Stigmart VideoFocus Special Edition NKQ

12th Edition STIGMA RT 10.PRESS

From experimental cinema to fashion videography, fourteen artists breaking the boundaries Since its foundation, Stigmart10 has encouraged a conception of art based on a dynamic dialogue between artists and audience, reflecting the interactive nature of the creative act itself.

A winning formula, according to the doubled number of submissions - more than 3000 applicants have submitted their video works and CV in 2014 - and the increasing popularity of our project.

We are glad to present this year's edition of Videofocus, our special Stigmart10 review focused on experimental cinema, original fashion videography and courageous documentary.

Stigmart10 Team

4

Delphine Hsini Mei

"Like a lonley island of amnesia, each of us circles around the different selves, dancing endlessly, twirling the gorgeous and ethereal waltz.. Deep shadows of BLACK slowly burning its flame, while WHITE still stay in that silent sitting amidst a imaginary oceanic waves. "

20

Effi Weiss & Amir Borenstein

"In 1869, John McGregor, a Scottish explorer, arrives in Palestine to explore the Jordan River. In the summer of 2011, Effi and Amir, Israelis who have been living in Europe for the past decade, set out to retrace McGregor’s steps, from the river source to the Sea of Galilee."

34

Lenka Kuricová & Michal Huštaty

"The nation is one of the most successful social constructs in mankind history. Nationality is one of the most basic identifiers of modern society. The video Who wants to belong in my country? is part of same-named series, dealing with private nationalism, racism and discrimination. "

48

Rui Hu

"I work with video, 3D graphics, photography, and objects. My current interests span disaster, technology, institution, knowledge, and serendipity in the daily life. Most of my works, regardless of medium and subject, are rooted in virtuality. I see my practice as constructing alternative worlds, and the work, be it a photo or a video, is a segment of that world. "

58

Benjamin Glas

" The idea that our generation and various cultures are all moving towards a seemingly "rational" take on the everyday, while moving away from an overall perception of empirical phenomenon, is a growing theme for my artistic practice and lifestyle.

72

Mathilde Ganancia

On one side, a cow is happily displayed with bits and pieces which transforms it into a grotesque puppet, becoming too heavy to stand upright.On the other side, a corporate video promotes its high quality, latest milking machine. Rules and codes are well controlled for this « milking system » so that it becomes a clear ongoing evolution of cow milking.

Mai Al Shazly

72

Much of my photography works express ambiguous visual elements, trying to explore the visuallanguage of the feelings they evoke in us, by expressing the meanings it holds to create a composition that could reflect different feelings,spirituality, beauty, ugliness and impermanence everybody can feel it in ourcontemporary life.

Mark Regester & nonnon

80

The House on Fire examines the religious rituals of American Pentecostal churches, some of which use deadly snakes, fire and even the drinking of strychnine in their services. These services often send their followers into a frenzy of dancing, fainting and speaking in tongues as the spirit takes them.

Barron Sherer

92

"A new project is a response to the previous films I’ve made. It is both an extension of it and a clear cut from it, because each project should be carried by a will for renewal, a revolutionary momentum. I came to realize that every film I’ve made was influenced and driven by the discovery of new musical harmonies, new sounds that I wanted to explore. "

Dmitry Kmelnitsky

104

"SOURCE is an audio-visual meditation on the mystical origins of creation and future states of consciousness.

This short motion graphics film presents a coded ambient journey laden with inspiration from quantum physics, Kabbalah, and science fiction."

Leonardo Selvaggio

116

"As I was “walking,” I couldn’t help but take notice of all the faceless people in Google Street View. I found them haunting and had a very visceral desire to provide these bodies with an identity, a surrogate if you will. More profound to me was the algorithm used to erase these faces. ."

Mariam Eqbal

126

"In-Between Frames is a part of a series of works that are experimental and explore the fundamentals of animated motion through repetition.The work is an inquiry into the unlimited in-betweens of movement. All the images are created using a scanner as the primary tool for the transcription of motion. "

H.C. Turk

138

I began by making music videos based on some of my songs (I have created 2 albums of über-rock music, 1 of abstracted sound art, and 1 of voice-based sound art, which I term Voxart). Though I have been making images and writing fiction for decades, movies/filmmaking/cinema (the first is the most accurate term regarding my work) is a relatively new discipline for me, despite being a combinatorial extension of my previously established interests and achievements.

Natalie Goldman The past and future are obliterated and obscured through speed and perpetual movement, allowing the traveler to stay focused on the very immediate present as the landscape tumbles and unfolds itself, one image into the next. Lucy Lippard, when writing about walking as a form of meditation, describes that, “motion allows a certain type of mental freedom that translates a place to a person kinesthetically."

148

Delphine Hsini An artist's statement

Like a lonley island of amnesia, each of us circles around the different selves, dancing endlessly, twirling the gorgeous and ethereal waltz.. Deep shadows of BLACK slowly burning its flame, while WHITE still stay in that silent sitting amidst a imaginary oceanic waves. Matter as substance, form as phantom, death-rebirth/reality-sureality of dubious humanity through a microscopic perspective. Gradually erasing or gently

finding the deepest memories buried in the body, ghost dreams, spirit elves, nature life cycles thus appear one by one through familiar and unrecognizable-nameless songs, through fragments of storytelling, through movements to dance. The creative work belong to “MICRO: Homeland_Dreambody� series. The basis of developing work include three parts: Workshops Shooting videos Live Performance & exhibition The three part echoes the different timeline (past-presentfuture) of events and the invisible stories told circling infinitely as a mobius stripe.

Mei Delphine Mei, Interdisciplinary artist and performer. Born in a small Pacific Asiatic island named Taiwan, and soon drifted away with the Atlantic wind. Delphine has practiced in New York, San Francisco,Asiatic lands, Europe, China, and Taiwan. BFA/BA in Art History and Arts at University of Illinois in the United States, and Advance Diploma in Physical Theatre In Arts in Helsinki, Finland. Selected activity: Cite American-Foundation (Paris, France), 2012 Soho In Ottakring Biennial, 2011-2011 guest artist lecturer for new media

department in Linz Art University, Austria, 2013 Arte Creative Program selection, 2014 Research Project in Southeast Asia, live at Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, talk-work collected in Independent Archive and Resource Center Singapore.

Delphine's work centers around identity shifts and travel/migration/cultural transition-transfer, and spirituality. She is now based in Taiwan.

An interview with

Delphine Hsini Mei Delphine Hsini Mei's visionary work ISLE 4224 reveals a remarkable effort to extend the boundaries of human perception or to be more precise, to manipulate it and release it from its most primitive parameters in its search for physiological sensations. Delphine, how did you come up with the idea for this work?

It's a great question you ask to me and I’ll try my best to give some ideas.

As many of my works come from pieces of observations and direct experiences from daily life, so does this one. This is essentially a lyrical poetic take on biographical stories.

I have wanted to make something about my native land Taiwan after a long absence since youth of over 10 years. Coming back here, surely I can still recognize everything, but what I was used to be familiar with as a child can no longer be found and it felt very foreign to me. Furthermore, after so many years not speaking my native tongue, I could only speak it in a cryptic way. At that moment I felt as if being castrated in a surreal manner. I asked then, “How can this be? I am in my own country, amongst my people, who look the same as I am, how can this be?” So I felt alone among my own land. I felt the huge differences in every aspect. Although I wanted to mingle but felt somewhat apprehensive about it.

This made me reflect on my own identity, as well as the country’s identity as a whole.

I think Taiwan, the collective, and me, the individual, share a similar feeling: trying to be with the world, trying hard to connect internationally and to reach outwards, but at the same time struggling with maintaining its own unique position, an island of its own in the vast Pacific Ocean. Water is a significant motif in this work: eg, womb, fluidity of island people, koi pond in the beginning.

Thus by doing a piece or a series about this theme, I want to decode the layers of complexities while explore the hidden fragility and the socialpsychological darkness that actually lives within all of us humans. Therefore, for me it is a microcosmic

example into the universal human psyche. By using the island/myself as a departure point, I hope to "journey" into a broader human subconscious landscape. So what you said in your question about "extending the boundaries of human perception" is exactly what I wish to do.

What you said in your question about "to manipulate it and release it from its most primitive parameters in its search for physiological sensations" is one reason why I have chosen this particular visual composition for this video: silent scenes and movements coupled with black screen with only narrator's voice, inviting the viewers to enter into another world of darkness like inside a womb. Once entering this place, our senses buried within our body are triggered. Especially in the modern society, when everything is emphasized on fast consumptions

and quick replacements, be it visually or otherwise. Our culture is so packed with overflow of fast information that we are constantly caught in the same acceleration, losing touch with the ability to connect deeper with ourselves in the slower, more fine-tuned and sensitive ways.

Last but not least, the fundamental storytelling aspect: Storytelling and creating alternative imaginations are key elements ever present in all my works.

However abstract it might appear to be, I am fundamentally curious about what stories buried within our body: collective body, social psychological body, emotional body and the spirit body, and how these aspects manifest themselves in our subconsciousness and in dreams.

As a result, it is easy to see the layers of symbolism in this video, where a almost mystic and primordial atmosphere, mixed with the delicate decadence and placed in a vivid imaginary world. Such is the idea of "doppelganger", represented here as the nameless faceless man-woman. They are but one of the double dualities living within us, e.g.: love-hate, ying-yang, man-woman.

As a movement-oriented person, I have always been interested in choreographed human behaviors. My first short performance video was more fictional and told the triangle love story through complete movements and gestures, without any dialogues. I believe that in this way of working, the viewers would get naturally more space for their own imaginations about what the potential story is themselves rather than being

told what it is exactly. The concept of differences in perspectives is exciting and more interesting to me.

Your art knows no boundaries between visual art, music and theatrical forms. Could you introduce our readers to the multidisciplinary nature of your art research?

I am always interested in going between realms/mediums since early on. I am an art player who is curious about the flows amongst various shapes and forms.

My work is very process oriented: as mentioned briefly above, normally I have a extensive research period, such as reading stuff online, going on specific sites to look, make notes and write, shoot some things here and there, then

slowly developing and weaving concepts together, and from this process one or two main themes would emerge out of an ocean of ideas I’ve gathered.

A bit background information to share related to the question: I have studied first dance performance at the National institute of Arts in Taiwan, then went to do a BFA in the US. During this time in college, I was still very active in learning the performing arts, and was often on stage. After America I went to Finland to study physical theatre and Mime. So one can see at an early stage multiple art forms have already been there in my learnings.

As far as music: My ears are very good. My dance teachers always commented that my body is really rhythmic, so I am sensitive to beats. But it is actually my ears are very refined and my hearing ability was probably much better than my visual ability, or let’s say I hear therefore I see.

In the past I have done musical theatre, spoken word theatre, worked with several Jazz bands, sung, and made music myself on the side sometimes.

The music here you hear really helps to transport and express an inner psychological landscape: seemingly nostalgic and calm, not much happenings it seems, while the character walks through an old ancient place in the beginning. The music gets much tenser, denser, which reflects an inner tension, of confronting the emotions of oneself. This is when time and space start to meet as well as when they collapse together through the vehicle of music. For this particular soundtrack I have searched and waited for some years before finding the right one to fit my ideas visually.

Out of all forms, there is also the literary form that I worked with since very young: poetry.

Poetry is a very important element for me since youth as well as in understanding the lyrical sense in all my works, whether it be directorial or performative forms.

As poetry is like a landscape painting, it always leaves lots imaginary spaces and work with the abstract elements. But poetry has a distinctive flow to it, the rhythm paints the landscape.

How did you get started in experimental cinema and performance?

My interest in cinema started as a child, however my mother sent me to learn dance and piano, but I think it has always been with me.

In 2006, I was in Austria, participating in a film production and also learning how to produce film festival. There I met some filmmakers and had very interesting talks with them and watched lots of good films. Later I went on to direct my first performance video in an Austrian new media festival lab. The rest is history, as they say.

With performance: Literally I grew up with it as well. It has began as a little child, and I have even won local and national competitions.

After doing stage performances for many years, while moving from New York to San Francisco, I started film acting. Everything was very different than stage, and I like the differences and new challenges. Although I have not performed in too many films till now, I really have fallen in love with the craft of it as well as the fact that I can actually see my own performance! Even videotaping live is not sufficient nor does it do justice to the live performance. So this aspect of cinema is very charming to me. To date, except making my own video projects, I still continue to collaborate and perform for film projects of others.

Not only the experiences as a performer enhance the role as a director of making video, but it also teaches me a lot about the creative process and incubate my own cinematic eye. Performative skills are interlocked with the video: silent films style, my study of mime performance techniques, shadow plays, and others that all go into certain choices and concept-shaping of this particular work.

Last but not least, I would like also to share my view about the differences in comparing the role of being a filmmaker/videomaker and that of a choreographer/theatre/dance director: the creative process for a filmmaker, as some of you might already know, needs a structure - the storyboard, the location scout, and camera arrangements, etc.; whereas that of a choreographer can be scattered, making it as the piece goes. However, as both, I appreciate what they each can offer and compliment each other: film can change the viewing speed for dance, while dance can bring out even more the poetic

and lyrical language to film’s native imaginary qualities. Actors speak often with their eyes on film while dancers use more their body to speak.

past, present and future: can you introduce our readers to this aspect of your work?

Well, I will try my best.

Questions such as, if the story can really be explained in words, what’s the use of making a dance or sans-dialogue film? This was often in my mind when I tried to bridge these two mediums together. It happens to be that I am also much more interested in the world that’s different than our reality, and in films we can experience such world. It’s like taking everyone together on an adventure ride when I experiment with cinema and performance and mix-match them.

The continuous transformation of body substances into ethereal fluid and mental spaces is a peculiar aspect of your art research in ISLE 4224. Even temporal boundaries are blurred in your imagery. ISLE 4224 belongs to Homeland Dreambody, a video series composed of three parts echoing

It is always hard to talk about very conceptual part of your own work, especially when it is mostly imagery- based. From my perspective, to chose having no texts largely means there is no words needed, no need to explain, but for the viewers to be connected emotionally. Our emotional world is so intricate and layered, that often times it is not enough to use words to describe them. But that’s also why we have art such as poetry and dance or film to represent them more accurately and delicately.

The only section in the video with text is an excerpt from one of my older poems, read by a Polish artist in English, German, and Polish. My intention was to create a sonic landscape with the capacity to allow words to pass through their

literary meanings and be more transparent and open in interpretations, perhaps even becoming something completely different than the original.

It is as if in a magician’s hat, an egg can become a dove or a bundle of flowers. How we can create the unexpected and the accidental within a frame is what’s interesting to me. So it was my intention, by intersecting different languages, for viewers not to understand fully the texts.

Let me talk a bit now about “Homeland_Dreambody” series.

Homeland_Dreambody started when I first studied abroad in the US as a young foreign student to explore the idea of “home”. What is home? what does home mean? Is home where the heart is or?

With increasing globalization and my own migrations - traveling and living in different places in the world - more questions emerged.

The psychology of dreams is something I have always been interested, from Freud to Jung, from lucid dreams to astral travel, you name it.

“Dreambody” is the dreaming body or body in dreams, depending on your perspectives. Also this body is not necessarily a physical body but can be a energetic one. What is dream, and what is reality? Is our physical body the real body in home, or our energetic body the permanent one in lucid dreams? Or is there seemingly no boundaries where one naturally flow into one another constantly? Is our socalled time only an illusion, so is space itself perceived by us?

Homeland_Dreambody is thus exploring the relationships between physical home/body-ashome and the metaphorical energetic spiritual home/body.

In terms of the overall scene: here I contrast the very traditional location (Lin Family Garden, a typical old Chinese garden) to a timeless place.

Juxtaposing the external visible form that is represented by the garden to the internal often invisible internal psychological landscape - the outer birth place vs. the inner birth living within our body.

To understand all these, we have to mention about the subject of identity as an important part of underlying theme.

For example, I used skin as a costume, to write a fictional family history and story. Each calligraphic writing has its specific meaning, but when the performer moves, it loses its original meaning while making new meaning via

performance. Some words become invisible below the arms, while words on the side of the chin become visible. Like how we perceive things and people differently when we are abroad; and in return we are seen differently too by the others.

What this multiplicity via movements in variant shots can generate on screen for me is indeed very interesting.

I am a strong believer that film, because of its ability to combine multiple elements of artistic forms together, is naturally a creative tool that is capable of communicating this very concept of echoing and linking the past with the present to the future of time in one on screen. It is this alternate perspective and endless imagination that are the most charming aspect in cinema, always in space-time crossings.

Your vision is at the same time sub-molecular and cosmogonic: in your statement about ISLE 4224, you refer to humanity through a microscopic perspective. Can you explain this concept?

I will answer this in 3 points below: 1. Since early time I have been immensely interested in physics-metaphysics, chaos theory, and cosmology. So when talking about concepts like molecules and cosmos, we have to refer to the fundamental element of it all - time. Time, or concept of time, is where we human beings experience the distinct differences between the moment-to-moment (molecular level) and the eternal (cosmogonic) level. And in a circular cyclical way, it's the same thing and echoes each other's existence.

We as mortals, in my opinion, can only experience the microscopic slice of life forms, because living organisms as well as human stories and delicate emotions are beyond thousands. Therefore, with this in mind, I feel I can only present one or two possibilities visually, the rest is completely left to viewers’ imaginations to fill the infinite numbers of probabilities. Of course I was also wanting to explore a different way of storytelling and experimenting with the hypothesis based on these concepts. Is it possible to use visually suggestive common motifs to trigger something forgotten but hurried within our energetic memory that's beyond this lifetime? Perhaps we have more than one lifetime? How are these past or future or

before-birth lifetime memories are stored?

Questions like these came often to my mind in the process of creating this piece.

Maybe this quote speaks for what I want to express more concretely: "Our illusion of the past arises because each Now contains objects that appear as “records” in Barbour’s language. The only evidence you have of last week is your memory. But memory comes from a stable structure of neurons in your brain now. The only evidence we have of the Earth’s past is rocks and fossils. But these are just stable structures in the form of an arrangement of minerals we examine in the present. The point is, all we have are these records and you only have them in this NOW.” , quoted from Spirit Science.

2. How can we explore timelessness living with linear time?

I thought to experiment this through performing art forms instead of a normal narrative format.

Performing arts = erasable time + indispensable moments in time. This genre is both timerestrained, live only once in particular moments, and because of the very quality, timeless. It is also a form that I have been familiar with since a child, so I can boldly play with its delicacies and edges, turn it around and upside down, and if necessary, tear it apart, deconstruct and reconstruct it.

Don't forget essentially I am an art player and want to have fun with it while doing it!

The scientific artistic experiments allow this to happen in sequences of different timeframes, so it is at the same time requiring patience to string these “experiments results” together to form a whole, while recognizing the fleeting moments existed within these results that cannot be actually collaged together. So to authentically represent these “broken” elements from our 2D linear perspective to reconstruct a 3D life experience is something that I am interested when dealing with such theme. Namely, to see

eternal foreverness from one or several mortal moments.

3. I made something beyond words & abstract, intangible that only can be "seen" by tapping deeper into your own feelings and inner world.

After all we are all small in the bigger landscape of time, no matter how much time changes, how advanced the technology becomes, what age status rich or poor, we still share similar basic emotions as well as experience the same cycles of birth-growingold-sickness-death. This reflects how humanity can be both shallow and deep. However, all throughout our history different fields of creatives and thinkers have continued to be charmed by questions of life and repeatedly explored such subject.

Here is a work that is at one time surreal and real, abstract and yet full of symbols, not so much words, and the only thing is the whispering poetic verses in three languages. This is my very

intention to depict a world between understanding and unknown, dreamlike, and echoing as well as conflicting the realistic vs. psychological landscapes, all these entanglements and absurdities.

How to explain a visionary work whose vision is ahead of time when all we have is now?

I think by looking at the work itself is the best way to communicate my ideas.

No answers because there are beyond thousands millions of answers, if I am honest with myself and your readers, I would not even try to label anything, let alone my own works.

Memory, one of the core themes here, has bitterness as well as sweet happiness, I think that when all these becomes the source of inspiration for creative works and then able to channel it into a positive force, then it is the best. This is why I chose to reflect and dealt deeper into my own experience, base the story on it, and evolve it into

something larger than just a bloody painful birth of me into this world.

- Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

My creative process generally starts in the most common way, daily life like moments of hanging laundry or sitting watching plants outside while drinking tea in the mornings. I walk a lot so in these walks inspirations also frequent me.

When this happens, normally I would start to sketch down in my notebook, which I always bring with me. Generally words phrases coupled with drawings, as inspirations often come first in the form of images in my head. What generally follows, once some initial ideas form, is an extensive research period. Like a sculptor, I need to work with the raw material in order to mold into something recognizable, otherwise it is just a puddle of clay.

As my background is in the performance and theatre, so I would stage these ideas first into a performative piece, for me to actually see, feel, and observe more closely what and how it can be.

Lots of improvisations can then happen within this first staged happening with given structures and some great additional materials thus can be developed further from it. I am a firm believer of experimenting by doing, and improvisation is key.

Like the water, let it flow and it will flow to where it belongs.

Therefore, often when asked about my creative process, I think more how to explain my formlessness approach to create forms, as it sounds at first contradictory. However, life is not about from point A to point B and the path is not always as straight as we think.

I like an old Jewish joke: “if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans!”

And perhaps Bruce Lee said most eloquently about this kind of path that some of us chose to take as well as speak beautifully about my creative approach: in his interview he said, “be like water, be formless, my friend”.

Your art is rich of references: your visual imagery seems to be close to Sergei Paradjanov's rarefied atmospheres and

Romeo Castellucci's theatre. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

Thank you for the compliment!

I had to check who they are haha, one always learns something new every day.

Rarefied yes, complexities and the grand mystery in the universe always are wrapped inside the simplest form, such as a flower, thus there is the flower of life. And theatre for sure!

That is my background and original studies, especially the somewhat grotesque, very surreal, and highly emotional and very corporal physical-theatre elements that also can be seen in Romeo Castellucci's work.

Oh, Influences are everything in life.

I think because I am rooted both in the Eastern and Western thinkings, so you can see a diversity of influences from both.

Black & White silent films, social news world news, spiritual shamanic studies & folk traditions, anthropology, New media, old media, trees in the park on my way home, the food I ate this morning... you name it. I even was performing with a circus and sent to Vienna to study Opera, although one may not be able to identify the trace, but I am sure it is in there somewhere.

Most people even colleagues like fellow artists get surprised when I tell them that I actually have a classic training traditional background, and although doing experiment and avant-garde work, I listen and watch often traditional works as well and love some of them equally.

I tend to think we are like a sponge, absorbing information naturally, and most are not logical in the subconscious or unconscious level. So anything is as good as anything else. So hard to identify the specifics.

Hmm, yes.

Thanks for sharing your time, Delphine, we wish you all the best with your artist career. What's next for you? Have you a particular film in mind?

I have some ideas and have shot some footages, but the overall concept is still forming.

Basically I work in very stream of consciousness collage style, and leave room for onsite improvisations. So it often takes a longer time to develop into a more solid material.

Since the end of last year I have started to write a draft for a sequel that is more leaning towards the fictional narrative that’s inspired from an ancient Chinese story of Nßwa, also known as Nßgua, is a goddess in mythology for creating mankind and repairing the pillar of heaven; however in my story, as a contemporary woman, she will not attempt to repair heaven anymore but tries to create a utopia on earth this time.

This time I might combine the performative storytelling with some new media techniques or animation to continue develop the style that you see in this video.

I want to thank you for those who have trusted in me in this process such as Tony Huang my co-dancer-performer and who has not only inspired me but also felt lucky to have him in the world. Meta Hong my dear friend and talented woman of many things, and wonderful human being overall. Yuki Pan who has since a long

time given me many chances to experiment and try out my different art forms. Verena Kyselka who has not only been an excellent director to work on set while performing for her own films, but also has encouraged me with developing my own unique ways. Thanks to Han Yang and Ingo Keil who were willing to trust me enough to perform in this when I had only a rough idea and plenty of passion and guts to do this. Many thanks go to Dennis Tan whose music I came upon accidentally years after the video was made, found his music was a perfect fit for the video, salute to his own creative expressions and wishes for continuing of his own special sonic journey.

Last but not least, this video is also dedicated to my family, thank you. Also many I have not named here, thank you sincerely.

Something in the end of this interview I want to share: Today in my silent sitting time in the morning, I saw an ocean in my heart, very blue and wide.

I would like to share this joyous and peaceful feeling with all your readers.

Life itself is the greatest art of all, cherish it.

Bind farewell without end.

Effi Weiss & Amir

In 1869, John McGregor, a Scottish explorer, arrives in Palestine to explore the Jordan River. In the summer of 2011, Effi and Amir, Israelis who have been living in Europe for the past decade, set out to retrace McGregor’s steps, from the river source to the Sea of Galilee.

Against the backdrop of a mythical landscape overflowing with Israeli vacationers, they take us along on a journey down the river’s path. At the same time local and foreign, they gradually transform from travelerexplorers to 'explored travelers' - as the people they meet along the way unabashedly confront them about their relationship with the land they had left.

Borenstein

An interview with

Effi Weiss & Amir Borenstein Effi Weiss and Amir Borenstein hare with Straub & Huillet the desire to look at the world in new ways following a close examination of reality, yet refusing the traditional features of documentary cinema and undermining the trusted value of documentation. In an age in which globalisation impinges on every aspect of our lives, Effi and Amir use their art to explore the themes of national identity, discrimination and social stereotypes: for them the embrace of the imagination have specific political implications in the Brechtian sense of the term. Effi and amir, how did you get into filmmaking?

Well, it is a good question because we don't really consider ourselves filmmakers. We make films, but also other things that might be called 'video-art', 'performance' or simply 'works'. We often find ourselves selecting the term according to the context. We are not concerned with assigning categories to what we do. Categories interest us only as a predefined set of conventions that we can use, often by undermining them.

So how did we get there? When we finished art school (BFA at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem) we wanted to create our own art platform, to be able to show our and other artists' work outside the existing art circuit which was quite limited back then in Israel and more importantly, we wanted to be independant of it. Together with two friends, Isaac Layish and Irit Garty, who graduated with us, we created a monthly TV programme that we called ARTATTACK. It showed works that were made for the singlescreen: video art, animation, short movies or documentaries. We thought of it as a gallery on television, with fixed opening hours (each episode was broadcast 8 times per month), it showed works at full, not excerpts, as well as interviews or "items" we made with the artists, to make their work more accessible (artist talk, if you wish). In order to do that we had to learn how to work with video, something we hardly did while in art school and we had to do it well, to comply with TV requirements and respect

Effi Weiss & Amir Borenstein

deadlines. We bought a camera and a mac, and the first Final Cut software (version1) and started teaching ourselves, the 4 of us. That's how we started working with moving images,

and we never stopped since. Same River Twice is our first feature length, and the first work we did with a production house (CVB - Centre Video de Bruxelles). We don't really regard it

as an evolution and it doesn't mean that from now on what we do can be called cinema. This is what this project has required and this was the only relevant consideration.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Same River Twice?

Same River Twice started from a gap. First of all a spatial gap that has been opened when we left our homeland, Israel, in 2002. The new distance gave us a new perspective on our country and we found ourselves more an more interested in this very distance, in the possibilty to think about this place, to imagine it, to relate to it without actually being there. It made us think about the mythological, 2000years-old status of this country as an imaginedplace, a place that throughout the Jewish history, starting from Abraham the Patriarch, existed first of all as an idea, a dream-place rather than a real one. And most of all we got interested in the attempts to realise this dream. For years this tension became the

focus of our work, and we often were inspired by events where this tension has been manifested, such as the failed attampt of a great Rabbi from Vilnius to go to the holyland, or the Zeppelin flight to Palestine, which hovered above the land without actually touching the ground. With time, we realised that we find this tension so attractive because we think it unconciously persists within the actual concretized Israel of today.

In the context of this pre-Israeli-state obsession we read many books by travelers who actually experienced this confrontation of the imagined with the real, John McGregor was one of them and immediately we knew we would like to do something with his journey along the Jordan River. Still, years have passed until one day this thought came to us, so

In your Director's statement, you say "We are interested in how things are told and perceived -as this is what ultimately shapes our identity and the reality we live in.". We find fascinating this concept, there is very much in keeping with Straub & Huillet's approach to documentary filmmaking. Can you introduce our readers to this idea behind Same River Twice?

simple and obvious: We just have to re-make this journey. Same path,140 years later.

It took us another year and a half to realise that we should be the travaerlers of this journey and not somebody else, and that our specific status of "Israelis who left" (that have "descended", like the Hebrew common term to designate emigration from Israel, and by the way, the meaning of the name Jordan, the river we follow in the film, is actually "the descending") will have such an importance. To the notion of vacation and the touristic backdrop of the film we have arrived only after the first very brief scouting trip, when we actually saw the dimensions of the tourism industry there, and we were amazed by how revealing and full of significance every element of it was.

When we say we are interested in how things are told and preceived and that this is what ultimately shapes our reality, we mean as opposed to facts. We all constantly use filters of beliefs and guiding narratives while looking at the world. We all are constantly re-telling our lives and our reality, first and foremost to ourselves, and our stories quickly, or rather instantly, replace reality itself and consequently change the reality that follows.

In a way, this is why this film is not at all a documentary (as much as any documentary is not a documentary). It is a construct and it is important for us to point at it. To be more specific with regards to Same River Twice, the perceived and the told in this case is a piece of land that is called Israel, Palestine, The Holy Land. In the film we always try to show it through filters, be it maps, signs, environmental designs that direct the gaze and frame the landscape, paintings... And we were very careful not to give information about this place or to seek any kind of non-existing truth, but to try and grasp what this place mean to people, what role it plays in their identity, by letting them tell it the way they want. So it is all about representation, without forgetting that we too are busy doing it. And this was a big question for us, how can we deconstruct those layers of representation if we are creating a new one ourselves? The least we can do is to expose ourselves and the mechanism of the representation that we are using as the makers of this film. This is why we are in it, our hands enter the frame, the zoom clicks, the framing is commented, the manipulation is out there, in the open.

This preference of the how over the what, is probably also due to our visual-arts background (or vice versa). If in cinema, as it was shaped slowly and steadily by Hollywood industry, everything is about the story, for us the story is of little importance and everything is about the telling (which implies also nottelling, showing as well as not-showing).

The story of John McGregor is incredible.

When did you get in contact with his biography for the first time?

McGregor is a fascinating character, but he's also quite a typical one. A 19th century nobleman, sportsman and adventuror, a protestant.

A self proclaimed explorer who believes both in God and the Western ideals of progress, knowledge and civilzation. His travelog "The Rob Roy on The Jordan" was in Effi's father library more or less since its publication in Hebrew, in 1982. As a child Effi was already intrigued by the book and was attracted to its drawings that depicted her own country but as a wild, virgin place, full of un-knowns. But we only read the book, both of us, after we left Israel. An important detail about the book is that it was published by the publishing house of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, as part of a larger series of books by travelers to Palestine in earlier centuries. It made a perfect sens to us that this seemingly innocent and absolutely charming book would be published by the Ministry of Defense. We had a strong feeling that it serves the Israeli prevailing zionist ideology and through a lot of reading of various studies we could eventually formulate the thread that passes from the occidental practice of exploration, mapping and capturing geography, through that of the zionist moral obligation of getting to know the land through ones feet (and by this means to become the son of the land, and its master), to the presentday Israeli vacationeer on the Jordan.

How long was the project? What was the most challenging thing about making this film?

From the first idea of making a film till its completion, three and a half years.

The overall challange was to translate our ideas which were rather theoretical into visual language and cinematographic means. This film does't tell a story, it is not about a situation, neither it is a portrait of a society, it is about certain ideas. We knew we wouldn't like to tell these ideas, we wanted them to emerge, to become present through the images, through the framing, through what other people say, but also through the things that are never pronounced.

Then, on the practical level, all the stages were challenging. It was difficult to analyse our initial fascination and to put it into clear

words. It was difficult (and not very successful) to finance it. The filming was extremely hard and the editing full of doubts and frustrations... and it was a great challange to get to an edit where every shot matters and is there for a reason. But the most challenging thing was probably to keep our mind focused and our spirit tuned while being simultaneously the directors, cameramen, soundmen, production managers, assistants and protagonists, and to keep this up during 5 intensive weeks of daily shooting. And indeed at the third week we faced a real crisis. We felt like we were chasing the film we have imagined and of course couldn't find it, we were on the verge of giving it up and going home. This was an important crisis, albeit painful, because the way out of it was to make

an interior paradigm shift in the way we perceived the film making. We decided to forget about the film and to concentrate on the journey and to trust ourselves that the film will come along. It has saved our mental health, and probably made the film what it is.

From the first time we watched Same River Twice we were astonished by your sapient use of temps mort reminding us of the films of the Czechoslovak New Wave.

That gives the viewer a strong sense of emptiness, rather than the manipulative approach of most Hollywood productions.

How did you develop your story-telling style?

Most of the formal decisions were taken prior to the shooting, and some became clear along the way, during the shooting itself. We were discussing for weeks every detail and aspect of the film, before we could start filming it. We knew that this experience and our emotional involvement can get completely overwhelming, and there will be no external eye to remind us to get back on the track or to stick to our initial intentions. So we had to give ourselves very strict guidelines. For example, that there will be no landscape shot free of human intervention (or traces of this intervention), or no shot of a person that omits the geographical context. The geography of the journey was determining. In our minds we divided the journey and the film into three parts, according the geography. The first part, the

sources of the Jordan, is not a continuos path, we wanted to visit different spots in this area and this part of the film is fragmented like our journey, the encounters are brief, the coherency is not yet cristalysed, the spectator is given different elements which they need to put together by themselves. Then the main part is the voyage on the river, it is more of a flow, the elements come together like the different streams that form the river, the encounters are longer, we dive-in. The third part of the journey is mountainous and rather dry, the vegetation is more rare, there's no shade, and thus no tourism. In this part we knew we will be alone, away from "our people". We shot there some beautiful scenes but in the editing we skipped this part altogether, the end shot is the only one that we

kept from it. One of the main issues to define was our status as characters in the film, or our mode of action. Who we are as fimmakers and who we are as protagonists, how do we make this double-role apparant and how do we problematize it without becoming the film's center of attention. Finding the solutions and developping the style was a process of adopting devices we have already used in previous works we made, while redefining them conceptually. Meaning, defining their role and meaning in the context of this specific film. One of these devices, for example, is our short conversations behind the camera, they have an ambivalent status between a voiceover and a dialogue, between staged and spontaneous. They have of course the role of bringing in some thoughts that couldn't be

with very few casual sentences behind the camera, the landscape is charged with a new meaning, it can no longer be seen as a few seconds ago.

Same River Twice has aroused great interest in the festival scene. How did your experience making that film, and its subsequent success on the festival circuit, influence the way you approached this project?

There's a huge gap between making a film and showing it. Especially when dealing with such a personal film. When we finished it we had no idea if anybody would even like to watch it, we had no distance at all and could hardly believe that this long sequence of shots actually makes sens. So of course, when festivals select it, when people from different places and different backgrounds appreciate it, and when they clearly do so because of its cinematic qualities and not because they have an interest in the subject, yes, you start to gain confidence in what you have just done, you start seeing it through the public's eyes and we must say it was very rewarding.

So listening to the public, hearing their comments, answering their questions, and moreover, receiving many emails from spectators who wanted to express their appreciation or to share their thoughts and related experiences, is in a way a long process of detachment, of letting go of your film, and accepting it as a film. A film that lives without you, despite you. And it's a fascinating process of discovery. You learn how versatile a film can be, depending on the spectator who watches it. introduced otherwise, but conceptually they are an act of putting a layer of text (i.e. meaning) on top of a landscape (or an image) and thus changing the perception of what one sees there. This actually already happens in the very first scene of the film, like a declaration of intent. It's a one-shot scene that starts with a wide view of a landscape, the jordan valley as seen from the top of a mountain, near the border with Lebanon. Then we hear the sound of an sms followed by Effi's voice outside the frame telling Amir what message she has received "Welcome to Lebanon", this message is probably as close as she will ever get to actually being in Lebanon.

Amir on the other hand, didn't receive an sms, because he has an Israeli SIM card, while Effi has a Belgian one. He is not welcome. Thus,

Did any specific director appeal to you?

When we saw Same River Twice we immediately thought of Jean Rouch...

Here it is maybe the time to confess, with not much pride, that we didn't know Straub & Huillet's work while we were working on Same River Twice. We actually only started hearing their names as a refernce to our own work when we showed to different people much more recent footage, of the film we are working on these days... So we find it quite amazing that you could identify this apparently strong connection already in Same River Twice! As for Jean Rouch, we of course never thought of our film in anthropological terms, probably because we see ourselves as part of the "group" that is researched there, and because we clearly have a point of view and

opinions we hope we express with this film, even if we do it in an indirect way. We didn't have a specific director in mind, but we did watch plenty of road-movies in the writing phase. Each of them taught us something, and many helped us just defining better what we would not like to do. We think that the ones that were especially helpful were Robert Kramer's Route One USA which is based on what seems to be random encounters and whose main character is coming back to the US after several years abroad, Sherman's March

by Ross McElwee which mixes brilliantly a historical path and a personal quest, and maybe also Andre Douglas's Searching for the wrong eyed Jesus, which has lots of floating shots, staged scenes and is also concerned with telling a place through myths and beliefs.

It could be considered a specious question, indeed, nonetheless we have to ask you: does your art change people's behavior?

Do you aim to create a sort of "micropolitical" artistic act reawaking in the spectator the awareness of his perception mechanisms and models?

It is definitely not the initial motivation, or what pushes us to do what we are doing, but it will be dishonest to say that we don't secretly hope that our work will change something in the spectator's perception, or awaken a certain awareness. After all, this is the sort of art we like to be the spectators of. An artwork that leaves us completely unchanged really makes us wonder why was it made in the first place.

And you are right, we often like to think of our works as "acts" and these acts aim to interfere, although we usually use quite subtle means, with an exisiting order of things, set of beliefs or common opinions. This startegy demands a lot from the spectator and it carries the risk of being misunderstood, or even of falling apart, if the spectator sticks to the level of the "plot".

But if the spectator comes along and follow the journey, we know by now - from the many reactions we've got - they probably end it different than they started.

Thanks for sharing your time, Effi & Amir, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for you?

Have you a particular film in mind?

Same River Twice was completed in early 2013.

Since then we have made two shorter films The Vanishing Vanishing-Point (28') and Mnemonic Gymnastics (16'). We would be

happy to talk about them but it is more exciting to talk about future plans. Our next one, on which we've been working more or less since two years, is temporarily called House Warming, and it is shot in empty unfinished houses in Albania. Houses that we, as filmmakers and protagonists invade in order to occupy their emptiness. In doing so

we are using three symbolic but missing objects: chair, table and bed. The text of the film, which consists of iso-polyphony songs especially written for the film by an Albanian poet, and monologues cited by locals in a rather Brechtien style, are based on interviews we have conducted in Albania regarding our presumed immigration to this

country. It is a film that wants to propose a movement in the opposite direction. From the full to the empty, from excess to lack. In any case, we are having a wonderful time making it.

It was our pleasure to answer your questions.

Thank you so much.

Lenka KuricovĂĄ Who wants to belong in my country? (longer version)

leaching of nationalist tendencies in everyday life, without realizing it.

*nation, state, home, father, role-model, upbringing, game, politics, discrimination, absurdity The nation is one of the most successful social constructs in mankind history. Nationality is one of the most basic identifiers of modern society.

The video Who wants to belong in my country? is part of same-named series, dealing with private nationalism, racism and discrimination. The phrase private nationalism is interesting and relatively new concept. It does not address to an established perception of nationalism as a political drama, the phrase rather refers to the natural process of

The project analyzes the illusion of "normalcy", or the nature of national identity, which take a stand at a young age by listening to ideological stereotypes in a family environment. This piece is talking trough absurd situation of adults playing childish selective game, which refers to the stereotypes we learn to believe in childhood. Seemingly innocent comments like "You're as stingy as Jew" or "dirty as Gypsy " are very latent form of naturalized definition of particular group and leads to the division into "us" and "them." The problem of private nationalism is currently raising in Europe, as is€rising the power of nationalist political parties.

and

Michal HuĹĄtaty

The game here is not presented as an innocent form of entertainment, but as a tool to raise a child, shaping his character and developing his intellectual skills. The game is an important tool of nonviolent influence and educational leadership. In many games, like in the one in the video, there are elements of power, which seem to be like pulled out of political strife or war situations and are metaphorisation of reality. They often create a space for the emergence of the negative patterns of behavior and discrimination in the group.

In this particular game is clearly recognizable the principle of discrimination. Artificial construct adults playing selective child's game directly speaks about the absurdity of the situation, the absurdity of the stereotypes and prejudices, which

we carry with us since childhood, and which are cyclically repeated over and over again in our society. The conditions imposed in the video have nationalistic character and almost always are abstract - example: Who wants to belong to my country, has to hate all Gypsies!. Thus, they are not easily demonstrable, creating a space for lying and adapt to the majority group. Changing roles of children and adults in the game represents mirroring and overlapping of roles in the real world, where children repeat after adults and adults behave often unreasonable as children.

Daniel CortĂŠs

An interview with

Lenka Kuricová and Michal Huštaty In an age in which globalisation impinges on every aspect of our lives, video artist Lenka Kuricová and Michal Huštaty uses their art to explore the themes of national identity, discrimination and social stereotypes. Embracing the aestethics of visual clarity, their short films feature static figures, wide angles reminds us of Pier Paolo Pasolini's imagery. We are glad to present their film "Who wants to belong in my country?" for this Videofocus Edition. Lenka and Michal, how did you get started in experimental cinema?

M+L: We got to know each other at the academy, four years ago. We both studied in Ilona Nemeth's Studio IN at Academy of fine arts and design in Bratislava. In this studio is medium of video very encouraged, so that is how it all started. Every piece of work is experimental in the beginning, not only cinema ☺. Video is just one of many mediums, which can be used for artpiece, but for us the most important part is the idea, the concept. Then we can decide if video suits as the best choice. And it seems that very often it does work for us.

Defining your artistic vision, we daresay that your personal experience is your main source for your works, even when they face political or sociological themes. Where do you get the ideas for your work?

M+L: Most of them have origin in our homes and surroundings. It is true that we very much use our own personal experience and also we present our own political attitude to issues we are working with. So it may sound a bit like a cliché, but we get ideas from all around us. Of course, it depends on where you grow up, where you live, what you study, what kind of people you know, everything is interconnected and we are happy that we care about things as human rights, politics and everything that has do with life and living.

And maybe for artist the best inspiration is art

Lenka Kuricová and Michal Huštaty

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Who wants to belong in my country?

L: Well, it is quite long story. It all goes back to our first collaboration, The machine, social

sculpture performance where we used the child game as an inspiration for the first time.

When the topic of nationalism started to be very important, in whole Europe nationalistic parties are getting more votes and in Slovakia the main nationalistic party has been elected for city council as well, we discussed it a€lot in

our studio and it became the project called Private nationalism. We took this word private and analyzed what nationalism or patriotism means for us personally, how do we feel about being a€part of particular€nation or state, and how these opinions are created. Obviously, most of your opinions about world and politics

are created at home, influenced by parents mostly, and at elementary school during childhood years. Seemingly innocent comments that u can hear at home or school like "You're as stingy as Jew" or "dirty as Gypsy " are very latent form of naturalized definition of particular group and leads to the division into "us" and "them." So we decided to work with children, we made big research about how kids today think about having certain nationality and how they perceive discrimination in early age. We used child game again here, but the game here is not presented as an innocent form of entertainment, but as a tool to raise a child, shaping his character and developing his intellectual skills. The game is an important tool of nonviolent influence and educational leadership. In many games, like in the one in the video, there are elements of power, which seem to be like pulled out of political strife or war situations and are metaphorisation of reality. They often create space for the emergence of the negative patterns of behavior and discrimination in the group. We decided to raise up the absurdity and play the game ourselves with adults, still referring to childish behavior and not letting go of stereotypical opinions we get in childhood.

The project analyzes the illusion of "normalcy", or the nature of national identity, discrimination and racism, all the issues connected with nationalistic thinking.

It could be considered a specious question, indeed, nonetheless we have to ask you: does your art change people's behavior? Do you aim at creating a sort of "micropolitical" artistic act reawaking in the spectator the awareness of his perception mechanisms and models?

M: This is a difficult question. In some nuanced way of course, yes. I like the postmodern philosophy, that there isn’t just one truth, only one right way and that all depends on context. And even small things can influence anything in big measure. In art it is important to work with symbols and have almost everything under control and be aware of meanings and impact you can make as an artist, creator. So i find the term micropolitical really interesting and it rings true in our case, I think.

L: But we would love to achieve that kind of a result. I think that the one of the most important purpose of political concept art is to show the issues in other way, to talk about them in universal artistic language. But today sometimes

people doesn´t notice stuff that is basically in their face, not to mention artistic activism. Not only we would love to awake the spectators and make them think about society more, but our work also help us to know society and ourselves better. We don´t judge, I think we are as bad and as irresponsible as any other person, but it is important to realize what´s up and not ignore the problem.

You are multidisciplinary artists. What artistic media do you prefer to work in and there any that you don’t like to use?

L: Usually we work with video but we have also done intervention to public space or performance. Also we each work on our own projects as well, installation, sound or photography.

There is no media i would hate to use, but unfortunately i´m not so good with digital media, therefore they don´t appear in my works, although would be great to learn to work more interacteve software.

M: I am not trying to prefer one to another, as I said previously, it is important that the chosen medium is supporting your idea, your concept. But what I like the most both as an artist/performer and as a spectator is maybe performance, because it is live, and you really can feel the presence of something.

And also I like idea, that art doesn’t still have to be object or commodity.

We have been impressed with your minimalist shooting style. The recurrent use of

static shots marked by barely perceivable inner movements à la Bela Tarr highlight the dualism between movement and fixation, figures in your films seems to be physically 'prisoner' of social convention. Could you introduce our readers to this concept characterizing your work?

M+L: Thank you very much. We still think that visual aspect of video could be much better.

We like simple things, and simplicity is important in case you want let the idea come more easily through. In our works we usually predefine just part of it, for example here, there were rules for the "game" and there was a strictly determined area where to play.

We always keep some space for improvisation and experiment we could say. Incidental inter-

action of performers is always very important for our work. As we have said before, idea is always the most important, so we don´t need any distractions with some kind of film effects that add nothing to the concept.

How did you develop your visual style?

M+L: We have been working together for three years and we don’t even think about vi-

sual style as one of our symbolic traits. It is not important to us to have some exact artistic style from visual point of view, maybe more in themes, or in our political conviction. So if we produced some manifest, it would be just a statement on our opinions, not on our art form.

Thanks for sharing your time, Lenka and Michal, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for you?

Have you a particular film in mind?

M: Thank you so much for this space and opportunity. Our cooperation will be a bit complicated now, because I live for some time in Luxembourg and Lenka is in Portugal.

But we have in our minds set on one concept, again a videowork and again political topic.

For now we are looking for some grants and support for it to happen. I am in my last year at school, Lenka has one more year to finish it.

We will see what will happen after that. Wish you the best, too.

Staetement

I work with video, 3D graphics, photography, and objects. My current interests span disaster, technology, institution, knowledge, and serendipity in the daily life. Most of my works, regardless of medium and subject, are rooted in virtuality. I see my practice as constructing alternative worlds, and the work, be it a photo or a video, is a segment of that world. With an academic background in literature and

filmmaking, my work often has a loose sense of narrative, but sometimes I also consciously work against the traditions of storytelling.

Metropolitan Triangle Garden is an attempt to engage our cultural heritage and exploit a piece of high-�end 3D animation software in an alternative way. In a semi-�photorealistic gallery room of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 3D models of the sculptures go through misused simulation processes. Some of them morph into forms that defy their material quality or gravity,

Rui Hu and other deform into abstract triangulated shapes that reveal their CG nature. These effects are something neither museum guards nor commercial VFX studios would like to see in their own professional contexts. In the virtual world, the 3D model is a character, a piece of sculpture, and digital data all at the same time.

These sculptures were created with care and mastery, treasured in its time, broken and tossed in historical turmoil, and then preserved and admired again. The original delicacy and the torment of time combined create a new

sensibility. The viewers experience them along with the digital glitches that distort the sculptures – or the human and animal bodies. It becomes a visual orchestra of cultural objects and living beings losing their individual identities and merging with each other in the timeless virtual space.

Rui Hu

An interview with

Rui Hu We have been impressed by the way you are able to explore in your video work Metropolitan Triangle Garden the physical and the virtual worlds of your subjects: how did you come up with the idea for this 3d animation?

The idea probably came from a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of Classical sculptures at the Greek and Roman galleries. The sculptures there were a combination of classical beauty and the aesthetics of the broken. They were created with care and mastery, treasured in their time, broken and tossed during historical turmoil, and then preserved and admired again. The original delicacy and the torment of time – shown through the missing or broken body parts – combined to create a new sensibility. I had been working with 3D animated video and want to recreate something resemble that kind of sensibility in the virtual 3D world. I wanted to put these sculptures in the digital world and break and re-emerge them again and see what I can get. That was how I got the idea. Later I realize another layer of the idea: in the virtual 3D world, I not only can break the sculptures, but also the system that is used to manipulate them, i.e. the animation software, as well.

As you say in your statement, museum guards or commercial VFX studios never would want to see in their own professional contexts the effect used in Metropolitan Triangle Garden: in this sense, your work is an absolutely unique experience for the viewer. What is the audience's feedback to your video?

Many of the effects are glitches, or misused simulation processes. They are created by ways that would probably be considered wrong by a professional visual effects studio. One process breaks a solid sculpture into a pile of broken pieces; another one turns a sculpture into liquid so that it melts and flows away. But what if I feed the liquid sculpture data back to the breaking process, so that the program tries to “break” the liquid as if it was made of solid material? It would turn into a flow of disjointed triangles. Computers usually use triangles to represent 3D shapes. After the simulation process, the models are no longer sculptures,

and the illusional image of computer data was broken. This is an example of misusing the simulation process. Doing it too much might crash the process and you get nothing but an error message, since the glitch is a product of balance; you want to do something “wrong” and cheat the computer into thinking it’s doing something correct, but not to go too far for it to quit working.

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

I have two almost opposite ways of starting a project. Usually I start with a concept as the spine of the project, and it could be something very insignificant or trivial, but somehow becomes the transformative spark. It could a line of text, a process, a reference, an image I have in my head, or a thesis that I ask myself “what if I try this.” These ideas can come from a long subway ride, misreading a sentence in a book, or a computer program crash. Then I mark them down in my note and often iterate through them until an idea is interesting enough. Metropolitan Triangle Gardenwas conceived it this way.

Sometimes I also start in a different mode when something interesting happens very sudden and handy, like when I am working on a conceived project and make a mistake during the process, and it turns into something completely unexpected. What I need to do then is recognize their potential and be able to preserve or repeat them.

We have been impressed by the balance between absence and presence in your video, which is not conceived as a classical balance, as the relationships between solids and voids in architecture for example, but a sort of coexistence between past and present in imagination and perception. We find that this aspect of you art is evident in Metropolitan Triangle Garden. How do you achieve this balance?

I guess I am very intrigued by the idea of time and how we experience it in so many different ways. You can feel that you had a long dream while at the same time feel the sleep was very short. I studied film at school but wasn’t very interested in the linear, one-directional treatment of time in traditional filmmaking.

The term “time-based media” is very ambiguous to me and sometimes I feel that it is misleading, because although the medium is time-based, the content doesn’t have to

Rui Hu

represent the passage of time. On the contrary, it can be about a constant state of motion that feels timeless.

Although Metropolitan Triangle Gardenadapted the form of a film or a video, to

me it doesn’t necessarily have to distinguish between past and present. Beginning and end in this sense are not much different than left and right in the special dimensions. What the work could be about is a state or a condition, and the potential of what the current state can

evolve into. In the virtual world, each of the 3D models is a character, a piece of sculpture, and digital data, all at the same time. The originally static sculptures can evolve into many different states under the digital impact and change their original characteristics, so I was

trying to focus on exploring what these new characteristics can be and not think too much about the order of time.

But as human beings, admittedly we normally experience time in the linear, one-directional

way, so when we face a time-based work we often try to make sense of it in terms of what happened before and what comes after. So I guess this contrast between the viewers’ expectation of a sequential flow of time and my attempt to work against it created this conflicted overlap between past and presence, which is very interesting.

In your refined video we can recognize a simple at the same time masterly work of animation: what kind of technology have you used in producing it?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has been experimenting with turning their sculptures into digital 3D models using 3D scanning technology. Some of them can be downloaded from the web, and I also did some scanning myself. What we used is an online program called 123d Catch. Using this program is quite simple but takes some time. It allows users to take twenty to thirty some photos around an object and make them into a 3D model of the object.

For the animation, I use a 3D program called Houdini. It isn’t a popular program but very well known in the professional visual effect industry. Unlike many other 3D programs such as Maya, Houdini’s strength is not creating the actual 3D model and animating it by hand.

What it is good at is making special effects based on simulation, such as explosion, collapse, fire, water, etc. What I particularly like is its node-based workflow. Unlike many other programs where each previous instruction has to be committed before moving on to the next one, which is very linear and not very flexible, in Houdini each instruction is a node within a network, and I can easily navigate through different nodes to experiment with different outcomes before deciding which one I like.

We find that your art is rich of references.

Apart from artworks you show in your video, can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

Visually, the one that came to mind is Giorgio de Chirico, especially his early work depicting the Italian towns, some of which also have Classical sculptures. There was a great sense of timeless mystery and solitude in those paintings. Conceptually I am very into Hans

Haacke, especially his work that involves kinetic systems or processes such as Blue Sailand Condensation Cube, both of which have a mesmerizing effect on me. I also admire the work of many artists who has been working with 3D graphics and glitch, such as Jennifer Steinkamp, Claudia Hart, Rosa Menkman, and David O’Reilly.

What's next for you, Rui? Have you a particular project in mind?

Currently I am working on some small-scale projects in various different media, including found-footage video, digital collage, and installation. On the technical side, I am taking

a dive into the interactive 3D graphics world and will see if a project idea emerges during this process. These will probably keep me busy for a while.

Benjamin Glas An artist's statement "The presented piece is a wonderful relic of my studies in contemporary media. This piece came into being during a time of great introspection and learning; the learning to simply experience and feel fleeting moments, no matter what emotional value they hold, in the everyday mundane. The idea that our generation and various cultures are all moving towards a seemingly "rational" take on

the everyday, while moving away from an overall perception of empirical phenomenon, is a growing theme for my artistic practice and lifestyle.

Just as happy instances occur in daily living, these also seem to take place when the artistic process and documentation of it all is running its course.

The subject of the film is truly unimportant (His name is Charlie and I've received more knowledge from him than I can truly recall) The importance

A still from Making The Time To

lies within the process of making this short piece.

What started off as a strongly choreographed interview, controlled and crippled by myself, ended up becoming, in my mind, scratch footage for later experimentations. These later experiments came to be a strong focal point when I began reading and interpreting the works of Marshal McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard in regards to new media and their effects on art and subsequently the masses who view, or don't view them. Using a strictly

structuralist mindset I began metaphorically creating screens that differed, perhaps only in time and compositional placement, from the original clip; which was to be seen as the initial simulacrum. At some point, I truly can't recall when, this process became intuitive, rhythmical and even deconstructed."

Benjamin Glas

An interview with

Benjamin Glas Benjamin Glas-Hochstettler manipulates the boundary of perception and release it from its most primitive parameters in its search for physiological sensations.

Inspired by the essays of Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard, his film Making The Time (to) uses a structuralist approach.

Ben, we want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for "Making The Time (to)"?

The creation of this piece was purely experimental and a happy synchronicity! This piece of work is essentially a relic of the results of some experimentations I was undertaking in a video class. The idea itself came from an interview I was shooting for a completely different purpose. When I was reviewing the substance of the interview I was feeling very serene, very at peace due to some external circumstances. Through watching the initial clips with all of its humor and nuances, I began to see a pattern that I had never observed before- the Mundane in all of its nature and neutrality, a contrast to superstimulation. This idea of superstimulation I think is a key inspiration as of now. With contemporary media, be it news or Hollywood cinema, it is easy to fall into a rhythm of only having a basic awareness for "highlight" moments and to simply disregard or even fail to see a given mundane event, which is the contrast. To me the ability to accept the mundane in the midst of all of these technological and cultural advances our society makes is a real gift, and is not to be squandered.

On that note I began to technically dissect, with the help of editing tools and processes, small pockets of time that held moments of laughter, confusion and a seemingly banal tone. I found it romantic to make a piece of art about something I had otherwise overlooked in my fastbrainRIGHTNOW youth. The act of slowing down, taking in the moment and having no true expectation of what the

outcome was going to look like, or even how the work was to be presented struck me very hard. I felt I had to dig deeper and let go even more ground. A structuralist mindset definitely helped with this goal. The editing process was baby-bottom smooth and all details and loops and occurrences simply found their place in the overall composition.

Your work reveals a remarkable effort to get under the skin of film like psychologists investigates the subconscious dimension: how did you get started in experimental cinema?

Thank you kindly. I began my learning journey in experimental video, sound and cinema about 3 years ago. I was coming from a place of unawareness, a place of apathy. Through a leap of faith and courage I found myself removed from external obstacles and with more free time than I could shake a stick at. So I began reading art books to fill the time and found myself in love with moving images, no matter how simple or complex. When I was first introduced to editing software I saw the possibilities of new media and the message a moving image could convey at the tip of a hat.

The collective works of Bill Viola, Nam June Paik and John Baldessari's video works introduced the concept of simplicity. From there on out I was fueled with ideas and inspiration to go on further. I have yet to truly regret it. I have also found that making art in general is very therapeutic and forces me to reckon with myself and my subconscious. My gears started turning and have never stopped since.

In your refined film we can recognize a a masterly work of editing: what kind of technology have you used in producing it?

Thank you again. I used a Rebel T-9 camera to shoot the interview and Final Cut Pro for the rest of the work. The editing process in this case carried the heaviest load. I typically don't put too much emphasis on the technology used. Most work that I end up creating is a direct result of not being prepared, or when I get out of my own way. I know I can't plan any results as an artist, yet I can surely put in the effort...That typically happens within the editing process.

Can you introduce our readers to the concepts of Marshall McLuhan and Jean

Benjamin Glas

A still from Making The Time To

Baudrillard that have so deeply influenced your art research?

In regards to McLuhan's writing; the extension of mankind's self and an awareness of media are key here. McLuhan thoughtfully dissected different forms of media used in our everyday communication with gusto.

What struck me as important was the concept of medias residing and functioning within other medias. In his book "Understanding Media" he takes time itself and the

construction of human made parameters to be a media that humans function within and depend on dearly.

With that in mind, and after I had experimented with the initial results of time based collages in "Making The Time (to)", I began using this idea of "time as media" to bring a simple awareness to the passing of time itself. In the video a man, named Charlie, is laughing at something banal we were talking about in the studio during filming. To me that laughter is itself a media, without a true

reason, within the human parameters of McLuhan's take on time and how we as humans perceive it. Retrospectively and introspectively- the naming convention of this piece is a tribute to the act of slowing down and reframing this mundane moment between two humans. (Maybe there was something I missed?...There always is!)

Baudrillard prompted a response of a different nature for me; a more loose and symbolic take at best.

One of the ideas I always take from his writing is the honesty and violence that an image may hold, the story it tells and the emotion it sells.

Through reading and inhaling Baudrillard's work it has become quite clear to me that "art acts as the punctuation of reality's sentences".

Also there's always something to be said about simulacra and simulation when talking about digitally created and rendered artwork.

And there's definitely a relationship between simulacra and "MTT(t)". The act of duplicating and processing these different clips in time, for

A still from Making The Time To

A still from Making The Time To

me, points to a well rehearsed global conversation regarding awareness of the moment and the act of being present with it while it inevitably passes into the next. With this particular piece I hoped to visually and sonically narrow moments to a point of awareness by restricting the range of visual information.

You want to make the perceptual process the subject of his films by emphasizing the medium's material form: the Gestalt

theories by Rudolph Arnheim are fundamental for your vision. You eschew traditional storytelling and opt instead for an associative methodology. Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

I typically start from a literal statement.

Perhaps it's something I read, or an advert I experience, or some other mundane event that happens in public. When it comes to actually

sitting down and undertaking an experiment, the process always looks a bit different.

Sure, I have some preset modes to beginning the editing process, some older artists who I aim to shoulderstand on and a result that I truly want to plan and fulfill.

Typically it all starts when I give up trying to plan the result of a piece and just put in the effort to explore different forms of representation of ideas.

When thinking about abstract narratives and the use of Arnheim's theories, I am trying to find a link to the present moment and a sort of gift to the viewer and myself. Now, the tricky part is that I surely don't know what it's supposed to look like, this gift. Simple visual illusions, slowly fading over time and careful sound curation and composition are all a part of this process. Above all of the aforementioned techniques comes the idea of meditation through repetition. In terms of Gestalt theory, I find the process of repeating

A still from Making The Time To

an image or a sound over and over again gives the audience, and of course myself, more and more opportunities to examine and observe, to sit with and analyze an event that may be overlooked in other circumstances. I am careful to not claim an objective outcome in the majority of my videos because I feel that would be limiting to all persons involved in the act of perceiving.

From a visual and technical point of view, Making The Time (to) is a complex work .

How long does it usually take to finish a piece?

I don't think I can claim to ever have truly finished a piece. If a true finished piece could be presented, the creative process could be defined by a beginning and an end. Maybe I'm being romantic.This piece though was created in about 3 months, give or take. Visually it may be complex, but my leaning on a structuralist setup made the editing process quite simple.

For other projects it depends on what idea and

how expansive it is in the present moment, or technology I'm working with at the time. Alsolife happens at life's own rate. That's something I am learning more and more.

Thanks for sharing your time, Ben, we wish you all the best with your artistic career. What's next for Ben Glas?

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present my work. As of now I am working on a sonic release for a local record label

(http://blnkstrs.com/, and attending school at PNCA in the Pacific Northwest for Video and Sound. More contemporarily I have come into contact and have joined a wonderful and awe inspiring collective in Amsterdam by name of INK/ In Naam Der Kunst (cargocollective.com/innaamderkunst). Not sure what will come next, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm certain though that there is more to learn and always will be.

An artist's statement On one side, a cow is happily displayed with bits and pieces which transforms it into a grotesque puppet, becoming too heavy to stand upright.

On the other side, a corporate video promotes its high quality, latest milking machine. Rules and codes are well controlled for this ÂŤ milking system Âť so that it becomes a clear ongoing evolution of cow milking.

Mathilde athilde Ganancia I decided to link these two ways of handling a cow using the simple device of a handmade turnstile.

The sound is made from a sound data bank for corporate videos.

An interview with

Mathilde Ganancia Mathilde Ganancia's cinema offers a heady mix of mythology and pop culture: in her video work Genuinely double-sided she get under the skin of corporate videos, taking at heart Michelangelo Antonioni's teaching "We know that underneath the displayed image there is another -one more faithful to reality." We are pleased to present Mathilde Ganancia for this year's Edition. Mathilde, how did you get started in experimental filmmaking?

I really like the way Michelangelo constructs his films, they seem to be build like a painting, using layers of meaning and time. It is all about mixing patterns.

Concerning me, I actually come from a painting background but I have always thought of it as a way to tell a story or perform an action within a frame. Hence, time and acting have recently become great tools to work with on top of the canvas. I construct my videos in a similar way to the way I paint, they are like episodes of painting, allowing all sort of material to enter : sound, sculpture, liquids, other videos etc.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Genuinely double-sided?

I did this video while staying at the Cow House Studios, an Irish farm turned into an art residency in Enniscorthy. I was surrounded by cows, obviously, and I was charmed by their mechanical and cartoonish glaze whenever I walked by their field. They would suddenly all stop and simultaneously turn their heads towards me at exactly the same speed.

Then one day, we went to this amazing annual agricultural fair where they were selling all sorts of equipment for farmers. I was fascinated by the milking machines and the way it was displayed. This elaborated system and commercial tricks to attract the client, made such a beautiful contrast with the naive imagery I had of milking a cow with one’s hands. I started looking at all these corporate videos trying to sell the newest milking machine, and they were just as good. I am

Mathilde Ganancia

extremely attracted by this kind of collision of realms, when they become palpable. Here the point of contact is where the machine actually touches the breast of the cow. But it also lies in all the meanings and shapes that bump into each other at this vey instant.

Then, one day, this image of a crazy puppet spinning on it self and crashing down under

the weight of it’s own decorations, came to my mind. It clicked spontaneously with this motif of the cow.

I couldn’t resist making it in real, right away.

The same night I went back to my studio and shot the whole thing. Everything seemed to coincide into a viable network : the painting of a cow that I had left for ages in a corner, the branch that I had brought back a month ago,

this corporate video I really liked, all this playful materials laying around next door that I had been wanting to use since I arrived…

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

This work is typical of my creative process.

I have many things in mind that don’t necessarily match together, until one new composant or image pops up and becomes a magnet to bring it all together. It suddenly creates a web of signs responding to eachother, and that needs to be adjusted more or less until it holds together. At this stage, there is no more thinking I just do things and get very excited. Then at last, I choose : sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t !

You have developed a peculiar mythology, crossing the boundaries between high and low culture reminding us of Jodorowsky: can you introduce our readers to this aspect of Genuinely double-sided?

The points where high and low culture meet is a great source for collision in many different ways, wether destructive, astonishing, unexpected, loving… I suppose it is a natural place to go to if you are looking for interesting clash.

What is amazing about Jodorowsky’s films is that he actually raises the magic that comes out of this encounter. He crosses these boundaries in a truly epic way.

In your work we can recognize a deep introspection: do you think art’s purpose is simply to provide a platform for an artist’s expression? Could art steer or even change people's behavior?

Of course, I think art can change people’s behavior : new experience is the best way to change one’s pattern of acting and art often brings up unexpected aspects of life or thoughts. The difficult balance to find is to be able to stay on a common ground while pulling a thread towards the unknown. I think it is all about opening up new spaces in one’s brain.

The most extraordinary art is for me the one which creates some emptiness which can never be spoiled by any kind of understanding : magic !

I am not interested in art only as a platform for an artist’s expression. There are plenty of platforms in society such as any language, music, clothes, dance.. and plenty of people who like to express themselves. I’m interested in art when this form of expression actually creates a sort of machine, which can then be consumed by others through their own expression. The best machines are those which

never dies, with a somehow infinite potential of energy.

Your art is rich of references. We have previously mentioned Jodorowsky, however your visual imagery seems to be closer to P.McCarthy's work. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your cinema?

I definitely love Mc Carthy’s work. The artists I look at are not necessarily those my work is directly inspired by though. Once again they are those which feed me with a bit of their energy. I look at them and it opens up some new cells in my head, allowing new ideas and

thoughts to come through, which I then use for my own stuff.

People like Sigmar Polke, Paul Thek, Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris, Martin kippenberger, John Bock, Ryan Trecartin…

In these last years we have seen that the frontier between Video Art and Cinema is growing more and more vague: do you think that this "frontier" will exists longer?

Really ? I think I’m not an expert at all in either of these fields to talk about big changes.

My feeling is more that Video Art is growing more and more and Cinema haven’t got that much influenced by it…But I don’t think that it

is a bad thing, they are each addressing different things in different ways and if they become too similar, then there will be no more possible collisions between them, only a soft melting into one another.

But I think Cinema and Video are very different experiences. Although the support is the same, one creates a space where the audience forgets itself for a while and lives different situations under the skin of various characters, while the other gives the tools to create your own space of potential experiences. Maybe one would be like falling in love while the other would be like reading a poem about love. This metaphor sounds a bit cheesy but I think this difference is actually very similar : while one cannot replace the

other, they will hopefully keep on feeding each other.

Ganancia? Have you a particular film in mind?

Thanks for sharing your time, Mathilde, we wish you all the best with your artist career. What's next for Mathilde

Thank you for giving me the opportunities to talk about all this.

Next, is probably a lot more videos mixing painting and filmmaking, more collaborations, and more experimentations always.

I recently finished a short film in collaboration with the director Margaux De Sermoise called ÂŤ Les variations Dramatiques Âť. That was a great learning experience of mixing genres, references and tastes, and especially working with actresses. The video I am making now also includes actors which made it really

stimulating. This process of inviting actors to perform in my work might not become systematic but it definitely opened up a new dimension which I am really looking forward to develop.

Mai Al Shazly An artist's statement Much of my photography works express ambiguous visual elements, trying to explore the visuallanguage of the feelings they evoke in us, by expressing the meanings it holds,such as visual language of form through the usage of vivid colors, lines, shapes,patterns and textures to create a composition that could reflect different feelings,spirituality, beauty, ugliness and impermanence everybody can

feel it in ourcontemporary life. And this how I started my abstract photography.

Alternating between abstraction and representation,I started in experimental film influenced and explore the depth of human experience,trials, body movement, resistance and even the concept of discrepancy and thethings which are opposed to one another to structural parallels between outsideand

A still from Undercurrents

inside , organic and manufactured and the natural and constructed landscape.

Institute in Cairo , Al Madina Theaterin Beirut , the 22th Salon at Cairo Opera House, the Egyptian Culture CenterRome, Italy and in Emirates Photography Exhibitionin Abu Dhabi in 2012.

Mai Al Shazly is an Egyptian photographer and visual artist born in Cairo 1985. In 2011 she started a new bodyof work and she has exhibited extensively, for instance recently in SwaneeUniversity in United States, the Goethe

Her work and researchpredominately focuses on the medium of abstract and contemporary photography. She in a honorable members atFIAP “ Federation Internationale de l’Art Photographique “2011.

An interview with

Mai Al Shazly From the first time we watched Mai Al Shazly's work, we were deeply impressed by the radical way she explores the psychological nature of the cinematic image. Her cinema reveals a highly original and consistent vision of time and space, undermining our knowledge in order to reintroduce us to the adventure of knowing. We are pleased to present Mai Al Shazly for this Videofocus Edition. Mai, how did you get started in experimental cinema?

First I would like to introduce myself to you as a visual artist and how I first started in photography then in experimental cinema and how the ways of expressing my ideas formed between static objects to moving objects.

Much of my photography works express ambiguous visual elements, trying to explore the visual language of the feelings they evoke in us, by expressing the meanings it holds, such as visual language of form through the usage of vivid colors, lines, shapes, patterns and textures to create a composition that could reflect different feelings, spirituality, beauty, ugliness and impermanence everybody can feel it in our contemporary life. And this how I started my abstract photography.

Alternating between abstraction and representation, I started in experimental film influenced and explore the depth of human experience, trials, body movement, resistance and even the concept of discrepancy and the things which are opposed to one another to structural parallels between outside and inside , organic and manufactured and the natural and constructed landscape

For this Videofocus Edition we have selected Undercurrents, a refined video installation evoking a visionary imagery reminding us of Francis Bacon's triptychs. We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for this work?

Glad I made you remember the amazing Francis Bacon’s paintings!! The black triptychs for George Dyer is my favorite.

The idea and the technical process of my video work passed through many stages, and I think the idea grown naturally out of work that I was doing before and these philosophical questions that always came to my mind. The concept of “Resistance” was one of these questions and how resistance develops from mind resistance as a human nature to body resistance.

Meanwhile, it had also a political and social perspective. From my personal point of view “attacking those who organize repellent circumstances or regimes and working on weakening their power or destroying it is what called resistance “.

And I wondered how can express this in an artwork.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner's concept of resistance is a fundamental starting point of your art research in Undercurrents. Can you introduce our readers to this idea behind your experimental film?

For me BF skinner was a role model, before I started working technically on my video I have read a lot and tried a lot to come up with the idea, I wanted to say that resistance as a repeated behavior because of “enhancement “whether positive enhancement or negative enhancement like punishment and insult and upon that we act whether we give up with some inconveniences, or resist and insist. For me boxing sandbag was the enhancement.

Mai Al Shazly

A still from Undercurrents

A still from Undercurrents

We have been impressed by your peculiar use of the two channel formula reminding us of Bacon's paintings, highlighting the psychological nature of the cinematic image and its relationship to dualism.

Could you comment this peculiar aspect of your Undercurrents?

At first my point of view was only to show

the relation between the performer and the sandbag where I should be focusing more on sandbag as an enhancement and how people can deal with.

Sometimes you will see the performer attacks, and other she talks to it as a person and that will makes you feel that there is a silent conversation between two

people, meanwhile and in some moments you will see that she is totally surrendered.

Actually all these scenes was unplanned and I was shooting behind a curtain. I did not want to confuse her but she did it very well.

After that I decided to involve the submerged underwater world in my video,

and its elongated soundscape contrasts with the sharp. And I found that the space between the two is the meeting point of resistance and non-resistance, and the whole speaks of frustration. The active aggressor is in combat with a passive enemy, confined within her frame. The calm blues of the ocean feel thwarted too; the bubbling soundtrack continuous despite the assault adjacent.

A still from Undercurrents

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

I really don’t have a particular way to work. I usually experiment and read a lot until I come up with the idea and I think I still see myself in the research and explore stage

Your art is rich of references. We have previously mentioned the Irish painter Francis Bacon, however your visual imagery seems to be closer to Douglas Gordon's video installations. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

For me the biggest influences in art are

John Baldessari (conceptual art and photography) Shirana Shahbazi (photography) Pipilotti Rist (video art) Yvonne Rainer (performance) Vito Acconci (performance) You are a multidisciplinary artist: in what manner your work as

photographer influences your video making?

Sure. The way I see, the way I frame, light, colors, geometry, all of that. But you realize that is only a part of the video making processes. It’s as important as sound. They are so many layers in video making.

A still from Undercurrents

What do you think about the contemporary art scene of Cairo, from an experimental filmmaker and wellknown photographer's point of view?

from the beginning of the revolution, artists played a significant role in the protests. Likewise, many genres of arts emerged such as street art, music, and independent cinema.

After the 2011 Egyptian revolution a new era of arts appeared that reflects new social and political environment. The revolution triggered a new public culture

Now and after more than four years the political situation became more complicated, and the art scene became not as it was when the revolution erupted.

The freedom of expressing and movement became more difficult than before. Now there are a few independent art foundations still exist, but they face some constrains.

Thanks for sharing your time, Mai, we wish you all the best with your artist

career. What's next for you? Have you a particular film in mind?

Yes, these days I am reading Camera Lucida for Roland Barthes, and I try to explore myself through re-reading images inside the book to enable me make a small performance video trying to use the camera as an active witness.

Mark Regester The House on Fire, a synopsis

The House on Fire (2014, 6 min 55 sec) is the latest collaboration between Scottish-born,

California-raised artist Mark Regester who currently lives and creates in St. Louis, Missouri and Utah-based composer, producer, musician, mad scientist, nonnon (aka Dave Madden). The House on Fire examines the religious rituals of

& nonnon American Pentecostal churches, some of which use deadly snakes, fire and even the drinking of strychnine in their services. These services often send their followers into a frenzy of dancing, fainting and speaking in tongues as the spirit

A still from The House on Fire

takes them. This video pairs black and white footage of these services with a haunting original soundtrack.

An interview with

Mark Regester Dave Madden (aka nonnon) and Mark Regester's cinema reveals a remarkable effort to explore notions of the body, identity, and the social value of both art and the media. In their latest collaboration The house on fire they uses the the rituals of American Pentecostal churches as the jumping-off point for a meditation on the relationship between sound and gesture, reminding us of Jean Rouch's cinema.

Such plot description fail to convey the true strenght of the film, however, which delights in wicked Bunuelian black and and white array of genuinely striking images and sound. Mark and Dave, could you introduce our readers to your collaboration?

Mark: Dave and I have known each other in the virtual world for many years, eventually we met in the real world and got along famously, like we’d always known each other. Dave has such a unique approach and perspective to making music, the guy’s a genius, though he would never admit it. Dave lives in Utah and I am in St. Louis, Missouri so all of our collaborations happen via email.

I create the visuals here and send them to Dave who works his mad science and creates the sonic landscapes. He then sends me the soundtrack and I add it to the visuals. The House on Fire was our third or fourth collaboration and one of my favorites. It’s much darker than what we’d done previously. I knew right away when I had finished with the visuals that Dave would enjoy sinking his teeth into it. The soundtrack he created is perfect, it’s dark, ominous and sinister. When paired with the visuals I think that it’s incredibly haunting.

Could you tell us a particular episode who has helped the birth of this project, or simply an epiphany, a sudden illumination?

Mark: I think I first took notice of these Pentecostal services after seeing the documentary The True Meaning of Pictures several years ago. I had sort of forgotten about all that until last year when I read an article about a Pentecostal pastor who died after being bitten by a poisonous snake during a church service. Right then I knew that I had the subject of my next project.

In your quest to explore the notions of body, image and sound you produce something hypnotic and memorable with this piece. How did you develop your visual style?

I think that my visual style is due mostly to my lack of formal training, that and my use of the most basic and crappy editing software.

Mark, we have been impressed with the way you explore religious rituals: your work reminds us of the films by Jean Rouch, a pioneer of cine-anthropology.

How did you get started in experimental cinema?

Mark: I am very new to experimental cinema and filmmaking in general. Art photography is what I generally do. In the summer of 2013 I did an artist residency in Steelville, Missouri, a small, rural town a couple hours outside of St. Louis. The residency culminated in a solo show at a great little gallery in the town. When I was filling out the proposal I wrote that with the photos I would take during my residency, I would also create a short film to be projected alongside my photographs. I’m not sure why I wrote that, since at that time I had exactly zero experience in making films. In retrospect, it must have been my subconscious forcing me to step outside of my comfort zone and broaden my creative thinking. Even though I panicked slightly, I was able to complete the film entitled 44 Ghosts. My good friend Brandon Johnson who makes music under the name Tridact wrote and recorded a great soundtrack for it. For a first attempt at video/filmmaking, I’m very happy with how it came out.

A still from The House on Fire

It wasn’t long after that Dave and I began creating together.

you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

How long does it usually take to finish a piece?

Mark: Music has been huge influence on me from a very early age. I never went to art school or film school or any university. I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, MTV was huge to me when it first started. I was obsessed with music videos. In high school I fell into the skateboarding/punk rock scene in Santa Barbara, California, where I discovered zine culture. This guy, John Lyons was taking these incredible photos of local and visiting punk and hardcore bands. His photographs captured the kinetic energy of a punk rock show. I wanted to do that. I tried and failed miserably. I didn’t pick up a camera again for years. Music remained a constant and the Velvet Underground led me to Warhol who taught me about appropriation, something

Mark: Not long at all. Dave and I work very quickly. Once I get an idea I usually finish shooting and editing in two or three days.

After I send Dave the visuals it’s usually another two or three days for him to work his magic. If I spend too much time on one thing I begin to second guess myself.

We have previously mentioned the French filmmaker Jean Rouch, yet Mark's black and white imagery seems to be closer to Guy Maddin's cinematography and editing style. Can

A still from The House on Fire

that has been a big part of my video work.

Reading about Boards of Canada and their recording techniques is something I think about when making videos. The way they would record tape to tape to tape etc., thus changing the quality of sound and adding new textures. Much of my video making involves filming media playing on a television or computer screen and sometimes then filming the playback of that to add new levels of distortion and texture. No Wave cinema is a big influence on me, not so much the actual films but the attitudes and methods of creating films, much in the same way DIY punk is an influence, it’s the attitude of, if you have the desire to do something, do it. Want to start a band but you don’t know how play an instrument?

Fuck it, go find a cheap guitar or keyboard or whatever and bang away on it. Want to

make a movie? Grab the closest camera and figure out how to make it do what you want it to. Also, I’m so lucky to have so many creative friends. Musicians, painters, filmmakers, playwrights, poets, DJ’s, illustrators, photographers, etc. Seeing what they’re doing inspires me and makes me excited to go make art.

Thanks for sharing your time, Mark and Dave, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for you?

Have you a particular collaboration in mind?

Mark: Thank you. Nothing set in stone at this point. I’m sure we’ll be making something new before too long.

An interview with

Dave Madden aka nonnon Dave Madden (aka nonnon) and Mark Regester's cinema reveals a remarkable effort to explore notions of the body, identity, and the social value of both art and the media. In their latest collaboration The house on fire they uses the rituals of American Pentecostal churches as the jumping-off point for a meditation on the relationship between sound and gesture, reminding us of Jean Rouch's cinema. Such plot description fail to convey the true strength of the film, however, which delights in wicked Bunuelian black and white array of genuinely striking images and sound.

Mark and Dave, could you introduce our readers to your collaboration?

Dave: My partner Internet-introduced us to each other (and our families) around 2007.

We were all Flickr and Buzznet friends who, based on our interests in the same music, politics and visual art seemed like we would have been good friends in high school – which, for a guy like me who refuses to grow up, is the starting point for a relationship.

I’ve always admired Mark’s photography and was excited to see him bring that same eye into the film world. I was really honored in late 2013 when Mark sent me a link with, “Hey, do you want to do some music for this short I’m putting together (demons & saints)?” If you haven’t watched that, it’s a collage of Lucha libre, UFO’s and Frankenstein type monsters that invade earth. I poured the same amount of disparate musical elements (hip-hop, Krautrock, Lounge, B-movie samples) into that one to keep up with the wild editing.

When I finished, I waited for Mark to either bail on what I did or never call me again.

Instead, he loved it and respected that “do what you want, I trust you” actually means that; I’ve dabbled in soundtracks since 1999, and this was one of the few times that I felt

an artistic bond with a director. And, five movies in, we haven’t looked back.

The soundscape composed by Dave for The house on fire is in the same manner as the pictures a mix of fragments, different speeds, playing directions and places. Audio has a huge importance in your works. The use of soundtrack has not a diegethical aims, but tend to sabotage the common perception mechanisms. Dave, could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

Dave: My background is an intense appreciation of post-punk, synth pop, hiphop, and then figuring out at 28 that I wanted to write proper experimental (Academic) music. Because of this, I have musical schizophrenia that manifests itself in one of three ways: something based on a beat that falls between latter Autechre and Public Enemy; electroacoustic music where I’m heavily manipulating audio in the vein of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Milton Babbitt; something in the tradition of John Cage’s use of found objects, junk instruments, or just playing an instrument the “wrong” way and the acoustic space to create an altered reality and sonic environment. All of these I tie together with my obsession of sound and how to make new things to add to our sonic universe. I’m not under any contract, so I like to alternate from month to month using that trio of directions.

When Mark sends me a project, I’m usually in the middle of messing around with a new music toy or piece of software so I have loads of recent recordings and musical snippets floating around my hard drive. I like to watch about a minute of his movies and then start flinging sounds at them, like making a big blob of clay. You know, like putting together a puzzle without knowing the end result until it’s 95% complete. It’s really interactive for me, and working minute to minute alongside the visual, the aesthetic starts to take shape. Really, with Mark’s movies, I’ve felt confidence for the first time that I’m simultaneously blending all the musical worlds I enjoy.

A still from The House on Fire

Your statement about “sabotage perception mechanisms” is certainly something always in my head when deciding “should I make this thump line up with a scene change, or do I let the viewer/listener use his own quantization?” I kind of hate when music tells you how to react during a movie, and I think the scariest, most emotional films have zero music (i.e. No Country For Old Men).

That said, I’m very excited when a soundtrack is just…cool and imaginative, such as Fight Club and There Will Be Blood.

I definitely identify with the magic and myriad styles brought to those films.

I also spent a few depressed (but not under the influence of any illicit substance) years watching movies with the sound turned down and some other music playing in the background. You know, the Wizard of Oz with Dark Side of the Moon trick? I think that changed how I thought about the coupling and interchangeability of visual elements and music.

Anyway, for The house on fire, I wanted to make something that goes against the grain of what was probably some old timey music playing in that revival house. (I may have intentionally used a quasi-African percussion bed and pan-Asian scales because 1) I know these Southern religious zealots would oppose 2) snakes are rhythmic animals 3) these scenes are straight-up voodoo.) I think of my music the way a sound designer does and love to put in sort of my own sound effects to pull the listener out of a comfort zone of predictability. So you’ll hear a modular synth going nuts with a djembe, a bowed cymbal slicing along with backwards Melotron flute and the pitch of a soothing jazz drifting out of tune while the main elements guide in a more linear fashion.

How long does it usually take to finish a piece?

Dave: With each of Mark’s movies, I’m usually watching and gathering sounds on a Friday night, shifting, processing, recording more on Saturday and finishing the mix on Sunday afternoon. As I said before, when you have the trust of your collaborator, it’s easy to stop second-guessing. I had a teacher who once worked in L.A. as a hiphop producer. He said that the more outrageous the sound, the more the MC’s

A still from The House on Fire

would love it, and that experience helped free him of the nervousness he felt being the only old white guy in the room. I personally feel obligated to be outrageous and interesting when working with Mark ha ha. I can explore as much as I want, and that makes me a speed demon in the studio.

We have previously mentioned the French filmmaker Jean Rouch, yet Mark's black and white imagery seems to be closer to Guy Maddin's cinematography and editing style. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

Dave: Michel Gondry in film, Basquiat in painting. Those two love breaking up reality

while addressing how absurd it is.

Musically, I love all the people I previously mentioned plus composers George Crumb, Penderecki, Wu-Tang Clan, The Art of Noise, Liars, Matmos and everyone who has created a distinct sound by trying something new. That too is my goal, and that’s what inspires me to keep working. I also have a love/hate opinion on technology, particularly with the barrage of tools used to produce so-called computer music. However, there is this company called Glitchmachines that makes these ridiculously neat music plug-ins that generate really fantastic, skewed results. I'm definitely inspired every time I work with those - and these are proof that every piece of software should include a

"randomize" button. Happy accidents are our friends.

Thanks for sharing your time, Mark and Dave, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for you?

Have you a particular collaboration in mind?

Dave: Who knows? Most of my visual art friends finished school, moved away, or just don’t paint anymore. I keep threatening to send Mark music and have him make psychedelic videos to accompany it (a complete reversal of how we work). I believe we both made New Year’s resolutions to keep on working together, so stay tuned.

Enrique Verdugo An artist's statement

A broken compass, where east and west lose all sense of direction, leaves the space open to the traveler, to chase the perpetuate with the vanishing moment.

There are no directions, in the battle to free the senses of all references or possessions. Toward that place to set the psychomagic act, in the search for personal alchemy.

Time infuses garments with parts of life and memories.

I believe that what creates iconic fashion is social phenomena. Fashion appears and is reinforced through the passing of time, thereby creating a style, often born from social movements or related phenomena. It amuses me how the fashion industry struggles every season of the year, year after year, attempting to reinvent itself, borrowing from social phenomena and the arts.

There is a lack of substance in this industry and its chronic reinvention, which attempts to camouflage the real core of an ethos of profit based in consumerism. True fashion comes from real people, with individual self� expression.

Time infuses garments with parts of life and memories.

Looking how time passes behind a personal garment, clothes, the possibility to recall memories, experiences, and attachments appears as a bridge to cross. Connecting our past and the world around us.

This film glimpses a metaphor about departure and emigration. What does it mean to leave behind emotional bonds and bury them in a ritual or sort of poetic act, perhaps a way to emancipate emotions.

My short film ‘Broken Compass’ was not meant to deal with any aspects of fashion. It does happen however, that the ‘noir’ aesthetic of the film is part of the narrative and coincides with the characters dressing.

I was attracted to the idea of producing a work using stop frame animation. Sometimes still images in sequences can give a bigger emphasis in nuances and describing action than can continuous footage. I think the film is quite open, because it offers the possibility of multiple interpretations.

Enrique Verdugo

An interview with

Enrique Verdugo Enrique, how did you get into experimental cinema?

As a photographer, experimentation has always been the key in developing my ideas and informing my creative process.

Time, motion and space were the main inspirations in my series of work “Body and Flux”, which sought to explore the inner connection between movement and energy that can be expressed in a still image.

Photography started to synthesise my ideas which eventually led me to work increasingly with concepts, leaving behind the “in a second” physicality of the medium.

Eventually, I became more interested in experimenting with story telling by combining genres in my personal approach to documentary films and story telling, by attempting to open other channels to relate the viewer to the films.

For me, memory and images are what remains after viewing a film. Experimenting how to associate these elements is the seductive essence of making films.

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Broken compass?

The idea for the film was born while talking to an my very good friend Ricardo Gaete, an artist mime of the physical theatre tradition, who was having difficulties with his visa status in the UK. He could see the possibilities of staying near his son Lautaro were beginning to dissolve as the immigration policies in the UK became tougher and tougher.

As he related this to me one autumn evening, his problems, emotions and his frustrations, he suddenly exclaimed, “I have been wearing this coat for the whole four years I have lived in this country. This coat is full of my experiences, good and bad. I want to bury it!”

Enrique Verdugo

After some time of sitting in silence, I suggested to him that we make a film with the coat. I felt the constellation of narratives, emotional and visual elements were there, and like a ball ready to roll.

What was the most challenging thing about making Broken compass?

I felt Broken Compass would be mainly marked by ‘time and emotions’ shaping its form in a linear narrative.

The silent film allows the viewer to focus on the characters’ presence and their gestures to convey their emotions. Broken Compass portrays a feeling of abandonment and departure and love, which at once gives all, and lets everything go.

I felt that a video camera would diminish the power of my idea, as 25 frames per second would not be necessary. I was looking to break with the logic of sequences,

I wanted the film to convey the same feeling to the viewer as it might in a comic strip format.

As I had never worked with stop frame animation before, it took me a long while to sense the pace of the film, and distil how the photographs would unfold to give the rhythm I wanted for the story. There is no common timing in the sequences, each frame was worked individually to sense its potential and accent its expression. With help from my fantastic editor Roter Su, we shaped the final form of the film.

Once the film was made, I had the privilege of collaborating with Andria Degens (Pantaleimon), with her music and influences to create the soundtrack. She developed a sound with a crescendo intensity. The resonance of the Indian harmonium instrument gave the film its final touches, fine tuning the emotionality of the scenes.

We have been impressed by your clear story telling. In Broken compass you create a time-based work that allow the viewer to abandon himself to his associations. That gives the viewer a strong sense of emptiness, rather than the manipulative approach of Hollywood productions. Can you introduce our readers to your vision of time in cinema?

I believe that any film is shaped by a conjunction of different elements, which trigger in the viewer channels of associations and experiences. Using time, the director can play with the idea that the film represents or symbolizes.

experimenting with a timing perspective, and resolved to use a synthesis of photographs for the film.

I chose to work with stop frame animation to be in control of the timing and story telling, unfolding the narrative of the film as it developed, and to emphasize the emotional content in the sequences.

We live in a hectic world that has shaped us at such speed that compromises our capacity of observation; this is tremendously present in the film industry. When a film deprives the viewer with a fast pace of storytelling, editing, etc, then the viewer loses the opportunity to relate and judge what the director intends to say, and is carried away with the ‘action’.

Personally I believe that by allowing time to exist within the elements of a film, the viewer can participate and gain a higher experience of the moving picture, giving a better understanding of the story, images and sound.

Time allows the elements composing a film to breathe.

What was the reasoning behind shooting in a desaturated palette?

Broken Compass is a story which can take place anywhere at any time, it can be recent or it can be really old. There are not many associations of time and space in the soundtrack or the visuals because I was looking for a feeling of atemporality.

has a high contrast effect, resembling the tradition of comic trips in their black and white shades.

Are you as interested in the camera as you are in the screenplay or the actors?

Black and white format has the quality of being both real and abstract, giving what is necessary for a film like this to exist. The film

Yes, the camera is my intrinsic medium relating to the image. Whether still or moving, I have a subconscious approach with camera in

of creating a film prevails over many factors, mainly financial. This reminds me of the beauty of the film “ Man with the movie camera”. This personal approach is more popular today than ever.

Stylistically, your film owes more to the surreal fantasy world of Jean Cocteau than to the expressionism of Arrabal's cinema.

Who among international artists and directors influenced your work?

Naturally I am drawn to eastern European cinema. Their way to observe and the passing of time is something that has always enchanted me. It is hard to think about directors who have influenced me, so I would rather describe the work of directors who I admire.

Andrei Tarkovsky, for the power of observation and simplicity of his films. I admire the way that he relates his vision to time, history and poetry, his view to electronic music and his approach to author cinema.

The work of David Lynch is surreal and rich in audiovisual realms, the loss of conventional storytelling is something that has always been amazing to me.

Satyajit Ray’s excellent Apu Trilogy portrays life in Bangladesh working with an amateur crew, limited budgets and mixing documentary with feature film, creating a compelling view of the country and its people, which is loaded with emotion and reality.

Thanks for sharing your time, Enrique, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Enrique Verdugo?

Have you a particular film in mind?

hand, developed after many years of experience. The camera is a natural extension of my person, and I don’t need to think that much about it as a result. I understand how it works and behaves, which allows me more freedom to focus on the actors, the story and locations etc.

I think that guerrilla filmmaking has its own signature style and comes with the proliferation of technology where the necessity

I am researching and developing ideas for a film that explores ecological issues, which are emerging in both the African and South American continents. There exists a contradiction amongst international communities who are developing a massive environmental alternative in the Sahara desert, whilst ignoring rainforest devastation in South America. I want to portray these contradictions in an experimental documentary.

A still from NÃO SÃO FAVAS, SÃO FEIJOCAS - They’re not fava beans, they’re scarlet runner beans.

T창nia Dinis

An interview with

Tânia Dinis Tânia Dinis's work focuses on the passage, duration and experience of time. Her experimental documentary titled They’re not fava beans, they’re scarlet runner beans is marked by a stunning cinematography reminding us of the atmospheres of the films by Victor Erice, in particular El Sol del Membrillo. We are pleased to present Tânia Dinis's film for this Videofocus Edition. Tânia, how did you get started in cinema?

I can only say thank you for the invitation to participate in this Videofocus Edition, as well as the relevant and interesting questions that make my movie. Thank you.

I took a degree in theater as an actress in 2006 and now I'm finishing a Masters in Contemporary Artistic Practices in the Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto, Portugal.

I work regularly as an actress in theater and cinema. But in recent years I started to develop my artistic projects exploring the universe of performance, film, video, photography and installation, often assuming an itinerant nature which were presented in Portugal, Spain, London, Chicago, Mexico, Argentina, Australia and Brazil in various institutions and festivals. I enjoy and watch a lot of movies, in particular documentaries. But it is with the creation of video performance and facilities that there is a need to create a short films. Working in a two-dimensional and three-dimensional performance schedule using during presentations to the dialogue between the analog and digital images. Between the performer and the screen. In these early projects, as is the case of my FEMALE performance and super 8 - Femmes doing integrand part of the performance, sparked up the interest in starting to post short intimateprivate moments. A shared intimacy. Then it was only continue to explore more.

Oscillating between the documentary and autobiography, They’re not fava beans, they’re scarlet runner beans deals with theIntergenerational conflict between people. We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come

Tânia Dinis

up with the idea for your experimental documentary?

I grew up and lived in my grandmother's house for many years. My childhood and adolescence was spent there. One day, my grandmother said she wanted to visit the your child's new home. We decided to do a family outing Sunday to this village. It was the whole family.

My great-uncle used to photograph these meetings. But at that time, as I was working

with super8, I decided to take the camera and record that moment, it was very important for my grandmother: The family all together. The images led me to past memories. I decide at that moment, I want to shoot my grandmother in her routine in their day to day. They’re not fava beans, they’re scarlet runner beans is my first film. In 2011 and 2013 my only concern was the registration of images and audio moments of their to day to day, their relationship with me, the days we spent

together, the passage of time in her life, in my life, in their animals in nature. Sign little moments, quirky images, that when I was a kid fascinated me, such as how to hold your hair.

Your film reveals a clean storytelling reminding us of Chantal Akerman's slow narration. That gives the viewer a strong sense of emptiness, rather than the manipulative approach of most Hollywood

productions. could you introduce our readers to this peculiar narrative style?

I think this slowness, the emptiness that you speak of, is related to the time of shooting the film, which is based on the action of my grandmother's time, the moment of my reaction of it, and the moment after, their reaction, to the image. I did not want provoke or cause any reaction. I wanted it to take its own course. In editing the film I also tried not to manipulate anything, by not using any editing strategies. So the film is practically edited almost as was filmed. I had several ideas for the audio of the film. A poem, a song or so a number of record stories from my grandmother and sounds I was recording during the three years. I tried a few things but the feeling I had, was to create a narrative that did not provide me the same feeling of the days I spent with her but still now whenever I pass by to have lunch with her. Its clarity, objectivity, intimacy, sense of humor, the relationship of grandmother and granddaughter. So I decided to show the pictures to my grandmother and without her realizing it, I recorded her reaction to the image. Which was a big surprise for me. I'm expected to say this about my movie, but I think its strength is exactly the sound relationship with the image. Giving the viewer a specific moment and a peculiar atmosphere.

You use an anemic palette of dirty greys and yellows that recall bleached out photographs or faded newspaper clippings. How did you develop your visual style?

The Super 8 support brings us to the past. For a memory. It is a device associated with the family affective universe. The Super 8 gives us have another color texture, grain, noise, very similar to old photographs that have been spent over time. Despite having help friends and family at various times, I was always alone film. Only then it would make sense to me, nothing to interfere with the environment and family atmosphere. As I wanted to record the moment, could not turn the light projectors and other accessories, So could only shoot with the light of day. So enjoyed the most to film the light of the morning and afternoon. But in reality all the routines of my grandmother take place between 5 am until 15h in the afternoon.

After going to rest and sleep in your kitchen bench. Just to have also different shades because it was filmed over the seasons,

creating very different color rhythms. When shooting in Super 8 I know I'm to give the film a sense of the past, associated with a memory but at the same time bring it to the real images, to the present and that should your story.

We find that your art is rich of references.

Besides Chantal Akerman and Victor Erice we have mentioned in this interview, can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

Thank you for telling me that my film reminds you of the work of Victor Erice and Chantal Akerman. It is an honor. They have beautiful movies. We all have, consciously or unconsciously references that influence our

work and think they are really very important for our development and growth as an artists.

We could speak of Godardยง, Jonas Mekas and many other filmmakers and artists, but in this case my concern was to register the instant moment. If I wanted to register a specific moment, I have to react immediately. I could not ask my grandmother to repeat. Then she would be representing. Uncompromising camera, without any aesthetic or cosmetic concern, but a concern for their content.

In your director's statement you say "The clash of the image with those it represented." Could you comment this fundamental concept of your cinema?

Confronting my grandmother with these pictures allowed me to have a different

perspective of how we see things. The images I shot for me has one meaning and for her it has another. She looks at things in a completely differente way. She sees things I had not seen. It was her who named the film, because it really makes you wonder if what you are seeing are fava beans or scarlet runner beans. And that made me think a lot about the issue of the image. That an image is not closed.

The memory that is associated with the image can be confronted, questioned and there may be new approaches. So then I started following-up on my work and I ended up developing an Upward Curve performance, where I worked with the photographic estate of my family. Which clashed again with photographs of my grandmother and other family members. Images then revisited by me

and presented through devices associated with a family affective universe. Providing the viewer for the first time, the ritual of viewing photos, listening to the stories of the images at the same time while they create their own images, reminiscing their past and memories.

The film is taking an interesting route at the film festivals and video art. However the first showing of the film was in Experimental Jet Set (Super 8) in the CAAA - Center for Art and Architecture Affairs and it was a performance. My projection was hanging up clothes, the same as in the movie. I put a bundle of clothes the kitchen infront of the washing rack and my grandma and I were sitting on the bench watching the movie and the rest of the family was behind us being confronted for the first time with those images. They’re not fava beans, they’re scarlet runner beans it has a more experimental side because of its intimate character at the moment. It is a fragmented captured film in a familiar universe. It is a film of love for my grandmother.

Thanks for sharing your time, Tânia, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Tânia Dinis? Have you a particular film in mind?

Well, it's impossible to stop filming my grandmother. I think I will continue to shoot(film her) forever. She is a true inspiration, with their stories, wisdom and especially the way she faces life. Her unconditional love for the countryside and for her family. But this is a project that takes time. I do not want to feel presured to create a new movie. I want to go filming and experimenting. Trying to capture the moment. Noting new memories and stories. Filming the time spent in her life and therefore in mine. And it can only be done in that way. My grandmother is not an actress. It's just my grandmother.

In the meantime, I am currently working on a new project that I hope still present this year. The work is of research and a collection of family archives. Today we find lost, abandoned or for sale, fair use, complete or incomplete files of families who for various reasons got rid of those images related to their intimate and family life. The purpose for the moment is to build one or more works. (Photos or a movie). I'm concentrating now on a trial based, on ownership of these photos and videos with stops memories in time. Revisit them, manipulating them through small narrative conflicts, moving them to other contexts as well. Reinterpret these images, see what you see and be curious of what is not seen. Multiplying memories that can be expanded in time.

Thank you for the invitation. It has been a pleasure to participate and share this with you.

Pablo Molina Children’s playground statement When I was a child I used to watch too many horror movies. These images still come to me sometimes. In my most recent appropriation video Children’s playground I used some movies I still remember as part of my childhood to go further in the themes I work like childhood, violence, death, relationships, essay film and†found footage.

In a way, Children’s playground is familiarized with two of my older videos: Outtakes (from ‘This mashed potato doesn’t even exist’) an appropriation of some footage that weren’t used in a documentary where I was cameraman, that follows the everyday life of a five year old kid and as a critic of modern life’s family in a essay film manner; and Street anal-ysis, a meditation about violence and friendship in chilean protests through some texts related to anarquist points of

Guerrero A still from Children’s playground

A still from Through the oceans of space and time I: Hey Bro 2014

view. The violence and childhood theme, gathered until it became Children’s playground.

world to join them and erradicate the adults from the face of earth.

Kids are the real deal in horror movies. People who become their victims, have to fight to the moral dilemma that they are young and inexperted and cannot be their enemies. Kids are the ultimate nemesis for adults. I read once, that kids have no moral dilemmas and they learn it as they grow, so as they are proyects of being can be anything, like inviting the whole kids of the

I decided not to mix whole scenes in a normal way, but to deconstruct them in a temporary chaotic way so it can create some kind of vertigo while watching and listening it, so every frame could be a non-linear and almost independent layer in a mash-up killer spread made by these special children.

An interview with

Pablo Molina Guerrero Pablo Molina Guerrero's pictures make us believe in their truthfulness, because he captures private moments in close-up. In his film Children's playground he explores the blurry boundaries between childhood imagery and grotesque, revealing a remarkable effort to get under the skin of the cinema.

We are glad to present his work for this Videofocus Edition. Pablo, we want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Children's playground?

Before I started I already had in mind that a lot of movies had children as the main antagonists.

Once I read a text about it as how the children were a kind of archetip of the ultimate fear for adults. And one day I dreamed about it, and I kind of like the way I dreamed it, so I started working in selecting the movies some of them I knew about and others were real surprises for me like øQuiÈn puede matar a un niÒo? (Who can kill a boy?, 1976, Narciso Ib·Òez Serrador), a spanish movie very similar to Village of the Damned. A great movie and very cryptic with these children just communicating each other with almost only laughs.††Definitely it was a dream that helped find the form. After that I started the edition.

Your sense of juxaposition give your films a playful yet utterly subversive sensibility: how did you get started in filmmaking?

I came from the drawing so the obvious was to start with hand animation. It taught me about the time and dedication you have to give to a video, and how every frame matters. After tests and one short cut I decided to move on and I started to do fictions, documentarys and experimental films. Since animation to the experimental films I started to understand the edition as the main stage of the filmmaking process, where ideas and images get together and from that crossing appears the meaning of the footage.

Defining your artistic vision, the topos of labyrinth is no doubt a starting point of your filmmaking. In Children's playground you deconstruct images in a temporary cha-

Pablo Molina Guerrero

BIO Pablo Molina Guerrero (b. ConcÛn 1989) is a chilean videomaker and audiovisual recycler.

He has made fictions, animations, documentaries, music videos and mostly appropriation videos. His work has been exhibited and screened mostly in Europe and Latin America in places like the Museo de Bellas Artes y M100 (Santiago), Bideodromo

Experimental Film and Video Festival (Bilbao), Bienal de Artes Mediales (Santiago), Jornadas de ReapropiaciÛn (MÈxico D. F.), Fesancor (Santiago), Cine Under (Buenos Aires), Cine//B Film Festival (Santiago), Festival de CreaciÛn Visual (Ecuador), Arqfilmfest (Santiago), Surdocs (Puerto Varas), The Wrong: New Digital Art Biennale, Video Raymi (Cuzco), One with a Movie Camera (Marburg), Visiones

Laterales (Santiago) and several others festivals and exhibitions. He writes in certain media about cinema, literature and culture. He is currently coordinator and one of the several directors of the collective film “Epistolario”, also is writer and co-editor of Roberto Mathews’ feature documentary “SALEIA”.

Web: https://vimeo.com/pablomolina

A still from Children’s playground

A still from Around A Statue

A still from Children’s playground

otic way, creating a a transcendent timespace continuum. Could you introduce our readers to this fundamental aspect of your cinema?

This way of making cinema that deconstructsdestroys all the time-space continuum is something I’ve just recently started to do. In a way it’s a game, an exploration of elemental characteristics of film that usually are not distorted.

Peter Tscherkassky, a filmmaker I started to admire, said that his work is a frame-by-frame creation. His idea of films and his own work really inspired me, at last for Children’s playground. Also I believe that every short or audiovisual work has to get its own form, and I try to do that in every new piece I do.

We find that your art is rich of references: while your childish imagery reminds us of Victor Erice's films, your found-footage sensibility seems to be close to Alberto Grifi's experimental works. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

I must say that Histoire(s) du cinÈma by JeanLuc Godard and Sans soleil by Chris Marker are the two biggest influences to me. Their work has the seeds I’ve been developing in every video I’ve made, sometimes it works and sometimes not. Both works are unclassifiable and really inspiring. After them I also knew and like the films of Matthias M¸ller and Christoph Girardet, Peter Tscherkassky, Jean-Gabriel

this as a whole mix of references and it's something that happens to everyone, some may say it and others won't. As I am still working in found footage I prefer to call it appropriation video, all the work is just about getting images in good quality and while I edit I think about the best way to mix the images, the in-between of meaning. After all the images-massacre I watch it usually alone and if I like it while watching it I’m happy. So then I consider it finished.

The Chilean scene is often underrated, nonetheless we have found it very interesting and rich of experimental filmmakers, often working with low budget, but with great results. What do you think of the Chilean artistic scene, from a filmmaker's point of view?

PÈriot, AndrÈs Duque, Juan Daniel Molero and Harun Farocki, all of them for their ways to work with the footage, the textures, times, themes and ethics of the found footage in experimental and documentary contexts. I started with animation so they have become my new and biggest influences in thinking about-from images I don’t own.

Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

Usually I read a lot about the subject or I investigate other movies just to know what has been thought or made before, just like a starting point not to try to do something different, I don’t believe in the originality because I thought of

It’s funny about the Chilean scene, many of the filmmakers especially the experimental ones we know about each other just when we have screenings in Europe or US film festivals. There’re few places to show experimental films and usually aren’t screened. Of course I really love Raul Ruiz’s films and Juan Downey’s videos, maybe the most famous experimental Chilean filmmakers. Also there’s other people who work with found footage like Paulina Soto, or Tizianna Paniza; or other people like JoaquÌn CociÒa and CristÛbal LeÛn who work with a very experimental kind of stop-motion and Francisco Huichaqueo with his videopaintings. I especially like the documentary scene, there’s a lot of great films and filmmakers that work a documentary’s point of view in a very experimental way. Some of them are Bettina Perut and Ivan Osnovikoff or JosÈ Luis Torres Leiva. I think Chilean filmmaking scene is very interesting and diverse but we have a real debt with an experimental scene that is very marginal and often not known as I said even between us.

What's the future of found-footage art in your opinion? What will be the influence of platform like vimeo and youtube?

It seems there’s a great boom with the found footage, above all in internet. Platforms like vimeo or youtube for a lot of creators those are their only way to show what they are doing and also almost their only way to know what’s going on today in film. There’s always the problem about copyrights and all that stuff but that’s another story. I think it’s very healthy the fact that found footage is growing

A still from Children’s playground

a lot, that means there are a lot of people who are active spectators or are obsessive recyclers of the medias or just want to have fun while they get fun of the images we always watch.

Thanks for sharing your time, Pablo , we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Pablo Molina Guerrero'? Have you a particular film in mind?

I’m currently working on three projects: I’m

finishing a documentary short that is called The Eternal Return, a co-direction with my friend Roberto Mathews, it’s a philosophical portrait (related to Nietzsche’s Eternal Return theory) of the Chilean city ValparaÌso after the great fire in april 2014. A city very related historically to fires that we thought we couldn’t avoid the idea of the ouroboros. Also I’m working in a collective feature film I’ve been coordinating called “Epistolary”, it’s conformed of

very multifacetic Chilean directors and everyone develop a film-letter in absolute freedom with every technique they want.

And I’m currently working in my first feature film it’s a essay film with a found footage ethic.

I found a notebook in the subway with a lot of thoughts about the way we live in the city and the loneliness of it, these thoughts will be read by a girl while we travel through the city.

It’s a long time project I have been building while traveling and as a puzzle, as a fragmentum I’m still getting the pieces together so it can works.

Daniel Watkins An artist's statement

Somewhere We Lived was born out of the decision to relocate from the place I was born (Orlando, FL) to Los Angeles.

“Lived” is an important aspect of the title because it suggests that I was experiencing my final weeks in my hometown as if they had already happened.

The application of a past tense to my present circumstance allowed me to invent feelings of nostalgia for events as they happened. Everyday

leading up to my departure was experienced both in real-time and with a sense of retrospection. This “retrospection of the present” played on my more obsessive characteristics and together formed in me this compulsion to archive. The project began simply as that—an archive of the place I grew up.

What started as straight forward documentation soon transitioned to staging improvised works of narrative fiction, which itself took on the qualities of representation through re-creation.

However, the fallacy inherent in this type of representation—that being that a re-creation of the

A still from Somewhere We Lived

past ultimately amounts to the creation of a false history—forced me to see the fallacy inherent to all representation. Meaning that when you place an object in a frame you exclude the world outside it.

At best you can merely allude to it. Thus every form of documentation, artistic or otherwise is by its very nature an act of revisionism. I saw this realization as an opportunity to use medium as a way to negate representation (essentially the medium negating itself) by foregrounding the ease in which it can decay into abstraction. I then the pieces into something reflective of my own narrative timeline.

It is here that our connections to the past, memory loss, and transitioning into adulthood are re-told in the tenuous grasp we have over the mediums on to which our society reflects itself. Somewhere We Livedblends narrative fiction, documentary, and analog artifacts in an attempt to reconstruct the act of losing one's connection to place, time, and body.

Daniel Watkins

An interview with

Daniel Watkins Daniel Watkins often uses prosaic, everyday moments to build lyrical tapestries of pure visual poetry. In his visionary film Somewhere We Lived he displays an extraordinary cinematography, featuring an interior style of fimmaking close to the stream of consciousness of literary models. We are pleased to present Daniel Watkins for this year's Videofocus Edition. Daniel, how did you get into filmmaking?

It's funny, I don't think I've ever been asked that. It seems that so much focus is placed on output that origin hardly makes the conversation. I was taken with films the same way I imagine most children are. Super hero movies, adventure, comedy ...particularly that string of children's films made in the 90s based off of cartoons from the 50s and 60s.

Specifically the Casper film made in 1995. I recently revisited it, and I can say that it handles the subject of death as well as anything else in cinema. That film and Angels in the Outfield from 1994, I believe are in serious need of critical reevaluation. There are moments in both that are nothing short of heart breaking. I think experiencing that heartbreak at the age that I was had an effect.

I wanted to get inside of those feelings and explore them from another angle. I wanted to find out how to elicit those feelings. That is something I'm still working on.

In terms of formal filmmaking, and I use formal in the broadest sense, it happened in the usual sort of way. When I was small my Mom bought a super 8 video camera, and I would use it to make short films using Legos as actors. They were movie parodies mostly. Comedies. I liked making my parents laugh. I think for me it was a way to equalize us. They were bigger, stronger, and had all the power, but I could make something that would make them laugh.

To me this meant that I also had power if only for a little while.

In Somewhere We Lived you highlight the blurry boundaries of perception and memory. We want to take a closer look at

Daniel Watkins

the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for this work?

Well, first I would like to say, that it did not happen all at once. I was born in Orlando, FL, I had lived in Central Florida for all of my remembered life, and I was about to leave it for the West Coast. I reacted to this by (sort of obsessively) accruing footage of the places and people around me. I knew I wanted to do something with it, I just wasn't sure what that

thing was. This freeform methodology soon narrowed itself to a more structured staging of improvised fiction. I would give each actor a topic that they wanted to bring up, and then have them create a conversation around these ideas. As I would edit these conversations together I began to notice thematic similarities not only between the scenes I was staging, but also between the documentary footage I had been gathering. I began foregrounding these similarities in the edit, and weaving them into

the experimental film techniques that I had been developing in a few shorts that I had made around the same time. I ultimately shed most of the documentary footage I shot. It pops up here and there. The long shot of the lake as well as in the final scene in the hospice.

To an extent the film wasn't thought up, but rather it arrived at itself. I wanted to find the poetry in the pragmatic and really dial into all of the small things that I didn't want to leave behind.

A still from Somewhere We Lived

As you mention, the boundaries between perception and memory are quite blurry. We photograph in order to bring ourselves a clarification, but photography is not documentary so much as it is an act of revisionism When something is framed something is also omitted. It is this reframing of our timeline, that gives birth to its own narrative. An alternate timeline. These two timelines, that of memory, and that of photography run parallel to one another until ultimately they collide. The memory can no longer be remembered, and the photo becomes the truth, because it is represented physically and can be revisited instantly. It provides a false clarity, until the photo too succumbs to its own “finite-ness,� be it through the decay of an old VHS tape, or the failing of a hard drive full of digital photographs. What I wanted from the film was a sort of tonal tapestry of what I was experiencing at the time, and of Central Florida itself as reflected in the tenuousness of not only our memories, our ability to recall our histories, but also of the type of representation that cinema is. A thing that is finite and impermanent.

Your narrative timeline is very original.

We have been impressed by the coexistence between past and present in imagination and perception in your work: can you introduce our readers to this fundamental aspect of Somewhere We Lived?

Certainly. Our histories are not linear.

Especially in the cinema. They are constantly being altered by the physical remnants of our past. Like the photos I mentioned in the previous question. That's what I find to be so beautiful about memory, how nebulous it is for most people. By allowing the past to engage in an open dialog with the present I feel you arrive at a more honest tonality. This however creates a paradox in that the perception of honesty is a fiction. It is based on a subjective recollection. To arrive at honesty you must embrace fiction. Our imagined, or perceived histories are realer to us than objective truth.

Playing in this space of the half remembered is something that has always interested me.

You have a peculiar sense of time and rhythm that harkens back to an older tradition of European filmmaking, in particular to Robbe Grillet's cinema. How do you conceive the rhythm of your works?

In terms of this film I feel that rhythmically it has much in common with dance, in so much

A still from Somewhere We Lived

that rhythm is not something that I conceived, but rather something that I found. I felt for it.

Much of the editing process for me involved sitting with a long take, staring at it, and then waiting for my body to tell me to cut. It's interesting you bring up Robbe-Grillet, because I think, like much of his work, my film plays very close to the surface. There is no deception in the image, there is merely the image. However the longer you stare into an image, especially a static one, the more the context of what you see begins to warp. You lock into the focal point, remain there for a bit, but then begin exploring the shadows—the outer edges of the frame, the screen, the room you are in. Suddenly you find yourself in a situation where the image doesn't refer back to

itself, but rather points outward. It's like a very cerebral, lofi 3-D. I feel you can take an audience that far only so many times within one film before it becomes far too exhausting to sit through, but it was this technique that informed much of the rhythmic qualities of the film.

It would be interesting to compare your films to the cinema of Guy Maddin, where images progress moment by†moment, conveying a purely subjetive, yet modernist, sensibility where the form conveys its meaning directly. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

Maddin is certainly fantastic, but in terms of direct influence I have been fortunate to have so many wonderful teachers: writers like Lisa Stokes, and Sam Rhodie. Filmmakers like Christopher Harris and James Benning.

Makers like Tom Jennings. For a young artist just beginning to get his work out into the world I feel that early validation is so crucial.

I've seen many talented people simply give up after a string of early rejections. Now be that a failing of the work, or of their resilience to continue is certainly debatable, but for me to have someone like Christopher Harris screen my work really means a lot. Enough to continue for sure.

However, lately I find myself less and less

A still from Somewhere We Lived

A still from Somewhere We Lived

influenced by filmmakers. The composer William Basinski's Disintegration Loops manifests itself pretty literally in the lake sequence of my film in which I rephotograph the same image over and over until, after several generations the video of the landscape is reduced to abstract color and sound. The gentle heartbreak of some of Bas Jan Ader's, particularly his installation Please Don't Leave Me has had a pretty big effect on me though I would say its influence over my work is much less pronounced. Miss Julie by August Stridberg continues to linger with me as well – specifically the intimacy of the staging. When I set out to shoot a scene with actors I try to maintain a similar sense of closeness.

Of course there is always the shadow of

Godard which looms large over all of cinema.

His influence is as ubiquitous as the concept of the cut.

What was the most challenging thing about making this film?

I would say just trying to balance the visual variety. The film is made up of so many contrasting pieces, that I was worried they their relationship to one another would not resonate. That they would just seem like nonsequitars. I like the visual dissonance, but I am also very concerned with cohesion. Trying to balance those two elements while also switching mediums, cutting between characters, and indulging the more experimental techniques was a very big concern of mine.

and to a larger extent, see yourself in a work depends on your ability to decode symbols – symbols that are not only incredibly subjective, but also are often unable to retain their significance when they cross geographical and cultural borders – when you make work like that you create something so insular that that it reflects nothing but you. It's as if you've created a mirror that can only display your image. This feedback loop of self is uninteresting to me so when I begin a new piece I always try to point outward. Even work that is very personal, and uses me as a subject still attempts to reach out and make a connection to something larger than myself.

In terms of visual aesthetics, I have no interest in speaking a dead language. When Isidore Isou made Venom and Eternity in 1951 he stated (and I'm paraphrasing) that the language of popular cinema has reached the apex of its form, and it must now be smashed in order to giver birth to a new language. It was smashed. The New Wave smashed it, Brakhage smashed it, but now I feel as though we are nearing that point again. Nearing the apex. We need a new language. When I make new work I'm attempting to find that new language. I haven't done it yet, but my films are about the search.

Thanks for sharing your time, Daniel, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Daniel Watkins?

Have you a particular film in mind?

The first scenes could have been the scenes of a Kiarostami film too, if it wouldn’t have been for the way it was filmed. Since the first seconds, the viewer is not asked to meditate on the action in progress, decrypting a series of hidden symbols, but to follow the logic of sensation. Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project?

Very true. I love Kiarostami's work, but I have no interest in symbols. I feel when an artist loses her/himself in her/his own iconography – there own personal attachment to specific aesthetics, or objects within the frame – they close themselves off to critique. The work becomes impenetrable, and shuts down the conversation. When the ability to understand,

Of course. Thank you for your time, and the incredibly thoughtful questions. As far as what I'm up to, I just completed a show of my installation work up at Cal Arts. I've been doing some sound work with a band I started with follow artist, Christina Santa Cruz. In addition to doing the music of this film Somewhere We Lived, our work can also be heard in some of her installation work that will be debuting shortly. Cinematically speaking I've begun writing a film that is loosely based on the lives of my parents before I was born.

I've become interested in tracing my personal history to back before I was a person. I hope to begin production sooner rather than later. I also have a short film I Love You that has been making the rounds as well.

Continuing to further separate my sense of self-worth from the success or failure of the work I make I feel is something that is incredibly important. Basically just trying to remain present, active, breathing, etc.