Festival Silver Hugo Award.
robert-hamilton.caThe Image as an Archive: Traversing the Reimagined Palestinian Neighbourhood
by Zain Al Sharaf Wahbeh, U.K.
2021, 2 min 21 sec
The video presents a virtual historical journey through Al-Manshiyya, a Palestinian neighbourhood in Northern Jaffa, which was completely demolished from 1948 and the present day. Home to Zain Al Sharaf Wahbeh's paternal great-grandparents, Al-Manshiyya contributed functional and stylistic Arabo-Islamic design principles she found compelling to digitally immortalise.
To confront the erasures of Al-Manshiyya's infrastructure, land, and culture, Zain Al Sharaf founded
The Image as an Archive: an architectural practice that attempts to virtually reconstruct the most relevant aspects of this now-absent neighbourhood. These reconstructions were primarily achieved by cross-referencing scarce archival photographs and personal testimonies collected from interviews and schematic drawings. In doing so, this audio-visual experience aims to address her hometown's destruction from the regional to the material scale, by enabling its audience to experience the neighbourhood’s vernacular past and 'real-estatised present' through contemporary modes of visualisation.
More about this project:
p21.galleryeveryday by James Murphy, Ireland
2015, 1 min 30 sec
A study of the everyday where a difference of scale changes quotidian rituals into statements on the existential.
James Murphy is an artist based in Cork, Ireland
murphy-james.com
Grayling Draught by Pam McKinlay, Dunedin / Ōtepōti, Aotearoa / New Zealand
2019, 2 min 23 sec
A meditation on an installation by artist and jeweller, Michelle Wilkinson in the exhibition, "Wai: Mountains to the Sea" from the Art and Water project curated by Pam McKinlay and Dr Jenny Rock in the Otago Museum.
In recent decades an estimated 20 per cent of the world’s freshwater-fish species have become threatened, endangered or extinct. New Zealand’s only extinct freshwater fish, the Grayling (commonly known as Upokororo) was long gone before the current wave of species extinctions. The New Zealand grayling was an amphidromous species, migrating between freshwater and saltwater during different seasons as well as stages in their life cycle and was abundant during the 19th century. The population decreased during the early 1900s with the last known sighting of the fish in 1923.
Music:
Better Days by Benjamin Tissot
Wai, Art+Water catalogue:
issuu.com/dunedinschoolofart/docs Michelle Wilkinson:
m.wilkinson.jewelleryHere Is Where You Were Never A Child by Thomas Duggan and JS Fowler, U.K.
2020, 3 min 38 sec
Atmospheric film describing loss and the effects of climate change, with references to Brodsky, the death of a World Strongest man from COVID, policing and enforcement, and on mental health affected by lockdown.
Music:
Slow Drive To Shore by Dirty Three
www.thomasdugganstudio.comThe Silence: Puanga by Maata Wharehoka, Parihaka, Aotearoa, and Tracey M Benson, Australia
2021, 5 min.
Voice: Maata Wharehoka
This dual language titled video, filmed in 2019 and 2021, during the lead up to the Parihaka
Puanga Kai Rau festival, is part of an ongoing collaboration between Parihaka Kuia Maata Wharehoka and Australian based media artist, Tracey M Benson. It features a poem recited by Maata, written during their time together in 2019 and recorded in 2021.
More about this project
Maata and Tracey first met in 2013 at Parihaka during the
SCANZ 2013 arts residency organised by
Intercreate and their relationship deepened during the 2015
SCANZ 2015 residency. Since then, Maata and Tracey have been in conversation and sharing linkages between creation stories across cultures. The three narrative threads in this video which connect to their respective ancestors as part of their collaboration are
Te kete tuauri, te kete tuatea and te kete aronui, (
The Three kete (baskets) of knowledge, connections to the Norse universe through stories related to the
Nine worlds and Yggdrasil (the world tree), and the
Nine elements of the Druids.
Maata Wharehoka ((Ngāti Tahinga, Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Kuia), a raranga (flax weaving) and karanga (chant) practitioner, specializes in reinvigorating Māori cultural practices (
Kahu Whakatere) around death and burial. In 2015 she won the Creative New Zealand Ngā Tohu ā Tā Kingi Ihaka award recognising her lifetime contribution to the arts. She played a role in the 2018 91 min drama-docu,
Maui's Hook, which centered on five families who lost loved ones to suicide. The film, directed by Paora Joseph, was produced by Karen Te O Kahurangi Waaka-Tibble, with executive production by Quinton Hita.
More about Maata:
nukuwomen.co.nz/2021
Dr Tracey M Benson is an Australian based interdisciplinary artist, researcher and founder of
Treecreate. She works at the nexus of media arts, digital transformation, ecological systems and citizen empowerment. Her work focuses on issues related to belonging, place, wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviour change. Walking is central to her creative practice exploring locative and augmented media tools to engage audiences to see their local places with fresh eyes. Her work has been extensively presented internationally in media arts festivals and exhibitions. With a passion for understanding different knowledge systems and engaging audiences, she often collaborates with Indigenous communities, historians, technologists and scientists. She lectures internationally and holds adjunct positions at University of Canberra, the More than Human Lab at Victoria University, Wellington, NZ, the eXtended Reality Collective at Charles Sturt University and is an
Advisor for the TransArt Institute. She is listed as an expert with the
Australian Academy of Science for her work on citizen engagement and behaviour change around energy and household sustainability.
traceybenson.comrenaître (transcension)
by Russell J Chartier & Paul J Botelho, U.S.A.
2020, 4 min 3 sec
Transcension is the predominant focus of the multilayered video and audio piece. An important aspect of this collaboration between video artist and engineer, Russell J. Chartier and musician and composer, Paul J. Botelho is the principle of synchronicity. The video artist and the composer, agreed on the duration of the piece and had no other communication until each part was completed. The artists call this process a collective subconscious, meaning also the commonality that permeates betwixt the artists and those close to them. They have collaborated on art projects for over a decade.
Russell J. Chartier is a film director, and as an artist makes experimental film.
Paul J. Botelho is a composer, performer, developer, and artist whose work includes acoustic and
electro-acoustic music, multimedia installation pieces, visual art works, vocal improvisation, and a series of one-act operas. He performs as a vocalist primarily with extended technique and incorporates the voice into much of his music. His work has been performed, presented, and exhibited in concerts, festivals, galleries, and museums across the world. Botelho received a Ph.D. and M.F.A. in Music. Composition from Princeton University, an M.A. in Electro-Acoustic Music from Dartmouth College, and a B.F.A. in Contemporary Music Performance and Composition from the College of Santa Fe. Currently he is Associate Professor of Music at Bucknell University where he teaches music composition.
pauljbotelho.com
Heat by Paul Fletcher, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
2021, 5 min
Sound and animation:
Paul Fletcher
An abstract contemplation of heat waves, radio waves, gravitational forces our selves as specks of dust in time and space. The pandemic seems to call for a time for bigger perspectives as hinted at by discussions of universal basic income, the four day working week for all, and so on.
www.paulfletcherartwork.comOne, none and one hundred thousand
by Daniela Lucato, Berlin, Germany
2021, 2 min 52 sec
A vertical short on diversity and inclusion. A man embraces his other selves.
Written, directed and produced by Daniela Lucato
Camera: Jacopo Pantaleoni
Actor: Thomas Kreutz
Text: One, none and one hundred thousand by Luigi Parendella
Voice: Jonathan Nyberg
Music: HitsLab
Daniela is an Italian artist, filmmaker, and actress based in Berlin, Germany.
creative-city-berlin.de576 by Roopesh Sitharan, Malaysia
2021, 5 min
The video focusses on delicate and subdued close ups. His garden and backyard while in lockdown is both prison and space for connecting to nature. The video ends with a quotation from the
Tirukkural (Sacred Verses) or Kural, an ancient three volume Tamil classic on ethics and morality.
"If it cannot hold and protect trees, the soil is useless. If it cannot empathise and care for others, the heart is useless." The number 576 refers to this couplet in the Kural and this citation references the material that inspired this video.
Roopesh Sitharan is a Malaysian artist, curator and researcher. He was involved in several local and international research projects, art exhibitions and conferences such as Siggraph and ISEA. Most recently he participated in "Acts of Life", a critical research residency organised by NTU-CCA, Singapore and MCAD, Manila.
www.roopesh.com
ludzie stąd (people from here) by Ewelina Węgiel, Poland
2021, 2 min 30 sec
A Polish church community as the subject matter for an experimental film on ritual and the performative.
Ewelina Węgiel is a visual artist:
ewelinawegiel.com
Fear in your eyes by Evgenia Makarova, Russia
2021, 1 min 13 sec
A poetry video incorporating archival footage of her parents caught in an elusive moment of happiness with phrases from a haiku on nostalgia and loss.
Soundscape: Evgenia Makarova
Evgenia Makarova is an artist based in Moscow Russia
evgeniamakarova.net8STABS by Noemi Comi, Italy
2021, 1 min
An attempt to make digital images mortal. A camera was placed in front of the computer screen and a presentation of images were filmed, then a second video of the same presentation was made. This process was repeated several times. Each process degraded the appearance of these images until they were unreadable. It took eight 'stabs' to destroy these photographs into monochrome changing blobs.
Noemi Comi is an Italian conceptual and documentary photographer currently completing a MA in Photography in Milan.
noemicomi.com
Bush Dance by Brit Bunkley, Whanganui,
Aoteaora | New Zealand
2021, 4 min 47 sec
Performer and Voice: Andrea Gardner
I wanted Lucy, the dog, in a tree. Since we had a plastic dog in a tree at the Auckland Botanical Gardens, a real one in a tree was the next obvious step. Lucy actually climbs trees, or tries to when she can ... Someone said that this tree is a 400 or so old titoki tree. - Brit, September 2021
A contemplation of escape to another time, another universe during a period of crisis, this is a video of interactions within previously unexplored bush during the New Zealand 2020 Covid 19 lockdown. Close ups of an ancient Titoki tree while reading Micho Kaku and Clifford Pickover essays on hyperspace and dancing salsa in a Tyvek suit are overdubbed with ambient piano.
Music: Loops and sound effects by Soundsnap and Pond5
The tree scan is made with Metashape software.
Texts:
"Borrowed Time: Interview with Michio Kaku" on the physics of time travel in Scientific American November 2003
"Surfing Through Hyperspace" Clifford A. Pickover, quoting Jane Roberts and Ann Rice.
"You are so part of the world that your slightest action contributes to its reality. Your breath changes the atmosphere. Your encounters with others alter the fabrics of their lives, and the lives of those who come in contact with them."
-
Memnoch the Devil, by Anne Rice:
"The tribe spread out to intersperse amongst countless families, and families joined to form nations, and the entire congregation was in fact a palpable and visible and interconnected configuration! Everyone impinged upon everyone else. Everyone drew, in his or her separateness, upon the separateness of everyone else!"
Michio Kaku in Scientific American: “We just happen to be in one thread of this wave. And we have the illusion that we are the only ones. In this other thread, they think they are the only universe. The reality is, nobody's function has collapsed. In time travel scenarios, you would simply go from one thread to the next, one timeline to the next timeline. And the two look awfully similar."
scientificamerican.com
More:
www.britbunkley.comInterview by Chenglin Xue,
Beijing China / New York, U.S.A.
2021, 1 min
A video of a three channel video of a fabricated webcam system he created in 2012 with 10 vibration motors connected to an arduino microprocessor which amplifies the vibrations of each object into sound and motion.
Is energy an emotion? As a photographer, I can express light and shadow, but how can we represent energy? This video visualizes and makes energy audible in these objects.
So what we see and hear is the 'voice' or 'emotion' of each object and this video is an interview with each of these objects.
- Chenglin Xue, 2021
Xue Chenglin (b. 1982) lives and works in Beijing and New York. Xue was educated at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts and Alfred university, department of electronic integrated art. He has participated in exhibitions at Werkstatt Grazy Gallery, Vienna; Robert C. Turner Gallery; and CAFA art museum, Beijing among others. Xue's work uses Arduino, processing, MaxMSP, and other interactive software in synergy with photography, video, printmaking, and other media. His work explores the nature of video and objective reality, focusing on the relationship between people and nature, attempting to harness interactive media to explore an invisible reality.
xuechenglin.com
A escala é grande e por isso ficamos por aqui
(The scale is big and that's why we stay here)
by Nicole Kouts, Brazil
2019, 1 min
A performative self-portrait using three methods of image capture.
Simultaneous recordings by screen capture, scanner and a webcam and the disparaties between them, create a dialogue of image and the actions behind each.
This 1 minute performative self-portrait is a play on multiples, alternatives, and on artifice vs representation.
Nicole Kouts (São Paulo, Brazil, 1997) is a multimedia artist and researcher. She investigates the multidisciplinarity of images as a transport medium of ancient beliefs to contemporary technologies; ghosts of the divine, the self and the infinite in luminous digital portals and obsolete analog media. She graduated in Visual Arts, with a Postgraduate Degree in Scenography and Costume Design (Centro Universitário Belas Artes de São Paulo). She has shown her work in various festivals and exhibitions.
www.nicolekouts.com
Union - Communion by Kateryna Bortsova, Ukraine
Kaygı | Anxiety by Müge Yıldız, Istanbul, Turkey
2016, 3 min 17 sec
text: poems by Henri Michaux
voice and music: Müge Yıldız
cinematograpy: Müge Yıldız and Utku Sömezer
Street cats and stone steps form the backdrop to a film where the filmmaker questions her own existence in the words of Belgian-French poet, Henri Michaux, to a soundscape bordering on dissonance.
Müge Yıldız is a Turkish artist and film maker who has degrees in cinema and philosophy from Istanbul and Paris. She works in photography and moving image (super 8mm, super 35mm, video, archival footage as well in expanded cinema (moving image installations)). Her works explore political, ethnographic and philosophical themes, including questions related our existence and draw on her travels across the globe.
She also writes articles on cinema and music in several art magazines and her cinematic works have been nationally and internationally screened in various museums, galleries and film festivals, including Istanbul Modern and Pera Museum.
mugeyildiz.com
Shui (Water) by Jason Sullivan, Peru
2021 3 min 45 sec
Music: original score
by Jason Sullivan
A refined cinematographic play on the optical and the natural. Filmed in Mancora, Piura, northern Peru.
Jason is a photogragher and is represented by Galeria Del Paseo, Lima, Peru.
photojasonsullivan.com
Wave Forms by Robin Johnston, Glasgow , U.K.
2020 2 min 26 sec
Soundtrack by Wendy Jordan
Experimental abstract wave forms.
He is a Scottish urban photographer and video producer based in Glasgow, Scotland UK. More -
vimeo.com
The Thoughtlessness and the Bad Timing of Joy
by Alyona Baranoff, Berlin / London
2021, 2 min 39 sec
Produced in Berlin, this parody of the spectacle is poignant and self-effacing. The goal set is what the arts is all about, to try something new.
Alyona Baranoff is an illustrator, painter, video artist and filmmaker who was born in Boston, raised in Moscow, and based in Berlin from 2015-2021.
baurlione.comartconnect.com/profile
Colonial Rd by A.A.M. Bos, Aotearoa / New Zealand
2021, 5 min
-- synopsis to come --
See the programme for the
2018 and the
March 2021 editions
About the
Take Care / Tiakina exhibition
Other shows curated by Sonja Art reviews on Sonja's blog Sonja's other projects Sonja's Artworks arranged by Medium
