Stigmart videofocus Biennial Edition

STIGMART10 ART PRESS

BIENNIAL EDITION 2015

MAŠA DRNDIC DAMIAN GROMALA KEN YOSHIOKA SABINE MOLENAAR JULIE HONG STEFANIE SIXT AURÈLE FERRIER ALBERT CHOI ANNA GARNER STEFANIE SIXT PAUL VERNON JACLYN SLIMM ARNAUD KHAYADJANIAN

JULIE SCHMIDT ANDREASEN

GONZAGA GÓMEZ CORTÁZAR

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From experimental cinema to dance video, twelve 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 3800 applicants have submitted their video works and CV in 2014 - and the increasing popularity of our Biennial project. We are glad to present this year's edition of Videofocus, our special Stigmart10 review focused on independent cinema, videoart and dance film.

Due to the advent of technologies like low budget cinecameras, in the last decade it came a true revolution in the video field.

The fusion of differents worlds, like videoart, experimental cinema, and fashion video is attested by the increasing number of videoartists cooperating with filmmakers in the last decade, though this synergy is not limited to the improvement of the overall quality in mainstream cinema terms, but shows the great potential of a new generation of artists able to renew the cinematographic language itself from the inside.

The primary responsibility of our editorial board has always been to explore the

relationships between contemporary art and the audience. Creating and supporting a fertile ground for innovation and dialogue does not necessarily require compromise: cinema is par excellence a syncretic art. Stigmart10 surveys the work of contemporary film and video artists never restricting themself to any single field, inviting the eye and the mind to travel further, crossing the boundaries of conventional cinema.

Every is a cohesive summary of the past two years of contemporary art and at the same time a fundamental platform for predicting future trends: this is why we proposed a special focus of this edition on dance cinema: the artists presented in this Biennial Edition include a mixture of young and seasoned professionals, both offering highly original and captiving forms of cinema, often marked by the contamination of painterly and theatrical codes.

We are glad to present an exclusive interview with Albert Choi, whose astonishing film The Latecomer will be screened at Cannes, Sabine Molenaar’s visionary dance cinema and much more.

MaĹĄa Drndic

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A crowded Croatian bus terminal becomes a mirror of the collective memory of a nation. The Vanishing point is a kafkaesque cinematographic journey.

Albert Choi

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Choi, finalist at the prestigious CannĂŠs Film Festival with his new film The Latecomer, tells here the story of a scientist who becomes patient zero.

Julie Schmidt Andreasen

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Choreographer and performer, Julie Schmidt Andreasen focuses on developing methods of interaction between artists working different media.

Stefanie Sixt Stefanie Sixt embraces a surreal aesthetic blending a heady mix of philosophical ideas, nightmarish atmospheres, and overt allegory.

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Damian Gromala

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Damian’s cinema language reveals a multidisciplinary approach merging neoclassic imagery, experimental theatre and dance.

Sabine Molenaar

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After sold out in Europe over the last year, the Belgian choreographer Sabine Molenaar realizes a stunning cinematographic version of her play “That’s it”

Anna Garner

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Using areas of my body associated with intimacy and tenderness, face, cheek, and chest, Anna Garner draws attention to a desire for closeness.

Ken Yoshioka

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Yoshioka’s debut film features an interior style of filmmaking close to Tarkovsky's notion of editing subservient to the time-thrust

Arnaud Khayadjanan

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Khayadjanian attempts to tease out the various way in which mainstream cinema has infected our collective memories, focusing on the femme fatale clichè.

Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar Romero A ras is a sensorial film. Gonzaga's work focuses on the passage, duration and experience of time.

Julie Hong

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Honored with the first prize at the Elle Canada Film competition, Julie Hong’s film is a surreal journey into the fashion world.

Paul Vernon

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Paul Vernon creates the impression of the unrepeatability of each shot, providing the viewer with detailed images revealing the intimate feelings of his subjects.

Aurèle Ferrier

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In Aurèle's hands, the camera becomes an instrument for contemplation.

His refined film Infrastructures is an immersive experience

Jaclyn Slimm An experimental video for acclaimed electronic ensemble Mahogany's single, realized through Jaclyn unique visual and aural imagination

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INDEPENDENT CINEMA WOMENBIENNALE/15

maša drndić “

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Maša Drndić directed six documentary films and also worked on over a dozen short fiction films as a director, cinematographer, editor and assistant.

She makes her own deeply personal documentaries that often use specific locations as inspiration for larger emotional and philosophical inquires, focusing on the relationships between urban space and its inhabitants.

We have selected for this year's edition her refined black and white film , whose strong absurdist vein reminds us of Samuel Beckett's work. The Croatian director plays homage to the French roots of Nouvelle Vague, however if Godard overfilled his tangents with abundance of signifiers, Maša Drndić's temps mort attemps to underfill them with ambiguity and absence: in her film a crowded Croatian bus terminal becomes a mirror of the collective memory of a nation. Maša, could you tell us a particular episode, who has helped the birth of this project, or simply an epiphany?

I was doing my MA studies in in Tallin, Estonia when I first started thinking of making a documentary somehow related to the topic of transition, more precisely on the disappearance of public places, authentic or socially important locations that died out or were replaced by new, modern, more “functional” architecture. I was interested in the effect that these is changes have on social dynamics, ways of interaction and communication, as well as on individual lives. Tallinn was quite a good example and inspiration for such a topic, it being the capital of a country that was determined to go through a quick transition and was eager to replace and erase some remembrances of the Soviet past as much as possible.

After having gained independence and due to the rapid development of the free market, a large area of the center was rebuilt and reconstructed. Only 9.1% of the city is municipally owned and therefore planning became a matter of private developers’ initiative. This resulted in the emergence of a strange fusion of modern and medieval architecture, side by side; sometimes these architectural solutions

were beautiful but also quite alienating.

To come back to your question - while residing in Estonia I read an article in a Croatian online newspaper that was announcing a grandiose new project for the bus terminal in my hometown, Rijeka. It was planned to be a huge shopping mall type of station .

That was when I found and recognized my story. The film was meant to follow the last "surviving" year of the old bus terminal, its final breath, its last pulse, until the moment of its extinction. I wanted to capture this miniature model of a society that was watching its future being built just in front of it. The “old” bus station was and still is called Žabica ("Little Frog") after an old fountain that used to be located on the square. It was and is an open type of station integrated in the very heart of the city of Rijeka. During the past decade it became clear that “Žabica” was hardly able to host the number of buses and travelers passing through Rijeka.

On an exceptionally small space (of some 40 square metres off the roadways and 8 platforms), approximately 12 different services and contents are squeezed in: the bus stops, a ticket office, a shop, a currency exchange office, a casino, a café a fast-food restaurant, two kiosks, and a waiting room with a public toilet and a checkroom, as well as a taxi station. Furthermore, most of the services work around the clock, which makes the bus terminal the most active, lively, and crowded location in town, especially in the evenings. The bus station Žabica is permanently packed with beggars, the homeless, gamblers and drunken kids getting late night booze. In respect to this, the bus terminal often turns into a live stage of numerous conflicting situations with the daily attempts of its employees to guarantee it as normal a functioning as they can. So, after almost twenty years of promising its citizens a new station, Rijeka’s municipality had an architectural plan for the first time, a ridiculously large complex just opposite the old one. The construction of a new terminal was planned for the early spring of 2011.

I started shooting around February 2011 with a lot of excitement. With me I had only one assistant – Josip Grabar, so that we do not draw too much attention and could become more intimate with the people

around. We shot often that winter, trying to make friends with this small community of workers, alchoholics and beggars who hang out there. Spring of 2011 arrived, but the construction of a new station was postponed for autumn. Nevertheless, construction had not started even by autumn. We found ourselves waiting for our real shooting to begin, but THAT film was nowhere in view. News and gossip about the project were less and less present, and soon the whole ambitious plan was forgotten. There was no money for such projects, Croatia was about to enter the EU and many other events became a priority.

At that point I was seriously thinking to give up, to stop shooting, I had some very nice materials but my initial story was falling apart.

I remember, on a clear sunny day in the spring of 2012, my assistant and I were sitting at the bus station caffĂŠhaving a beer (instead of shooting). We were not really talking, not looking around, just waiting for something, anything, to happen, or even secretly hoping nothing

would happen so we could order another beer. At that point I realized we had already started being part of this station, we became quite like the people we were shooting, I realized that this film would not be about the disappearance of one world, but about the state of permanent, passive waiting . I wanted to picture a society with a dreamy yearning for modernisation, a society that with longing fantasizes about integration into Europe, and at the same time feeds on its romantic mentality, simultaneously patriotic and critical. It is a story of a community that in an authentic manner patches up the gaps of a worn-out system, a community that polishes and decorates its decomposing structure in a Sisyphean way, from day to day facing the same chaos and similar narratives around it. From day to day this community was (and still is) patiently waiting for tomorrow.

We have been impressed with your black and white cinematography. is inspired by the French New Wave, the use of normal lenses and frontal composition are trademark of the 60s. Yet your visual

imagery is not confined to a specific style, just think of the intimate color cinematography of (2010).

Where does your visual sensibility come from?

Perhaps my inspiration for making a documentary always develops from the feeling triggered and offered by a specific location. For me the location is the frame of the story, a stage for the action, a miniature of the world I wish to represent, a model, and as such it often holds a certain potential – that of telling a tale.

The story that usually catches me is that of the characters who are either tightly connected with or in complete opposition to the location they inhabit, visit, or pass through. In this sense the location and the main character either blend or they become opposed, counter elements in the story, and in some way try to find their meeting point, some middle, neutral piece of territory. I take quite a lot of time before I start shooting and I patiently observe my subjects until I understand their rhythm, routine and their manners. This influences my choice

of the mood, camera movement and also of the editing. I do the same with locations, I try to depict how spaces breathe at different times of the day, sometimes even through seasons, in order to understand how to tell the story. I don’t like to force a specific style on the story, every story has a unique rhythm and its specific tone.

For The Waiting Point I knew exactly how I wished to shoot it. I felt from the beginning that it should be in black and white and that the way it was shot should feel very natural. I wanted to reflect simple everydayness, a kind of a raw “normality” of the life of this bus station. I felt shooting this place in color would be a lie, it just didn’t feel right; all the characters and details would be lost in a raging chromatic mess. I felt that this exact feeling was not to be represented in an image, but actually in sound. A dense, occasionally overwhelming ambiental sound was actually the color of the film.

I kept my camera mostly at the same level with the characters, I wanted it to be a silent participant of the action. As a contrast to this, I built slightly

surrealistic moments, little breaths away from daily life, a view from above, capturing those rare (magical) moments in the early morning and late afternoon when the station would become emptier, calmer - leaving space for reflection.

For the few short fiction films I shot as a cinematographer, I also found my inspiration in reality, usually carefully choosing locations that can reflect sensibility in the story and then extending the existing mood, enriching it. I am not very good at inventing from scratch, also I am not very keen on building sets, but I think I am not bad in recognizing and finding magic in the obvious. That is where I find my inspiration, and I continue to build, sometimes completely transforming the primarily chosen reality. is marked by a sapient use of temps mort. In your recent work Nostalgia you push this technique almost to paroxysm. Could you introduce our readers to this project?

“On Nostalgia” is an on-going project meant to be developed through a longer period of time on different locations. It is

a documentary essay, a collage of reflections on memories and remembering, fragmented recollections floating between the past and the future, unique and familiar, at home and away from it. With this work I wish to create a world for our sentimental subconsciousness, a space where the viewer is triggered to imagine, relate and remember, reflect on temporality.

Nostalgia is a subject that always kind of squeezes itself in or comes up as a leitmotif in all of my films and previous works, but I never looked at it detached from a specific context. So, now it’s vice versa. I take nostalgia and find the context that comes into it. I try to see which different events, places, objects can lead to nostalgia, or which topics nostalgia can open.

During the past two years I started experimenting with creating documentary video installations (working with multiple projections and video mapping) with a wish to expand the cinematic space that engages the viewer to become part of the story as a live actor in the middle of a “given” narrative. This work has grown out of one of these experiments. I started

researching this idea as part of an amazing art expedition organized by Sound Development City and Haller Enterprise. It was a very inspiring art expedition that lasted three weeks and moved across Latvia and Finland. At the final presentation for SDC 2014, held in Helsinki , I created a documentary 3 channel video installation projected in an old harbor warehouse. The video transformed an empty industrial space into a series of ambiances and settings that changed according to the narratives (intimate stories, interviews) delivered through sound.

Your documentary Puppet Story (2014), realized thanks to the collaboration of Inese Tikmane, tells the impressive story of a Caucasian puppet director. Could you describe this collaborative experience?

Puppet -Story is surely one of my dearest projects and this is very much due to the collaborative process with Inese Tikmane.

Unfortunately, it is still an unfinished project as it is not supported, so it relies on our own financial means, on our time and enthusiasm. We are planning to

continue working on this project this year and honestly hope it works out.

Working with this very talented Latvian cinematographer was great. We studied together at the Baltic Film and Media School, so we made some films before the Puppet Story. On one of our shootings we had the luck to meet Russian actors who were unusually creative with using props, and then we found out that they worked for the Estonian National Puppet Theater. We learned about the charismatic and talented puppet theater director Evgeny Ibrahimov and he would become the main character of our film.

Shooting with Inese was amazing. We both did camera and sound, switching when necessary. We shared different roles without much discussion. I think assisting for each other on fiction films taught us how to communicate without words. After shootings we would discuss a lot the material we got and the story itself. I think we always understood each other really well throughout the shooting, as well as in the editing process and, most importantly, appreciated each

other's opinions. With Inese it was never about an artist's ego, but always about the film itself.

How has your history influenced the way you produce art?

The need to recognize, embrace, collect and store fragments of my life emerged as a reaction to the frequent changes and multiple migrations that marked my childhood. On the one hand I developed the role of a careful observer, as a survival mechanism that helped me understand my surroundings and integrate more easily, but simultaneously I was pushed to create, to gather observations and to search for various techniques of capturing temporality.

Implementing observationalethnographical techniques either in a film or through other forms of art (installations, graphics and photography) I find to be the most inspiring starting point, a process of simultaneous discovery, reflection and creation. The very choice of selecting a certain frame - a specific fragment of everyday life, I perceive as an instinctive, often as an auto-reflective action, where certain figures, spaces and situations mirror shadows - the doppelgäger of one’s

subconscious. Therefore, due to my experiences, I deal with themes that are the closest to me but still always quite mysterious. Most of my works are focused on exploring individual as well as collective expressions of identity and belonging, capturing socially constructed or imaginary borders, homes, memories, common narratives, beliefs, dreams and desires.

In the last decade you have worked using both digital and film equipment: how has your production processes changed over the years?

I only had the possibility to shoot on film while I was studying cinematography in Estonia. Unfortunately, after the studies this seemed a very luxurious dream, especially taking into account that I am mostly involved in documentary filmmaking. I remember when I first held a 16 mm arifflex camera and when I started shooting I could hear and feel the sound of film rolling. My heart started beating so quickly and my hands became shaky, so I had to stop for some minutes to calm down. I was really excited. I could feel time being recorded.

Shooting on film makes one very cautious and concentrated, one makes less

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mistakes and thinks a lot in advance. It is really important for a filmmaker to go through this process at some point. Film pictures, in my opinion, still have more soul , they breathe, they have texture and they are richer in shadow detail, they are more alive and “cinematic” than the digital medium. But I don’t mind that I cannot shoot on film, I find it safer to have space for experimenting and for making mistakes. I try to get the most out of what I work with. I am happy that I can shoot without a big crew and sometimes without a big budget, it makes me feel braver in perusing the idea.

for nine hours and that changed my whole view on the possibilities of cinematic storytelling. I thought he was the best filmmaker ever. I still think he is among the best. Among the documentary filmmakers that influenced me I wish to mention Viktor Kosakovsky, Pirjo Honkasalo, Michel Glawogger and Hara Kazuo. Also, I am a great fan of Frederick Wiseman and was greatly inspired by the Free Cinema Movement that appeared in Britain in the late 1940s. Its members produced some beautiful films like Reisz and Richardson's Momma Don't Allow and Reisz's We Are The Lambeth Boys.

We have previously mentioned the French New Wave, however, it would be interesting to compare to the cinema of Roberto Rossellini. Who among international directors influenced your work?

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

I truly fell in love with cinema after having seen Bergman's and Antonioni's films. At the beginning of 2000, a small (illegal) art cinema appeared in Rijeka, which was the only place where one could watch "art" films and film classics. They would screen three films by one director in the row. There for the first time I watched Bergman's films continuously

I have a couple of projects that I am working on at the moment. Besides working on the Nostalgia project, I started another collaboration with a talented documentary director Sanja Marjanovi So far, working with her has been really pleasant. We are shooting a film about children growing up on the small remote Croatian island of Susak.

It’s quite a magical location and the story is very promising.

INDEPENDENT CINEMA CANNES /15

albert choi “ ”

In Albert Choi's cinema the fantastic and the absurd are rendered in clear, precise images. His work is marked by a strong effort to destabilize the traditional storytelling: drama is stripped down to its essential elements to introduce space, gaps and temps mort, in which the viewer projects his own emotions. His film , finalist at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, tells the story of an ambitious scientist who becomes patient zero. We are glad to present Albert's work for this year’s Videofocus Biennial Edition: Albert, could you introduce our readers to Lost My Way? This is a short film I made for Cuushe’s unrelenting track “Lost My Way”. It tells a story of an individual carrying on with a decision that has significant repercussions.

With such mesmerizing and haunting vocals, I felt a need to balance that by providing some breathing space visually. Instead of being parallel and didactic, I chose to, as you put it, destabilize the structure while amplifying tones of loss and isolation.

I think temps mort is the closest to stopping

time, and it enhances the entropic theme .

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Lost My Way? I sometimes fantasize about being the only person left on the planet. But I realize a day will come when even that existence will eventually expire, whether engineered by design or by mistake.

Your film is rich of references: the theme of the scientist reminds us of the films by Robert Wiene, can you tell us your biggest influences in cinema and how they have affected your work?

Wow, Dr. Caligari… it’s been a while. As for influences, I’m not sure I can list them all here! But I will say this, there were films that almost made me quit filmmaking altogether. I remember being completely shell-shocked after Werckmeister Harmonies, Code Unknown, and Rosetta.

After the credits, I peeled myself from the theater seat and thought, “Game over man… game over.”

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has been filmed on RED, a highly professional and flexible tool, especially for interior shots. David Ethan Sanders's composition and cinematography highlights the contrast between the refined scenography and a peculiar Dogma-like experimental style.

Since the first scenes, the viewer enters into a dreamy filmic mystery.

How did you develop the visual style for this film?

Camera’s only good as the person behind it, and David’s been solid. We’d visit, tech-scout, and re-visit various locations while constantly talking about best practices and maximizing visual impact.

He understood why I wanted to shoot anamorphic, handheld, high fps for this particular project, and how that would ultimately affect the viewer (with specific compositions and lighting strategy).

While testing rigs, setups, and lenses I’d fill his inbox with mood boards, storyboards, research and references.

How did you get started in experimental cinema?

Growing up I was lucky to have an artistic older brother because I had access to creative materials early on.

Academically, this led me on a path of Illustration, Photography, Fine Art, and eventually Film. Professionally, I cut my teeth in TV by wearing multiple hats: producing, writing, shooting, editing, directing, etc. A lot of the first projects were run-n-gun documentaries, where I learned how to land on my feet, like a cat, and adapt to whatever was unfolding in front of camera.

Talented filmmakers know that cooperation is the winning formula for independent projects. Could you describe this collaborative experience?

I’m extremely fortunate to work with talented, capable professionals who are also close friends. Many moons ago, David (Cinematographer), Kris Matusoka

(Prod Designer) and I attended Art School together. Once I have a passion project in a good place and find it worth executing, I then open the creative dialogue and we finish the last bit of pre-production together. By the time production comes around, most of the heavy lifting is done and everyone’s raring to go.

We have been really impressed by the balance you have been capable of achieving in this work between classical sensibility and a futuristic vision. Could you introduce our readers to this work?

I was really interested in using light, color and space to hypnotic effect while dramatically transforming an environment. One approach was LED lights, and Orlando Hernandez (gaffer/lighting) built seamless rigs that created surrealistic atmospheres.

Narrative structure wise, I used a simple frame story. And for the scientist, played by the ethereal Alex Essoe, the inspiration was a self-inflicted,

reverse-Galatea, where Pygmalion and sculpture were the same being.

What draws you to a particular subject?

The mundane? The human condition?

Moral ambiguity? I’m afraid I don’t have a satisfactory response for you.

In terms of content, I like films and stories where you’re led to reflect on what you’ve seen… something that allows for repeated viewings and new discoveries.

Where you’re left with questions rather than answers.

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

My pleasure. I recently finished a short film “The Latecomer” and hope to share it online soon. In 2015, I plan to shoot a documentary and squeeze in another passion project.

videofocus/1555

#dancefocus

A still from “Psychocinetic” by the talented Polish artist Damian Gromala

Cinema+dance+theatre+ performance

Special selection curated by wac/network When cinema meets performative arts: an inside look to the work of five artists: from Damian Gromala’s avant-garde Psychocinetic to Sabine Molenaar’s dance cinema

EXPERIMENTAL VIDEO/DANCE WOMENSBIENNALE/15

julie schmidt andreasen “

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Photo by courtesy of Lassina Badolo

Julie Schmidt Andreasen's work invites the viewer into a haunted, subjective flow of clean figurative images. In her quest to explore the synesthetic nature of the creative act, the Danish artist produces something hypnotic and memorable.

Choreographer, dancer and performer, she focuses on developing methods of interaction between artists working different media. Julie, can you introduce our readers to the concept of Paintformance?

Paintformance is a research and performance practice combining drawing, painting and dancing. Within Paintformance labs, fine artist and dancers are led into task-based improvisations, which focus on ways to approach movement, drawing, painting and interaction between these art forms. The methods aim to enable artists to communicate and perform regardless of the medium they are working in. The methodology is in continual development, as it is influenced by the participating artists. The aim of the practice is to build tools for improvisation scores in performance. In Paintformance, the art forms of dance and fine art are completely interdependent.

We have selected for this year's edition your film The Body Canvas. How did you come up with the idea for this project?

I was taking drawing classes whilst studying at London Contemporary Dance School and became interested in combining movement, drawing and painting in performance. I started the research with fine artists and dancers during my last year of studies. This led to the idea of making a film as part of a live installation. The artists Anna Jung Seo and John Close, who took part in the research, very much influenced my passion to collaborate with fine artists. I was interested in Fluxus art, and inspired by exhibitions such as “The lunatics are on the loose: European Fluxus Festivals 1962-1977”, “A bigger splash” and “A house of leaves”.

The Body Canvas marked the beginning of your collaboration with the talented filmmaker Paul Vernon. Can you describe your collaboration process?

Paul and I share a passion to create and communicate a lot while working together. Till

date, our filmmaking processes have emerged from my choreography; either set material or improvisation scores. In the past, I have had locations in mind before asking Paul to come on board. Most recently, when Paul was in Denmark to shoot Branches and Bones, an outdoor community workshop, he reflected that the preparation involved in shooting our films is more about being mentally ready, rather than making any artistic decision beforehand. Paul has an ability to become invisible while filming. He is moving quietly, meaning the performers are less conscious of their on-camera performance. This is crucial, especially while shooting community projects with non-professionals. The choreography I create is sculptural, abstract and movementbased. Paul finds the characters and relationships within my work and his films draws stories from this.

Capturing the paintformance process on screen presents many difficulties because of the intrinsic nature of dance improvisation, yet your work hightlights the cinetic potential of the cinematographic medium. As a result, The Body Canvas is definitively not a "filmed performance", yet a work of art that shines on its own. What do you think about the encounter between cinema and other forms of art?

There is a certain honesty within cinematography – one can see the breath, shaking, hair, dirt, blinking eyes. In comparison, as a live art audience member one has the possibility to experience a kinetic energy from the performer. This is why cinema cannot substitute the experience of live performance. However, on film you can transport the audience elsewhere, for example, within my work I have chosen locations ranging from Vallø Castle Park, to a rooftop across Kings Cross to the inside of a Pyramid building in Boesdal Kalkbrud. That gives the dance a different soul. There is something about the detailed pre-planning and then the added unknown, to see what happens between the people on location and how it is captured, that excites me.

As an artist, how important do you think it is to teach what you practice?

At the moment teaching is an important aspect of knowing, vocalizing, researching and

Subtilus. Photo by Nauan Barros

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Photo by Phillip Engsig

questioning my practice. I learn as much teaching, as being taught. Teaching confronts you with both your own and your students' beliefs and interests. Sometimes new ideas arise from this. Teaching makes me appreciate teachers who I myself have been taught by, most recently Skye Humphries and Frida Segerdahl with whom I experienced a great sensation of flow and ability to progress and learn. They create an environment for practice: the goal is to experience the present rather than what will be achieveable in the future. Teaching gives my practice another purpose. It also offers me the chance to meet people for whom movement has different meanings, depending on their stage in life, from the youngest in kindergarden to the oldest in carehomes.

Recently you took part at the the Ouagadougou Company's project, which created 10 site-specific performances in Denmark. Tell us a bit more about this project...

The Ouagadougou dancers were not in fact a company, until they got together for the project in Denmark. I attended their workshops and alongside other Danish dancers, we created improvisation per-

formances with Contemporary and African Dance, led by the choreographer Pipaluk. We went on a bike tour in Copenhagen, performing at the canal, in squares, playgrounds and parks. The musicians played their instruments whilst we were driving through the streets. The final was a live installation in Boblehallerne involving African and contemporary dancing, BMX bikers, chinese pole dancing and live music. I learned alot from each artist from Ouagadougou, especially from Lacina Coulibali and Jean Robert Koudogbo Kiki. They posses an inner rhythm, physical and mental power and fulfilment in what they do, that inspires me deeply.

In what manner does your work with other companies influences your personal research as a choreographer?

I think my performance and choreographic practices are merged to some extend, depending on which projects I am involved in. Certain creative processes that I have experienced have become tools for my own personal research. There is no movement copyrights and one’s translation of another's idea will always be a

Photo by Paul Vernon

modification. As David Bowie said “The only art I'll ever study is stuff I can steal from”.

Choreographers such as Ari Rosenzweig, Itamar Serrussi and Chisato Ohno have made me curious. The gaga technique, the movement language created by Ohad Naharin, with whom these artists have worked, continues to inspire my approach to movement. It has influenced the way I appreciate movement in itself. On the other hand coming back to my choreographic research, I often use sources such as photographs, poetry, sounds to work from.

You have contribuited modelling and offering visual ideas for a promotional in trailer for collaboration with Nauan Barros. Can you describe this experience?

Nauan and I met while working on the same project at The Royal College of Art. We stayed in touch and when we met again, Nauan was just about to return to Brasil, so we had one week to make something happen. I suggested creating a film for Subtilus. We gathered dancers, a costume designer, a make-up artist and an assistant.

The film was shot at Rowing Projects in London. It is now, currently, in process of

being edited. The music that will be used for the film is played by Miloud Sabri, Luther Thomas and Per Løkegaard.

Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, Julie. What's next for you?

Have you a particular project in mind ?

Thank you. Fine artist Julie Damkjaer and I are creating a dance short film, with lighting designer Mathias Hersland and music composed by Rasmus Gram and my brother Jakob Schmidt Andreasen. It is a duet between us, one moving in a harness hanging above the other, who is dancing below. It has been a new experience for me, working with a partner being above my head! – I look forward to exploring this more. Choreographically, I am currently working with Karl Fagerlund developing another duet. I will also continue investigating Paintformance with fine artists and dancers, which, at the moment take place in Morley College, London. As a dancer I am working with Mara Vivas, performing Triptych at the Robin Howard Theatre as part of Resolution. In the spring I will collaborate with choreographer Birgitte Lundtoft on a land art performance. http://julieschmidtand.com

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Photo by Johnchul Kwon

VIDEO/PERFORMANCE WOMENSBIENNALE/15

stefanie sixt “

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Photo by courtesy of Lassina Badolo

With the advent of digital software, a new generation of abstract filmmakers has emerged, which tends to refer back to more metaphysical approach of earlier pioneers such as Wilfred and Belson.

Stefanie Sixt's cinema invite the viewer into a haunted, totally subjective flow of clean figurative images, taking at heart Jonas Mekas's words" When I am filming everything is determined by my memory, my past, so that this "direct" filmming becomes also a mode of reflection". Her fascinating dance video Alabama Song (2010), awarded with the Silver Award at ITVA in Frankfurt, embraces a surreal aesthetic blending a heady mix of philosophical ideas, nightmarish atmospheres, and overt allegory.

Her later works are marked by a rigourous and radical experimentation, featuring a high degree of abstractness.

Stefanie, how did you get started in experimental cinema?

Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud. Can you introduce our readers to this video dance work?

As mentioned above „Alabama Song“ does as the whole opera „Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny“ - have a strong reference to nowadays. Not only that a huge percentage of people are mainly money oriented regarding their priorities in life (the peak of this development can be seen in Las Vegas, the most crazy place I have ever visited in my life) but also the discussion about the definition of the female role in society is still an ongoing process. In parts women in the 20s were further developed than we are today.

Women are trying to handle the difficulty of the balancing act between career and family and moreover are fighting for being considered equally in their jobs. Bjök just talked about the difficulties that are still going on in this regard.

Sorry, I am getting lost, it is such a wide field… Well taken down to the point in the video the dancer plays the role of the whore and the housewife until she liberates herself in the end, gets rid of all the roles society has meant her to play.

Back in 2007 a friend from Vienna called me and asked if I was interested in presenting visuals on their New Years event. As I was very busy at that time I had to learn the software within a very short period of time and create enough footage to keep the excitement fresh throughout the night. During my research I found dancers out of the 20s and discovered the famous movie „Metropolis“ with the human-machine Maria. I was immediately fascinated by the atmosphere and power of this movie, the reflection of social and economic imbalances back then, as well as the approach to the traditional role of women. Today, both have become to highly topical themes again.

By using excerpts of the movie and overlaying them with coloured abstract graphics i created a reference between the 20ies and nowadays. I realised i do not necessarily need a narrative story / film to express myself.

That´s how i got into the field of live visuals and non-narrative audiovisual producing.

I was about to create a piece for the Brecht Festival in Augsburg in 2010. As i had met Anina in summer 2009 and we were planing to produce a dance video together we started reflecting and researching. Anina told me that her grandmother used to sing in an opera… back then… We found out that her grandmother was singing in the opera „Rise and fall of the City of Mahagonny“ in the 30ies. This was quite crazy of course. So her grandchild provides the binding link to nowadays. To be honest i don´t remember why I chose „Alabama Song“. Somehow I was very clear about that. Later we also got in touch with Guy Stern who was the first one translating the opera into English. A big fan of our film by the way. We are still in touch.

From the first time we watched we were impressed by the way you get a perfect convergence between two opposite poles of theatrical formation:

In your film figures appear and disappear in a gentle flow, sometimes moving the story forward, sometimes backward.

Can you tell us a particular episode that has helped the birth of

Subtitolos, Photo by Nauan Barros

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Photo by Paul Vernon

How did you collaborate with the dancer and choreographer Anina von Molnar?

We were developing the piece together, both of us contributing our professional experience: Anina her knowledge about dance and choreography and i was taking care of the surrounding, the scenery, the transitions between the single parts - let´s name it the formal aspects and limits. Of course we were inspiring each other in our fields.

In your later works, such as ReDirected, you push the limits of experimentation in order to achieve extremely abstract forms can you introduce our readers to the choice of inner subjects in your recent production?

Personally I do not believe in reality. For me it does not exist. Reality is nothing else but a reflection of thoughts, the larg-

est common denominator qua definition of humans. Let´s name this “bread“. The deeper you look into the manifestation of “bread“ for example the less of the substance is left over until you reach the level of quantum physics where nothing stays the same. To me this is absolutely fascinating, without understanding what this is all about.

While working on „Re-Directed“ in the beginning I thought I should get more figurative again. But somehow I became dissatisfied until i threw it all away in the trash can and came back to the abstract world. Suddenly it all seemed right, felt like it should. I would love to give you a theoretical explanation for this but I can´t.

We have found the soundscape of composed by your long-time collaborator Markus Mehr really stimulating: watching your video we have almost the impression that images react synaesthetically to the film's

soundtrack. Can you comment this multidisciplinary aspect of your cinema?

Within our fruitful long-term collaboration we have been inspiring each other a lot of course. We have worked hard on the principle of increasingly interlinking sound and visuals on the one hand and still leave enough room for each others disciplines on the other hand. We also discussed a lot on how to emphasize certain parts. You can set highlights through complete synchronicity but also by doing exactly the opposite.

Your cinema features several references to the contemporary dance and animation scenario. Who among international artists influenced your work?

That´s really hard to say as i am influenced by almost every exhibition i visit.

Sometimes it is not the work itself what impresses me the most but the artistic approach, the method. I was stunned after

the exhibition of Matt Mullican and his concept of the world order, i take my hat off the work of Pipilotti Rist, i was totally impressed by the piece „Artifact“ by William Forsythe, of course the early experimental movies by Richter, not to forget Kandinsky, right after the visit of his exhibition i produced „virtuality“ the impressive installation „Ten Thousand Waves“ by Isaac Julien, Gillian Wearing… there are so many…

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

Thank you for dealing with my work! As we just celebrated the premiere of our piece „Re-Directed“ on the Mind the Gap Nights, International Film Festival in Rotterdam I am still brainstorming.

I already do have something in mind, but it is too early to talk about. But i will be happy to let you know about it.

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damian gromala “ ”

Damian Gromala's work undermines our knowledge in order to reintroduce us to the adventure of knowing. Damian is interested in the connection between different media languages and the synaesthetic power of sound and image is a central feature of his scenario: from PsychoKinetic to Me Som Rom his cinema language reveals a multidisciplinary approach merging neoclassic imagery, experimental theatre and dance.

Damian, how did you get started in filmmaking?

My interest in filmmaking came unexpectedly. As a child till today I always be keen on music, later came passion to photography and then I felt to experience something new.

Inspired by watched music videos I decided to do something similar. My first work in field of motion picture was lip-dub music video (it was 5 years from now  in 2010).

Ranging from that time I slowly revealed the power of 10th muse which is cinematography. I learnt everything by myself. In my community there are very few people interested in film.

Later I worked on couple of clips on the assigned subject for contests purposes. In

meantime I started to make video commercials. However the greatest pleasure for me is to create something independent unique concept as a work of my imagination.

Creating something out of nothing gives me the greatest satisfaction.

PsychoKinetic is not conceived using a metaphoric approach, but adopting a performative research: this concept is fudamental for your art research. If we want to broaden our perceptual horizons, we must abandon our habits.

Could you introduce our readers to this peculiar aspect of your work?

It is true, experimental cinema require from audience much more understanding and artistic sensitiveness than for example watching feature films in the cinema. Referring to rules of avant-garde film more important is form and overall impression than logic plot structure. Significant theme of my work is the element of surprise and oddity. Spectator during watching PsychoKinetic ask himself questions about leading concept, lighting and way of edit. Everyone understand it in a different way intended aim has been achieved . Not to present obviousness

but show multiple meanings. Abstract, changing like in a kaleidoscope images synchronized with music carry out artistic investigation of unknown.

There is no linear structure, floating emotions take control over performers creating dynamic unrepeatable scenes. An impulse becomes source of action which show a specific nature of human being.

Theatrical vision sometimes overexposed connecting with music creates particular mood. Camera is observer and member of action in the same time. Low and high angles, static and dynamic shots, characters who stay still or move all together is turning into (non)logical form.

Likewise performers are not completely sure about what are they really doing final result is eerie. Opportunity to come into and reveal a new reality with them allow to release from everyday life. Maybe experience some catharsis? Or maybe cannot understand it at all? Who knows where incur you your mind.

Your film eschews traditional storytelling and opts instead for an associative, almost surrealist methodology. How did you come up

with the idea for this PsychoKinetic?

Main inspiration was taken from theatrical workshops which I participated in July 2013. During one week I revealed magical and intimate world of theatre. As a filmmaker I wanted to feel how to be an actor and discover how works relation between camera and performer from his point of view. Activities like body movement control, sensitiveness of senses or relaying created between us energy to the audience were implemented. Many of them appear in PsychoKinetic Moreover performers were not strangers for me because they were the same people who participated in workshops. After activity with many ideas and power to action I became a leader of group. Explaining my artistic concept we all decided to do something together regardless of fact that workshops ends. A big part in PsychoKinetic plays improvisation. There was no strictly screenplay it was more ideas and overall visions improvisations which they created were captured by camera. Unseen energy influence on performersbehavior and reactions. Also title of work is considered: Psycho because film contain

incomprehensible and surrealistic content and kinetic regarding main mean of expression (movement theatre).

We have been really impressed by the balance you have been capable of achieving in this work between classical sensibility and a futuristic vision.

Your art is rich of references. It is very difficult for contemporary artists to quote the classical age, however, sometimes this kind of research is not simply an attitude to quotation: it could give astonishing results, just think of Romeo Castellucci's incredible works, which are rich of quotation from Italian paintings. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

The greatest inspiration is music. It gives me limitless imagination. Every song or soundtrack moves me to ‘another world’.

Closing my eyes in my head arise images associated with actual feelings. Sometimes I do kind of experiment – avoiding to watch original music video I try to visualize alternative version of clip then comparing them. Open-mindedness to all

genres of music allows me to create innovative solutions of mixing it with motion in unconventional way. Synchronization it raise the tension and artistic impressions.

Being a ‘newbie’ in experimental cinema I had to fight with many doubts connected with main theme of ‘PsychoKinetic’. However gained knowledge of ‘theatre reality’ helps me a lot. How to unite quite different personalities into one piece – ‘energetic bomb’ - arousing excitement in audience? How to be part of performance without ruining built intimacy? I had to be one of them regardless my role of director and D.O.P. on the set. It is hard task to record magical movement sequences and take part in creation of them in the same time.

I am also inspired by other filmmakers and their works. Films watched on popular tube sites or during film festivals route me in which way should I go - what is still not known and what is too ‘mainstream’.

Your film is marked by a refined Rembrandt lighting cinematography: the fantastic and the absurd are rendered in clear, precise images. Can you ex-

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plain this choice?

Filming in low-key light is definitely my cup of tea. It gives kind of dramatically view and some mystery. Maybe it is caused by my personality and way of perceiving world. Excellently reflects contrasts in literally and metaphorically meaning. Characters reveal from and hide in the darkness. Colorful moving stains, blurred or sharp form dependently independence. Aim is not to show everything clearly but give some space for free interpretation. Focus on ‘unseen emotions’ require silence, introducing yourself into appropriate mood – chosen way of lighting influence positively on rising action.

What draws you to a particular subject?

I consider that film, music and theatre mash up work like synergy overall effect is bigger and offer something more for current audience. I do not want to be perceived as mainstream filmmaker. Copying

the same values, reproducting schemes often win with originality and new quality.

In contrast to traditional cinema I would like to focus on specific themes. I realize that nowadays in some communities avant-garde art is treating like a power level. On the other hand I believe in words finding a niche leads to success.

Getting deeper into genre of video dance I want to experiment with dance theatre, fire theatre, improvisation and much more.

Only the sky is the limit. Inconspicuous thing become main inspiration: the more bizarre is the better. When weirdness exceeds admissible level you recognize the world anew. Visualizing my own reality firstly in mind, transferred later into motion and finally into film is best manner to express myself in artistic way. Being creative as much as I can I want to represent new generation of young national and worldwide recognized filmmakers.

Your film production is very miscellanous: you have directed documenta-

ries, video art and feature film as well. How has your production processes changed over the years?

During my filmmaking career I deal with different genres. Apart from feature films which are ‘ground of film art’ one of my first significant production was documentary ‘Me Som Rom’ (I am a Romany) from 2013. Firstly I had to getting to know documentary film rules and then do research about main theme – Romany minority.

Elaborate essential questions I went outside. Being ‘witness of reality’ sometimes I recorded material from hiding. ‘Me Som Rom’ contain lot of facts (historical background, Romanies’ heritage and contemporary issues) and interviews with Romanies as well.

Then 2014 was year of ‘PsychoKinetic’ – adventure with experimental cinema.

Finally 2015 just come and who knows what it brings. Having expanded horizons of film genres I want to still mix it up and create ‘unique masterpieces’. Prove that

oddity stand up against mainstream can lead you on the top.

Thanks for sharing your time, Damian, What's next for you? Have you a particular film in mind?

It is a great pleasure to be interviewed by Stigmart team. I am very proud of myself to show results of my work outside, be appreciated internationally and to create a new generation of Polish filmmakers.

Actually I have a lot of ideas which certainly will be good material to create new films. Currently I am working at short dance film titled ‘Run! (Dance Steps Come!)’ planned as feature film but with dose of experiment stuff and improvisation. It will be about story between contemporary and modern dance.

Apparently different genres but creating coherence. All will be mixed with secretly, mystic tone.

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sabine molenaar “

Sabine Molenaar's works are a whirlwind of provocative imagery, tantalizing storylines, and nonlinear structures. After sold out and awardwinning performances in Europe over the last year, she has prepared a cinematographic version of her virtuosistic play “That’s it”

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Sabine Molenaar's works are a whirlwind of provocative imagery, tantalizing storylines, and nonlinear structures. Former Peeping Tom dancer, she founded Sandman (BE) in 2012. That’s It, the first solo piece from Sandman company, aroused great interest in the contemporary art scene and won the award for Strongest female talent at Theater aan zee in Oostend, Belgium. After sold out and award-winning performances in Europe over the last year, she has prepared a cinematographic version of the play, in collaboration with the talented cinematographer Lisa De Boeck. That's it is a film marked by a stunning balance between dreamlike atmospheres and natural environments.

Sabine eschews traditional storytelling and opts instead for an associative, almost surrealist methodology: in an Art Deco room we see her body as a series of fragments dangling on the string of the inner sensation of self, and lacking the wholeness that the Self-Other relationship would produce. Sabine, we want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for That’s It? I've always been fascinated by dreams. As i remember many of my dreams and as well have periods of bad sleeping which makes me wander on the border of reality and fantasy I question sometimes what is actually real or how much are we in control. If maybe we are constantly looking in a haze. Or that we're all just projecting on our private screen what we are seeing, but that there's maybe something behind that screen. I am interested in the expansion of the time and that of space that often occurs in dreams, these disorders zones carry within them the seeds of all metamorphoses.

Both in the play and the film, 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. How did you get started in performing arts?

As a little girl i was already jumping and asking for dance classes so i started at age of five. When i was ten i continued with a classical pre-education for eight years and after that i finished 4 years at the Modern Theatre Dance at Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten. After those twelve years of education, i quit dance. I didn't seem to get inspired by the possible paths that were to follow from there and i went for a long travel in Asia were i started to develop my interest for the yoga philosophy and practice. I see that period as very important 'reformatting of my system'. I learned to work with my body in a different way and more aware about transformation of energy and about what i would like to share. After a couple of month i came back with the wish to dance again but with my aims and visions sharpened.

I moved to Belgium and started working for Peeping Tom. A wonderful company in which i did feel artistically free and where your individual, authentic strength was supported and got the playground to deepen it.

In your film the isolation of the female figure at the center of the frame is a way of cutting it out of any narrative relation that would ascribe to it a fixed meaning. In this sense, the contrast between the interior architecture and the human figure assumes a fundamental role in your work : can you comment this particular aspect of the cinematographic version of That’s It? I was very lucky to have a residency, given by the 4Culture Association (Bucharest) Jardin d’Europe, Culture Programme of the European Union, in a studio of the amazing theatre of Bucharest: Sala Palatului. The whole atmosphere and the space inspired me for the dramaturgy and it gave the possibility for some stunning images. As I was working with different perception of time and space, for example,

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Sabine Molenaar / That’s it Subtitolos, Photo by Nauan Barros Photo by Lisa De Boeck, All rights reserved

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Photo by Paul Vernon

the immense empty theatre was helping to make the creature in a state of wandering around and being lost and the small elevator was creating a more suffocating situation.

All was emphasizing the surreal atmosphere in the dreamlike world in which the character is wandering around and entering different levels or states. So it was very inspiring for both camera and dance work.

The space just invited to have the onepoint perspective shot, which Lisa de Boeck likes to use as well, and as a result gave wonderful pictures.

It's an invitation for the viewer to surrender to this associative fantasy world.

In That’s It drama is stripped down to its essential elements, achieving an astonishing fluidity in storytelling.

Could you take us through your

creative process when starting a new project?

I quote my dramaturge Gina Șerbănescu (Romenia, Bucharest) that wrote about my performance with the title ‘The body as a state of mind’: “(...) the body presented in her performance is not the flesh-and-blood entity opposed to the immaterial soul or to the impossible-tobe-physically-perceived mind.

The corporeal reality is turned into a mode of existence that transfigures it into something very similar to a state of mind, in fact the body itself acts as such and therefore we can no longer fix our perception into the field of separations between the physical substance and the thinking/feeling one.”

When i'm working around a certain theme, there is several ways for me to get to some expressions. The sub themes will

make me come up with a (theatrical) situation or action or a certain emotion that i want to represent, which puts me in a certain state and the body will express a certain movement. It could be a very simple or small movement, but then it's all about diving in there and exploring it and tripping on it. Also i like using images.

Images that i search which connect or represent for me somehow what i have in mind and those images trigger movement.

But most important is that you really become that what you want to represent.

That's why it's so important for me to work with state of mind and then the body follows. If your mind is connected with your body you can dive deeper and project further.

We have recognized a touch of Francis Bacon in your surreal imagery. Can you tell us your biggest

influences in art and how they have affected your work?

I deeply appreciate Francis Bacon and I see why you link it to my work, because I use the distorted body in my work a lot to create this surreal imagery. Although I can't say that I'm influenced by him. I'm more influenced by cinema for example (eg Andrei Tarkosvky, Bergman, Lars von Trier, David Lynch) In dance, my biggest influence was Peeping Tom. They were the first one for me to like my unusual body and to offer me tools and a playground to research it differently and also to have a more intuitive approach of creation which i found was more organic and fitting with my own nature. And, even though I unfortunately have never seen a live show, i love the work of Pina Bausch.

We had the chance to watch at 42nd International Theatre Festival of la

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Photo by Terri Florido

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Biennale di Venezia Peeping Tom's internationally successful 32, rue Vandenbranden: how did your early work differ from what you're doing now? What progression or changes have you seen in your performances?

What i feel is that my direction goes more and more away from form.

Meaning, i never start by searching for a beautiful movement or form of the body, but always from a state of mind.

For me, the mind and body is 2 different things, but go hand in hand together. As i said, i like to trip on a certain state, which can maybe give small movement, which then later i pull to the extreme. It just important where it came from, then the rest will follow. For example if my mind has trouble to arrive in the state that i would need to be to do certain material, my body would have problems to achieve the movement, because i demand a lot from my body. I love to work with distorting the body because i like playing with this reality and illusion.

If you think you understand the image, to deconstruct it or to transform it in such a way that the mind is confused. I definitely like to confuse the rational part of the mind, because i believe then you need to surrender to a more intuitive approach. I try to apply it on myself as well as on the public.

You are currently preparing ‘Touch me’, which will premiere on the 17th of March 2015 at Festival Cement. Could you introduce our readers to this solo?

"Touch me" gives us a unique view into a dreamlike universe of a familiar, yet anonymous being. It seems it has come to terms with itself, but it continues to be conflicted with itself. In a bizarre series of images, burdened slowness as well as tranquil explosions of energy are depicted.

The many facets of “intimacy” are the guideline: the tenderness, the hardness, the vulnerability, the loneliness, but also the beauty and the solace of it. What does intimacy do to yourself, to your body, to your selfimage? And what happens if your intimacy clashes with someone else’s?

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"Touch me" sketches that quest in a chain of metamorphoses. Or the search(ing) itself as essence, in the fringe where you dance with your shadow, and where being naked flows seamlessly into being masked.

In no time atmosphere, image, time and space switch. A non-taboo play with form and content that is contagious and mind-blowing at the same time. This way, “Touch me� also shows the opposite of things, and flirts with the borders of illusion and disillusion.

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

After the premiere i will be in Montreal to start a research project with a video artist from there, Olivia Boudreau. We are one of

the pairs of MIXOFFs taking place in the 2015 OFFTA and Ailleurs en Folie Mtl/Qc and will finish the project in Mons (BE) in september. But next to that and performing the 2 solos, i will again make a movie version of the new solo. Because i really feel the drive to continue with making dance films!

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anna garner “

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Photo by courtesy of Lassina Badolo

Anna Garner (b. 1982) undermines our knowledge in order to reintroduce us to the adventure of knowing. Her works result from the processes of reflection that reveal the psychology of body. Her unique visionary imagery mixes traditional notions of surrealism with a deep interest in performance and complex psychological models. We are glad to present her work for this Videofocus Edition. Anna, could you introduce our readers to your video Surrogates?

Surrogates is part of my series, Proof and Permutations. I exhibited this series as a triptych of three videos; Surrogates is the center of the triptych, on the left Lineage, and on the right Sequential Interactions.

Each video depicts a physically challenging performance that similarly conveys Sisyphean effort and intimate interactions with inanimate objects. The inanimate objects serve as stand-ins and placeholders; my interaction and attempts at proximity with the objects affect a desire for contact and interruption of solitary pursuit.

The performances are both sympathetic and antagonistic. In Surrogates I interact with two cinderblocks hung from thick metal chains; with my cheeks pressed against their sides I attempt without success to push the two bricks apart. Using areas of my body associated with intimacy and tenderness, face, cheek, and chest, I draw attention to a desire for closeness. Yet this want is returned with scraping, hardness and rough surface to vie with. The space between the bricks becomes a point of intimacy, as I am held between the two, unable to push them apart.

We have been really impressed by the balance you have been capable of achieving in this work between classical sensibility and pure experimentation in your video Chewing, blowing, biting: your approach to the medium is deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, you use a black blackground to suggest an intimate acting space, on the other you unravel narrative expectations. Can you comment this peculiar aspect of your work?

Subtitolos, Photo by Nauan Barros

I began my career as photographer primarily working with built studio environments and lighting; this continues to inform the way I work with video and choices I make for framing, backgrounds, lighting, etc. I am drawn towards a very clean aesthetic and using simple color, black, or white backdrops. I find that taking information away from the background and creating a clean space to film allows for the action and content to come forward, and takes the distractions away. Furthermore because the actions in my work are very experimental and at times chaotic or risky, the simplicity allows for an arena of control that I believe creates more balance in the work.

Chewing, Blowing, Biting is a collaboration with artist Gail Dodge. In this video series we explore the boundaries of personal physical space between two people through a range of invasive and absurd actions. You suggested that the black background we use creates an intimate acting space; we kept the backgrounds minimal for that very purpose. Instead of creating narrative our intention was to focus on gesture and the subtle interplay between the two performers.

We have selected for this Videofocus edition your works In Pratfall I and II. We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your films: how did you come up with the idea for this series?

I was looking for a way to portray the body being both in and out of control; I began researching pratfall and physical comedy, watching and re-watching films

by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold and Lloyd. These pioneers of comedy perfectly executed the illusion of losing control, falling, or slipping in a way that they appeared to not know what was going to happen. We all know the stunts were rehearsed and calculated, that each actor had training in how to fall without hurting him or herself. However it was never possible to eliminate all risk; the lack of control, the fall, and the slip were at times an illusion and at times a reality.

I wanted my work to convey the

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contradiction of exerting control as a way to lose control, and the inability to discern whether or not someone is truly in control. In Pratfall I and Pratfall II I perform two falls, sawing a board in half while sitting on it, and falling off a bench that swivels when another person gets up.

With these pieces it was my intention to stretch out the moment of tension in the fall, to draw attention to the effort engaged in causing the fall, and to stunt the comedic release of laughter.

Most of your video works reveal a huge sense of absurd: like in the slapstick comedies of Buster Keaton, in every moment we have the impression that in your videos tragedy is always behind the corner. Could you introduce our readers to this fundamental concept of your art practice?

One of the things I enjoy in Buster Keaton’s movies is how the natural world and surroundings never behave as they should, walls fall down, floors cave in, stairs turn into slides, and the mundane becomes unstable and perilous. My works, Pratfall I and Pratfall II, portray actions that fluctuate between control and powerlessness and operate in a realm where the environment is precarious. As the performer I pursue risky acts, asserting my own determination toward the experience of losing myself, losing control, or letting go of my self-discipline.

In the works I want these aspects to exist simultaneously, for the potential of both certainty and uncertainty to coexist.

Your art is rich of references. We have previously mentioned the slapstick comedies of the silent era, however your visual imagery seems to be closer to Steve McQueen's early works. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your films and performance?

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Thank you for mentioning Steve McQueen I absolutely looked at his work as I was researching my series. What interests me

Photo by Paul Vernon

about his early work, Deadpan, is the way he turns an infamous comedic stunt into a solemn and contemplative act. He transforms what Buster Keaton achieved into a video that forces the viewer to think about how we consider humor, risk, and chance. In my work I similarly aim to alter the way a fall is perceived. Instead of the pratfall being immediately perceived as comedic, it becomes a device for conveying the contradiction of controlling the body to create the illusion of losing control.

For every project I work on there are different artists I look at and research.

My influences are broad, but it has always been important to me to look at artists doing performance for video. I also find that artists who are young in their careers are making the most interesting work; I really feed off of relationships with my peers and with artists I meet through doing residencies and exhibitions. Doing studio visits, assisting other artists in

their studios, and talking through what I’m doing in my own studio is what gives me the most inspiration.

You are a multi-media artist whose practice ranges from video to performance, sculpture and photography, how did you get started in experimental cinema?

I started working with video when I was in graduate school. I entered my masters’ degree in the photography department and was only making photographs.

However I was unhappy with where my photographic work was going; I seemed to be making the same images over and over. I was looking for a challenge and something new to experiment with; video made sense because of my background in photography. For a long time I had done photographic self-portraits, so I saw my performative video works as an extension of my earlier photographic series.

Eventually video became my primary studio focus and I haven’t made a still photograph in over two years.

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

My creative process is always different, but I find that most often new work emerges from the frustrations and mishaps of current work. If I am working on a project and something doesn’t seem to be working quite right I examine that and work to understand how what I’m doing can change and evolve into something else. This usually leads me to working with different mediums, researching new subjects, or testing out new parameters.

I always want to be doing something new in the studio, to find new ways to challenge myself, and new goals for where I want my work to be.

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

I have two projects I am working on right now. I am continuing my series of pratfalls and expanding it into an installation work including both sculpture and video. This summer I will be doing a residency at [nueBOX], a new artist residency in Phoenix, AZ, and will be installing and finishing the work there.

I am also starting a new video series where I pit my petite stature, 150cm and roughly 45kg; against people twice my size or larger. In these pieces I engage in comedic acts of athletic skill including chasing, tickling, tackling, and climbing on top of my larger adversaries. The works deal with size, examine the position of the underdog, and reverse the relation between my competitor and myself.

INDEPENDENT CINEMA VIDEOBIENNALE/15

ken yoshioka “ ”

The hallmark of Ken Yoshioka's cinema resides in his absolute sincerity and lack of artifice. His talent as director shows itself in the balance in the act of narration: in his work the narrative never interrupts the continuity of the gaze. In his refined debut film A week, drama is stripped down to its essential elements to introduce gaps and temps mort. From the first scenes we were impressed by his indifference to decors: A week features an interior style of filmmaking close to Tarkovsky's notion of editing subservient to the time-thrust.

We are pleased to present Ken Yoshioka for this year's Videofocus Edition. Ken, how did you get into filmmaking?

When I was 6 years old, I saw Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg) with my father in a big theater in Tokyo. That was my first experience in seeing foreign cinema. I didn’t have the slightest idea how people made it. I even imagined this was a real thing. Jurassic Park put visions of filmmaking into my mind strongly for sure, but I was not into films at that point. I saw my father was always watching black and white movies at home but I didn’t watch them so much. I began to be interested in them again when I was in university. I spent time watching some directors' films such as Bong Joon Ho, Ozu Yasujiro, Leos Carax, Jerzy Skolimowski and Edward Yang.

At that point, I couldn’t think about working in any other field than filmmaking.

After 17 years since I watched Jurassic Park, I went to New York to do and learn filmmaking and cinema. I watched so many films in New York. Watching 4 films at least in a day was my new lifestyle. So I got to know more filmmakers’ work such as Tarkovsky, Bela Tarr, Jia Zhangke, Tsai Ming Liang, Michael haneke and Theodoros Angelopoulos etc.

And when I was 24, my first short film A Week was made with support from many

friends, teachers and my family in Japan, thankfully.

You have a peculiar sense of time and rhythm that harkens back to an older tradition of European filmmaking. How did you develop your editing style?

I just wanted to put my ideas into the format of making this film. That’s the main reason to choose and develop this style. one of the ideas was that I wanted to capture every moment of images and sounds as much as possible which the actors and background scenery caused without cutting footage.

And I tried to direct (play around with) the movements of parts of actors’ bodies, actors’ positions (blocking) and the relationships between actors and props as layers in one wide shot.

Another idea was that each shot represents a photograph (a gaze) which is very connected to the story. The idea of tableaux in Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard) inspired me a lot. I thought it would be enjoyable even I didn’t move the camera and position with one shot and without chopping and connecting shots. Of course, I liked the easiness of editing too .

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

This film was inspired by the Japan earthquake of 2011. When it happened, I was about to leave from Japan to New York.

After a year passed, I read the following interview which inspired me: Q: I don`t want to come back to my ordinary life because I can`t forget my closest friend who died of last disaster. I have no idea what to do.

A: You should hold the ceremony to remember your friend once daily by yourself. If so, you can live your life after that without necessity to remember your friend.”

Subtitolos, Photo by Nauan Barros

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Photo by Paul Vernon

I didn't want to create a film to just address that disaster or create an excessively sentimental narrative. I just wanted the short film to make people who regret something or have a lot on their minds go just a little one step forward. I thought we had to decide what the essential problem is for us now and what we could do for the future of our children. So I decided to make this film. That was so simple.

After all, this film shows the relationship between us and our memories.

Your careful positioning of figures within the frame reminds us of Tsai Ming Liang's early films. When you write a scene, do you keep in mind the place of the actors on the screen?

I’m so happy to hear that. I wrote this script in 2 days first. And I drew a story board (a blocking board) for 2 weeks. It shows you that I was more careful with

images than dialogs. I described the actors' blocking and body movements as detailed as possible beforehand.

And I went back to rewrite the script according to the drawing.

Shooting on wide lenses has become a lost art. Your recurrent use of static wide angle shots is a fundamental element of your cinematographic language. How did you develop your cinematography style?

I wanted to capture everything in front of me (a camera) and also I wanted to make it as simple as possible. I didn’t want to rebuild the moment in one scene with editing many shots. I was a bit tired of correcting many shots to make a film at that time.

I felt I should make a film as a film and I should make a film that I really want.

Then I had to think about the way in which to make my ideal pieces. I got

the idea of wide shots, no camera movements and one shot per one scene, and I found out it works with my ideas very well. I know it’s very stressful for some people who expect something different. But I also knew Angeloplos, Roy Anderson, Tsai, Manoel de Oliveira, Tarkovsky, Bela Tarr, Jia Zhangke and even the Lumière brothers made great works which have long and wide shots. So I followed those great directors with courage. I talked with my director of photography, Patrick X. Liu. I just asked him to shoot wide shots with big depths of field and no shadows with very soft light. He did great job.

He composed them beautifully and follows the rules perfectly.

was…hmmm… sort of everything, I guess, because it was my first attempt to make a film. But everything went well. In pre-production and production, of course we had some troubles and problems but they were solved smoothly thanks to my producer, Cheena Mishra and Ads.

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

And in terms of funding, I was supported by many friends, teachers and family in Japan and USA. I still really appreciate them. The actors were very motivated and we could communicate well before shooting and on set too. We even used one of the main character(Frank van Putten)’s car as a prop. In postproduction, I met a great jazz musician, Hironori Momoi in a party who composed the music for me. And my friend whom I met here introduced his friend who did sound design and mixing. So I was lucky.

It took almost one year to finish it up.

The most challenging thing

Your sense of geometry does not apply only to composition and

Two stills from “Chaos” by Taekwang Yasu Lee Cinematography by Ken Yoshioka,

cinematography: from the first time we watched A week we were impressed with your crystalline story telling. In your cinema each shot is carefully orchestrated to work within the overall structure. What’s your writing process like?

I wrote a flat story about this first. It was just normal and maybe a boring structure, I think. And based on that, I put more details on it. I imagined everything which happens and is shown in front of a camera as much as possible, such as color, props, actors, positions, cars, back ground, white materials, abstract prop (sand on a table), sounds Everything that you can see in this film has a meaning because I put and composed them intentionally. Then I found out there are several layers and relationships in one screen and between each shot.

So it was like a maze at the beginning for me to envision it as if this “Death and living” theme is also like a maze.

A week has been screened at several prestigious festivals, like the Brooklyn Film Festival. How did your experience making that film, and its subsequent success on the festival circuit influence the way you approach your current projects?

My experience with this film is like knocking on the door of the filmmaking world. I got to know how the film festivals are and what kind of people are in festivals etc… I know where I should send my film too. I can save my budget a lot. And also A Week is like my business card right now. People can tell my taste as soon as they watch it. A Week was mostly sent to American film festivals. I’d like to send my new films to European film festivals next time.

The nostalgic atmospheres of your cinema seems to take at heart Jonas Mekas's teachings " When I am filming everything is determined by my memory, my past, so that this 'direct' filming becomes also a mode of reflection". A week reminds us of the films by Tsai Ming Liang: who among international artists influenced your work?

At that time, I was influenced by so many film directors. So it’s very hard for me to choose specific one. In a different field from film world, I’ve been most influenced by Shogo Ota, Japanese playwright - director. One of my favorite plays of his is Afternoon Light, 1986. Honestly I’ve never seen his play in theater. I just saw some of them by DVD and read his scripts and essays His radical way of thinking which put into his style of works gave me a lot of ideas and courage to make my new works. I don’t know about him

and his thought perfectly yet. I’m still struggling with knowing his vision that keeps influencing me day by day. And also Osamu Dazai is my favorite writer.

His discerning words remind me welledited film such as Leos Carax.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Ken, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for Ken Yoshioka?

My next project is making a feature film. I’m finishing a script right now. the story is about a few people who believe(want) strongly they can be someone different who they truly are somewhere in a future. There are some strange and interesting characters in it.

And I hope I can make it in an Asian country. I don’t know if I will use the same style for my next film. But I’ll always remember that I should put my ideas and thoughts into the style and way to make film anyways.

EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA

Arnaud Khayadjanian “

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The films of Arnaud Khayadjanian are unique in that they deliberately announce themselves as artifice, and yet they achieve an intense psychological realism. In Bad Girl he attempts to tease out the various ways in which mainstream cinema has infected our collective memories, focusing on the femme fatale clichè.

Arnaud, we want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for Bad Girl?

My actress friend, Mathilde Roux, gave me a play named “Cours Sourds”, literally 'deaf hearts', to read. It's a very realistic text about a group of teenagers, written by Laura Desprein. While reading it, a monologue by one teenager caught my attention because of its purity and brutality. It's like a cry in the night.

Based on this monologue I wrote the screenplay, adding a dreamlike dimension, especially by means of the creation of the imaginary 'Monster with five heads' that haunts the young girl. I wanted the screenplay, rooted in reality, to cohabit with completely unreal imagery.

In your film the voice of the main

actress is post-synchronized: in this way, you highlight the contrast between pictures and sound, achieving an estrangement effect reminding us of the films by Alain Robbe-Grillet and Michel Fano's experimental soundtracks. Could you introduce our readers to this aspect of Bad Girl?

The voice of the main actress is postsynchronized. The intention is to create a distance, a veil between the body and speech. The post-synchronization participates in the surreal aspect of my film. This voice, imposed on a body by means of post-synchronization, seems to float in the air. The viewer immediately becomes unsure of the accord between these noises and the image, to the extent that a sort of distrust seems to arise between image and sound.

How did you get started in filmmaking?

I didn't know about films when I was a child. I grew up in a small village without any movie theaters. It was only when I was 20 and studying in the UK that I discovered in situ the social realism of Ken Loach. Back in France, I studied film theory at the Sorbonne, where the

lecturers are obsessed by French ‘Nouvelle Vague’ and the great classics. Although I admire these films very much, I wanted to discover new things. So I left university to make my first short film, Lost Horizons, in Corsica.

Even though I don't think the film was a great success, the experience made me want to continue making films. Two years later, I filmed Bad Girl.

Your art is rich of references: we have previously mentioned the French filmmaker Alain Robbe Grillet, yet your visual imagery seems to be closer to Lynch's cinema, in particular to the surreal atmospheres of Blue Velvet.

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

Right now my biggest influence is James Turrel, an American artist whose main means of expression are light and space. I drew a lot of inspiration from him for the studio scenes in Bad Girl. James Turrel is a madman! A seventy-year-old madman! In

1979, he bought a volcanic crater in Arizona called the Roden Crater. He transformed it into a massive planetarium for the naked eye, dedicated to the contemplation of celestial phenomena. People like this fascinate me.

In terms of cinema, the last film that really made an impression on me was Under the Skin by Jonathan Glazer. The scene where the baby is crying on the beach traumatized me. The studio scenes are incredible, the scenes in the truck with Scarlett Johannsen, filmed by hidden cameras, are brilliant.

Your cinematography reveals a stunning balance between dreamlike atmospheres and natural environments.

How did you develop your shooting style?

The past few years in France have been all about naturalism. The trend is to film nonprofessional actors by following them around with a shoulder-mount camera to create a film that is 'true', in the style of the

Dardenne brothers. Although I respect this kind of cinema, I have to admit that it bores me. What's the point of making fiction films if it's only to reproduce our meagre reality? I prefer directors who dare to transcend reality, those who reinterpret what they see every day with their own vision and sensibility.

One could speak of magical realism – I often refer to 'stylized realism' when I speak to my technicians. Making a film is lying, I like the artifice… So it would seem that I like lying!

You are currently working on “Stony Paths”, a full-lenght documentary inspired by the story of your Armenian great-grandparents: could you introduce our readers to this project?

I have been working on Stony Paths for three years. The film was inspired by the story of my great-grandparents. They survived the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

My great-grandfather was saved by a

peasant and my great-grandmother was hidden by a Turkish family.

Their story becomes the basis for an examination of the transmission of memory as well as family secrets. I shot the film in only ten days, in Anatolia, in the heart of the spectacular landscapes you may have come to know from the films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The film will be released in April 2015.

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

Thank you! I am busy writing my two next films, a short film titled Arshak about the unlikely meeting of a marginalized young man and his cousin in the Armenian community. I'm also working on a full-length film, a road movie that takes place in France, Syria, Georgia, Turkey and Armenia. A musical trip trough spectacular landscapes!

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EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA

Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar Romero

VIDEOFOCUSBIENNALE/15

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Photo by David Cass

Gonzaga Gómez-Cortáar Romero's work focuses on the passage, duration and experience of time. In his experimental film A ras (Almost touching) he creates deeply contemplative moods that seems to transform figure and place into a transcendent time-space continuum.

Gonzaga fills his delicate, contemplative films with metonymies to achieve a dense emotional complex.

Gonzaga, how did you get started in filmmaking?

I’ve always considered film a window from which we can observe the world and understand others’ interpretations and versions of reality. The idea of manufacturing a reality in order to try and approach the actual reality has always fascinated me and that’s what brought me to filmmaking. During my undergraduate degree in Audiovisual Communication at the University of the Basque Country I had the opportunity to thoroughly explore the creation process of filmmaking. I also spent a year studying Cinema in Paris at the Sorbonne Nouvelle and their theoretical approach to filmmaking was

very useful in relation to my understanding of the possibilities of cinematographic language and its evolution throughout history. In the past few years I have collaborated in several short fiction and documentary films and I’ve made various commercial videos. However, until recently, my art practice has been focused mainly in still photography, where I have found and developed my own visual language.

In 2014 I started broadening this language in the field of video, which allowed me to explore the relationship between light, time, space and sound. A ras is the first finished piece of this new phase of my practice. an action that is familiar to many people, therefore, by showing this action with a close-up, I aim to make the viewer connect with the action and take him to his own memories.

The use of extreme close-ups is important to you in your exploration of the sensuality of your materials, reminding us of Kieślowski's cinema.

Could you comment this peculiar aspect of your cinematography?

A ras is a sensorial film. When I shot it I wanted to depict the way I perceived one particular moment, during a summer afternoon. The close-ups I created highlight all the elements in which my senses focused during that time: the faces of four people I know well, the cards, the grass, the water…

My close-ups are also a tool to express intimacy: they place the viewer close enough to be almost touching the subject.

All the shots in A ras are an extension of my own sight, showing the close relationship I have with the four protagonists.

Through the close-ups I also focus on actions. In A ras there are four people playing a card game and this is shown through a series of shots where we see just cards or hands with cards; these are images that practically any viewer has already in his or her mind, it’s an action that is familiar to many people, therefore, by showing this action with a close-up, I aim to make the viewer connect with the action and take him to his own memories.

Equally, by showing only details, the closeups make us wonder what’s beyond the shot. They can create a question in the viewer’s mind, an enigma. A ras doesn’t show clearly the space where the four characters are, which makes you feel uncertain about where they are and who or what surrounds them. The close-up hides all these things.

We find impressive your use of temps mort: that gives the viewer a strong sense of emptiness, rather than the manipulative approach of most Hollywood productions. Most of your shots have no doubt an ephemeral quality: you create entire scenarios out of small, psychologically charged moments. Could you introduce our readers to your peculiar vision of time and memory in cinema?

Time is intrinsically linked to the significance of a shot. The sense of emptiness in A ras is not only given by the temps mort of the shots but also by the sound. In my film the sound never corresponds to the images. There are four

people, but we never hear them. When we see the water, we can’t hear it. And the people we hear at the beginning in the background vanish. The sound, the quietness, tells us that the space is progressively empty and that, probably, the four protagonists aren’t there anymore.

Everything is a memory, and the film is entirely a flash-back in itself. And, like with any memory, in A ras the feeling given by the images is what remains rather than the actual succession of events.

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

In 2014 I started taking footage where I looked for the same kind of light and atmosphere that are present in my still photography. Soon I found that the combination of light, movement and sound could provide really interesting results, give depth to my work and open new avenues for my practice. This realisation provoked me to film A ras. Before shooting it, I was lucky enough to experience and contemplate the location on various occasions. The connection to the location, to the place, is central to my work and it’s reflected on my film.

Your art is rich of references. We have previously mentioned the Polish master Kieslowski: who among international artists and directors influenced your work?

A great deal of my inspiration comes from paintings. My photography has often been compared to Johannes Vermeer’s work: because of the way I use light and the way I compose images of daily life. But I’ve also been greatly inspired by the way artists like Edward Hopper or Francisco de Zurbarán use light. In the terrain of film, the Spanish director Víctor Erice, with his few but reflective and painterly films, had a big impact on my work, both aesthetically and conceptually. In the Spirit of the Beehive and The South he films children and small details of the daily lives of the main

characters in a very delicate and naturalistic manner.

In his films emotions are embodied in banal activities. Especially in The South, Erice creates images as if they were chiaroscuro paintings, achieving an enigmatic but realistic atmosphere by shooting mostly in natural light. All this results in a poetic and reflective film enhanced by the length of the shots. This clearly possesses a parallel with my own work. Two of Erice’s main subjects are the passage of time and isolation, two elements that I explore in my own practice.

Also, the collaborations between Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and the director Terrence Malick have influenced my work, but mainly their film The Tree of Life. This film is shot in available light, the camera is often positioned almost touching the ground or the actors and the subjects the film focuses on: memory, childhood and the passage of time. Another filmmaker I must

mention is Carl Theodor Dreyer. In relation to my close-up shots, it was upon seeing his silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc that I learned how powerful a close-up of a face can be. The Danish director shot most of the film exclusively in close detail, emphasising the actors' facial features and expressions. The magnetism, the hypnotic qualities of Dreyer’s shots in this film and the subsequent response they induce in the viewer are something I aim to instil in my own work. On a different level, and from a conceptual perspective, I’m also interested in artist James Turrell’s work, which is concerned with light and space, creating artworks that engage viewers with the limits of human perception.

Besides your work as a cinematographer and film editor, you are currently Director of Communications at ‘Joya: arte + ecología’: could you introduce our readers to this project?

Since 2010 I’ve been part of Joya: arte + ecología: an arts organisation located in the Sierra María-Los Vélez Natural Park, in Vélez Blanco (Almería, Andalucía) in Spain. Joya was founded

by British artists and ecologists Simon and Donna Beckmann. The organisation is based in Cortijada Los Gázquez, where the organisation develops most of its activities. Our principal aim is to facilitate, through production and collaboration, contemporary art and artists whose work manifests a discourse with the environment and sustainability.

One of our main activities is our residency programme, which brings contemporary artists from all over the world to work in this unique, isolated and yet to be explored spot of southern Spain. We also receive groups of Fine Art students from the UK and Spain who come with their tutors to develop their own work in this environment.

We develop a wide range of projects with an environmental agenda, including our trans-disciplinary project Sistemas Efímeros, which seeks to restore an ancient water catchment

system and involves both artists and scientists. We celebrate the culture and history of rural Spain and we create and encourage cultural activity within the Los Vélez area, engaging the local rural community through international events like our yearly Encuentro Internacional de Arte y Ecología (International Congress of Art and Ecology). We collaborate with institutions like the University of Granada and the Mediterranean Network of Forestry Research and Innovation (MENFRI) to name a few.

Joya: arte + ecología is a unique organisation developing cultural projects which do make a difference and engage people. All this is thanks to a talented and hardworking team lead by Simon and Donna that includes artist David Cass, Alicia García-Andrés (research collaborator at the Museo Nacional del Prado), expert on local history Andrés Fajardo and artist and explorer Andrew Welch. Being part of this inspiring group of contemporary thinkers has enriched my own work enormously and allowed me to collaborate with great artists and scientists from throughout the world.

Can you describe your experience in India from a filmmaker's point of view?

I travelled last December around Southern India photographing and filming in different locations. India is a complex, rich, fascinating country. A universe unto itself. People are very important both in my photographic and filmed practice, and most of the Indians I met were delighted to contribute to my work. I’m interested in peoples’ daily lives and rituals, and India’s authenticity provides this generously. Therefore, it’s a place where I found constant inspiration. I have filmed and photographed people working, people on the streets, people passing by, trying to capture at least part of the essence of this vast country.

The landscape and the colours are unique and I was surprised to find a very distinctive light, one that I chased throughout the country, determined to capture in my images – a light that I had never before encountered – which was likely a product of humidity, but offered a surreal, pale effervescent radiance,

and introduced new tones to my photographic palette.

Gonzaga, we wish you all the best with your filmmaker career. What's next for you?

I am currently working on all the material I photographed and filmed in India. Some of it will be part of ongoing projects and some will result in a series of short films and photographs.

Soon I’m getting involved in a documentary film project started by my colleagues David Cass and Andrés Fajardo that explores the lives, memories and traditions of people in the Comarca de los Vélez, Almería, Spain.

Next year I’m planning two exhibitions with Joya: arte + ecología colleagues, apart from organising the Encuentro Internacional de Arte Ecología #2, and participating in conferences at the Reina Sofía Museum and Matadero Madrid.

My film A ras started a new phase in my artistic practice and during 2015 it will evolve and gain complexity and depth.

This will result in more experimental pieces but also in installations where my films will acquire a new dimension. heir help in shaping other artists' ideas.

FASHION CINEMA WOMENSBIENNALE/15

julie hong

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We are honoured to host for this year’s Edition the work by Julie Hong, a talented fashion filmmaker artist: her exquisite film "Fashion in motion" has been recently honored with the first prize at the Elle Canada Film competition. As Mark Gould writes, surrealist art is desire made solid. Surrealism might be a subjective practice, but by definition it is also a hyperrealist one. In Julie's cinema each shot is carefully orchestrated to work within the overall structure, achieving a perfect balance between surreal and clinical cinematography. Julie, how did you get started in fashion cinema?

Thank you for featuring “Fashion in motion” and recognizing the thought put into the work. Fashion is a wonderful, artistic industry. An important aspect of presenting the art of fashion is through audio-visual storytelling, which is the part that intrigues me the most. Artists are always inspired by other works of art- I am no exception, and when I see other peoples’ compelling works I am inspired to create my own artwork with theirs.

For a while I’ve been interested in capturing moments, but now I am interested in creating moments or heightening the aesthetic of the particular moment. In that sense maybe the work is closest to hyperrealismalthough- I am not sure if I consider the work, or my personal style, associated with any “- ism”s.

I read somewhere a while ago that Michael Chabon commented on Wes Anderson’s style as - “not realist, surrealist, or magic realist” but “fabu(list)”. Wouldn’t it be great if I could join that circle of fabulists!

We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you

come up with the idea for Fashion in Motion?

I was inspired by a wide array of digital presentations. The digital platform offers a new dimension and exciting experiential opportunities that just cannot be physically explored on print. I just thought it would be fun to see photo editorials in magazines come to life and to have movement. Hence the title: “Fashion in Motion”.

Fashion in Motion has been realized thanks to the collaboration of the talented DoP Howard Wan and Peter Paik (Camera assistant), who did an excellent job using a flexible and professional tool like the Red Camera to create a seductive atmosphere. Can you describe your collaboration process?

Thank you for recognizing them. Howard is a very talented cinematographer and it was a very fun collaboration. We have been very lucky to have attended the same University (Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada) for Media Production (also known as RTA for Radio and Television Arts). He was a known DOP in the program with a background in creatives and telling intriguing visual stories. We had chatted previously about collaborating and the perfect opportunity came up. I feel very privileged to have had him on board.

Your film is dominated by a strong presence of white: besides the reference to the white of paper, this choice seems to heighten and alter individuals' experiences of space and time. Could you introduce our readers to this peculiar concept of your work?

It made sense to keep the background as minimal as possible to emphasize the movement of the models and their

Subtitolos, Photo by Nauan Barros

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Photo by Paul Vernon

presence. I wanted the theme of each model and his/her outfit to be realized, thus the blank space played a role of a canvas to house this collection of themes. I love good art direction and sometimes this means an ornate mix and match of designs, but some other times it can also mean simplicity at its purest.

The rhythmical element is extremely important in your work.

By definition cinema is rhythm and movement, gesture and continuity, however rarely in mainstream or narrative cinema we assist to such a joyful dance like in your film.

How do you conceive the rhythm of your works?

I appreciate your kind words.

Even before I knew the outfits, or the song, or the models, I knew I absolutely wanted this to be a rhythmical piece, both visually and audibly.

The rhythm certainly plays an important role in “Fashion in Motion”, but the weight of its importance in all aspects of life is equally substantial.

Rhythm and good pacing is something that is intuitively good to us. For this particular project it made sense to heighten and maximize that.

I think “Fashion in Motion”, using the same BPM and using the same theme of white background, transitions from high-energy dancing mannequins to a calmly standing doll seamlessly. In this way, the musical rhythm is extremely important but the visual rhythm and the art of editing is also very instrumental.

Let’s speak about influences. We have mentioned William Klein, yet your style is very far from the visual imagery of the Americanborn French photographer and filmmaker. Have any artists from the older generation in-spired you?

Truthfully I don’t have any artists from the older generation in particular that inspires me. I have many artists in my book of inspiration that I love to draw from for different projects and different approaches, but not one to definitively source from. If I must drop names, I am obsessed with the filming style of Wes Anderson (symmetry, colour coordination, a level of sophistication, and some light humour) and Karl Lagerfeld (portrayal of class and elegance, simple and stylish, well colour coordinated, and interestingly narrated) but they are not from the older generation.

I am inspired by many things, and from the most unconventional and unlikely places too. God is the ultimate and the oldest artist and he inspires me with the beauty of nature every day.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Julie. What's next for Julie Hong?

By the end of the summer I will have completed my Master’s degree in Media Production which is very exciting- but the journey towards achieving this degree is far more exciting than the degree itself because I am learning new things and extending my capabilities. Right now I am exploring the ways fashion can be presented on digital media platforms by experimenting with bullet time technology, which is something I have never tried before.

Outside of my learning zone, I love collaborating with designers, art directors, and artists to realize the potential of audio-visual exhibition. I am also staying in touch with local designers for future collaborations so that’s something to look forward to!

In the long run: I hope to keep making and sharing things that are pleasing to people and to me.

We are honoured to host for this year’s Edition the work by Julie Hong, a talented fashion filmmaker artist: her exquisite film "Fashion in motion" has been recently honored with the first prize at the Elle Canada Film competition. As Mark Gould writes, surrealist art is desire made solid.

Surrealism might be a subjective practice, but by definition it is also a hyperrealist one. In Julie's cinema each shot is carefully orchestrated to work within the overall structure, achieving a perfect balance between surreal and clinical cinematography. Julie, how did you get started in fashion cinema?

Thank you for featuring “Fashion in motion” and recognizing the thought put into the work. Fashion is a wonderful, artistic industry. An important aspect of presenting the art of fashion is through audio-visual storytelling, which is the part that intrigues me the most. Artists are always inspired by other works of art- I am no exception, and when I see other peoples’ compelling works I am inspired to create my own artwork with theirs.

For a while I’ve been interested in capturing moments, but now I am interested in creating moments or heightening the aesthetic of the particular moment. In that sense maybe the work is closest to hyperrealism- although- I am not sure if I consider the work, or my personal style, associated with any “- ism”s.

I read somewhere a while ago that Michael Chabon commented on Wes Anderson’s style as - “not realist, surrealist, or magic realist” but “fabu(list)”. Wouldn’t it be great if I could join that circle of fabulists!

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

I was inspired by a wide array of digital presentations. The digital platform offers a new dimension and exciting experiential opportunities that just cannot be physically explored on print. I just thought it would be fun to see photo editorials in magazines come to life and to have movement. Hence the title: “Fashion in Motion”.

Fashion in Motion has been realized thanks to the collaboration of the talented DoP Howard Wan and Peter Paik (Camera assistant), who did an excellent job using a flexible and professional tool like the Red Camera to create a seductive atmosphere. Can you describe your collaboration process?

Thank you for recognizing them. Howard is a very talented cinematographer and it was a very fun collaboration. We have been very lucky to have attended the same University (Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada) for Media Production (also known as RTA for Radio and Television Arts). He was a known DOP in the program with a background in creatives and telling intriguing visual stories. We had chatted previously about collaborating and the perfect opportunity came up. I feel very privileged to have had him on board.

Your film is dominated by a strong presence of white: besides the reference to the white of paper, this

choice seems to heighten and alter individuals' experiences of space and time. Could you introduce our readers to this peculiar concept of your work?

It made sense to keep the background as minimal as possible to emphasize the movement of the models and their presence. I wanted the theme of each model and his/her outfit to be realized, thus the blank space played a role of a canvas to house this collection of themes. I love good art direction and sometimes this means an ornate mix and match of designs, but some other times it can also mean simplicity at its purest.

The rhythmical element is extremely important in your work. By definition cinema is rhythm and movement, gesture and continuity, however rarely in mainstream or narrative cinema we assist to such a joyful dance like in your film. How do you conceive the rhythm of your works?

I appreciate your kind words.

Even before I knew the outfits, or the song,

INDEPENDENT CINEMA VIDEOBIENNALE/15

paul vernon “ ”

Photo by courtesy of Lassina Badolo

Paul Vernon's masterly use of filmic elements creates the impression of the unrepeatability of each shot, providing the viewer with detailed images revealing the intimate feelings of his subjects. His short documentary A Film

By Abigail, suspended between the timelessness of traditional portraiture and a radical filmmaking style, has received warm reviews and has been recently selected in the official selection for the London Short Film Festival screening at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA, London) - a BAFTA-recognised festival. Paul, how did you get started in cinema?

I'd pinpoint it with Hitchcock and watching his masterpiece Rebecca (1942) when I was very young, perhaps six or seven years old.

The opening scene, a narrated dream, floats you through an ominous forest towards the low-lit house of Manderlay. Not only was this visually eye-opening, but whether I knew it not, it was an introduction to a nonlinear narrative; essentially beginning with a flashback within a dream. I felt like I was on a slow ghost train; mysteries and fears just out of reach. That sequence stuck with me, exuding cinema and escapism, thrusting me face-to-face with a great sense of existentialism as a child. For me, it must have planted a seed and I could easily summate that it's through that early exposure that lead me to not just filmmaking, but how I still retain a sense of wonder and searching for those moments where the image and tone created transcend a physical camera or flimsy screen.

At secondary school I did a lot of acting in theatre plays, but started becoming interested in being the sole-creator in control of ideas and stories. Since then, I've been dedicated to studying as a filmmaker in all my education through to my MA degree from The Northern Film School.

How did your experience making A Film

By Abigail, and its subsequent success on the festival circuit, influence the way you approached this project?

A Film By Abigail taught me of the scope in which a single piece can find itself involved.

It went to festivals aimed at children, to documentary festivals, to art galleries.

Regarding The Body Canvas, I thought about where the real audience for the work would be and who would like to have it represent them; which is when I targeted galleries' artistic open calls, specialists in video art, artistic institutions and installation open calls. All films have a path, though some aren't as easy to make the first step. The Body Canvas wasn't getting selected for dance film festivals, but had been awarded a screening at a large eclectic art exhibition called Zealous X. It was in London's Southbank and only twenty films were honoured. For some reason, maybe the twenty minute length or the content incorporating more than just dance, it was not not getting picked up by festivals but was getting well received in regard to fine art. I want the film to be screened much more, as it hasn't been seen by many audiences. Still, sometimes the harder and longer path is worth the journey, as you arrive at a better place than if it came easily.

We have been deeply impressed by the intimate atmospheres of your films, whether they are documentaries or art films. Can you describe your approach to lighting and cinematography?

The light was all non-invasive for A Film By Abigail and The Body Canvas, just the light that was available to me in any given situation. I want to convey the reality in what I'm shooting, a sincerity to the situation, even if that means a near darkness and a desperation for the light. I want to discover the subtlety of light sources out of my control; pools of light onto a face, a hand, hair, eyes. This method is somewhat risky, but gives my work an element of documentary even if I'm shooting fiction. I'm always thinking in terms of documentary anyhow, trying to generate a blur between real and fictional, to the point where I'm not even sure myself. If I'm unsure, then I've truly succeeded!

With my cinematography, if I analyse myself, I'm looking for obscurity and intimacy. I want to see new things and I want recognisable objects, people and places to become subverted. Not for the sake of it, just to explore and deliver a new image. If

Subtitolos, Photo by Nauan Barros

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Photo by Paul Vernon

the brain recognises something, but doesn't know what it's looking at (and that would go for narrative and filmmaking techniques too) then that is a goal I've succeeded in. In terms of composition, I have to stop myself getting too close - I want to enter the subject with the camera, find tangible emotions in raw form, rather than conveyed or acted saying this, I'm reminded of the camera moving into the severed ear in Blue Velvet (1986). Though recently my instincts of getting closer were totally different.

When I was shooting films in Denmark and London, I wanted to accentuate and displace through the width and capacity in the frame. Trying to keep a shot subjective but using a shot that would ultimately be viewed as objective. It's about seeing things in a new way.

I see my emphasis with camera changing and evolving, as I use different equipment and approach new subjects and environments. I need that stimulation that there's always another world to find through a lens and I'm never quite

satisfied until I've at least begun to tap into whatever that is.

In your documentary films not only do we see the people depicted as friends, the images also transmit a relaxed, intimate and playful openness. What was the most challenging thing about making this film? What was the most challenging thing about making A Film By Abigail?

Before I filmed it, I was concerned Abigail wouldn't react to me. It isn't easy being in front of the camera and being so open and fluid. When her stories and characters started coming out as I filmed, I was relieved. And I had no idea those vivid ideas of hers were there. Once it started flowing from her, I had to think on my feet as to how I could maximise it. I isolated where she was drawing, suggesting she go under the table as a secure place a child might hide and I set up the warm lamp next to her (which was mine as a baby).

Another challenge was in the edit. It didn't take very long to complete, perhaps a week, but I felt a pressure to construct it accurately. She says a lot of humorous and endearing things in the film and I was very aware that the way she was put across could potentially seem mocking. I really didn't want to try to make it funny, I wanted the audience to see her intelligence and zest for story. To show that she has such a promising and complex mind.

I was also, somewhat secretly, trying to get a message across through her. At the time working for my MA, there was much discussion on "auteur theory" and how this didn't exist, with an almost bitterness towards very individual filmmakers. I swayed back and forth as to whether you can call a filmmaker a complete author, the argument against being the sheer amount of people and minds it takes to complete a film. However, I wanted to present a child as the utter author of her story and there would be no way you can tell me she isn't an auteur. I wanted to

prove that. It's also one of the reasons the title is "A Film By Abigail", as you find this often used with films and their writer/directors.

We have selected for this Videofocus Edition your dance film The Body Canvas, an impressive collaboration with the talented Danish choreographer and performer Julie Schmidt Andreasen. How did you first meet her, and how did her interartistic experience influence your filmmaking process?

I met her online on the IdeasTap website, responding to an advertisement she had posted wanting a "filmmaker for painting and dance with documentary experience" (or words to that effect!). We e-mailed and have been collaborating ever since.

I've always been interested in dance and my family has always been a part of it; my Mum and Grandparents used to do a lot of performance and my sister was a ballet dancer. It isn't easy to find the right

components for a dance film, so when the opportunity arose, I jumped for it.

It was really incredible for me to see this advert of Julie's. My reading at the time was focussed on painting and painters (such as Friedrich, Turner‌) with a mindset that I could put myself in the position of the first ever filmmakers who only had paintings to base their inspiration on and gain stimulus from. As well as observing compositions, colours and storytelling through the medium. To have this element in there, was too good to be true; the mixture of dance, painting and documentary within a film was just a fantastic thing.

Within the film itself, there is a secondary narrative to the performers on the screen.

I wanted the style to change as the film progresses; going from a veritĂŠ style and finishing with a static shot that represented a painting. With the final shot looking down the outside corridor, I placed the dancers/drawers in sections to represent foreground, middle-ground and background. I wanted it to look like a

painting. So in this other narrative, it begins reflecting modern day and then back into the past - however, in this instance the past feels fresh and loosens the chains of what is often expected of cinema today; fast and intrusive. I am perhaps being too self-analytical and sounding overly profound towards this!

What was the reasoning behind shooting in black and white?

I always imagine my films in black and white. As I develop my ideas more and get closer to them, I begin to see if colour appears to me. I realised recently I have a mild form of "Synesthesia", where I associate times of the day and months of the year with specific colours - maybe my fascination with colour or the lack of colour has something to do with this. I did not know that not everyone has certain colours and hues intrinsically attached to say 6pm or March!

I used a red filter which increases the tonal range between white and black,

producing images of high density which delivers a better differentiation between the colours turning into monochrome.

Black and white gives a timelessness too; it removes the unnecessary signification of colours you see in so many films wasting colour and allows a viewer to focus on the composition, subjects and the geometry that before was difficult to see.

You have a peculiar sense of time and rhythm that harkens back to an older tradition of European filmmaking.

How did you develop your filmmaking style?

If there is a correlation between the films and their aesthetics, it isn't intentional. If a style can be followed, it has come from the growth of personal instinct formed from reading and watching - though hopefully if there is a style, it comes across as somewhat my own. When I have a subject in front of me, I begin to frame it with an instinct that wants to subvert or accentuate. I have to really force myself

to stay still and keep certain conventions to often better convey a story - an example being in A Film By Abigail when Abigail explains the characters' relationships and I hold a medium shot on her. My impatience implores me to move closer into her expressions or pull out wider for the story in her environment, but staying there and minimising distraction with a non-dynamic shot can be just as important. When you switch off the sound and watch only the visuals of a film, even in the strangest most wild films, for example El Topo (1970) or Hourglass Sanatorium (1973), they are still built on standard shots. With these normal pieces as film components, the experimentation and moments of great movement or tableau can be achieved accurately cinematically. Take a look at some of your favourite shots in film and look at what preceded them.

I suppose my "style" is developed from a need to search for something new in what I'm filming and cinema itself. Not pushing boundaries for the sake of it, not

randomness, but putting eyes in places seldom seen or ventured in the everyday.

We appreciate your shooting style oscillating between fiction and documentary, an agile and at the same time refined filmmaking. What camera setup did you shoot on?

I was on my Canon 550d DSLR. I was handheld the whole time, apart from the static shot down the corridor at the end. I balanced the camera on a bird bath! I do now own a tripod however and frequently use it. With dance though, there are so many nuances and gestures that can go unnoticed unless you are free to move in all directions and being attached to a tripod or monopod gets restrictive.

Especially, I need to be able to go low and in tight corners. I want it to be only a slight extension of the way I'm seeing.

There are plenty of moments that I wouldn't of captured, unless I was totally free and handheld.

Your visual imagery is rich of references, from William Klein to the French New Wave. Have any filmmakers from the older generation inspired you?

European filmmaking of the sixties is the time period I watch the most. There's something there that I feel an affinity with and a yearning to understand. There's a rich creativity with the cinematography and I find so much in them, of course the black and white of Antononi's La Notte (1961) or Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963) are great inspirations and I researched recently that they had the same cinematographer: Gianni Di Venanzo. He also shot a lesser heralded but I think fantastic film from Fellini; Juliet of the Spirits (1965) which is a mesmerising example of a colour film.

As well as the films themselves, no one guides me and inspires me more than the writing and words of Michelangelo Antonioni. He is a god among men to me.

Chris Marker inspires me too, to find more in cinema, especially in documentary and what that form can truly

be. Fellini and Bergman, two masters with a rich filmography to wade through and cherish. My respect and attention to all these directors is exponential, full of love and admiration.

Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, Paul. What's next for you?

Are there any new projects on the horizon?

I recently completed a video piece commission called Lost In The Nameless City, which accompanied a live performance of Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint at an event called Filthy Lucre in London. With the only stimulus being "London's urban spaces", I shot the film with a mixture of colour disposable photographs and monochrome HD video, reflecting my physical journey in the city through simultaneously optimistic and at times pessimistic eyes on the capital. I wanted to subvert aspects of the city, especially cityscapes and show the place in a new way. When a reviewer said it was "perfectly providing a different

experience of London" [PlanetHugill.com] I was over the moon and motivated. My biggest challenge though, is finding the completion funds to pay for the music reproduction rights and paying for festival submissions. I'm in active research for potential funders and supporters of the work.

A project that keeps growing and growing is my Phantom Ships web series. I have around ten chapters I've shot over the last three years, ready to be edited. It's a place where I can create documentary, dance and short film sketches, made specifically as an online ongoing exhibition of film works. It is free from time restraints or the need to be anything in particular. It's an open place for me to experiment as a filmmaker and a platform to put thoughts, ideas and memories. A Film By Abigail is only five minutes long and it was with that film I realised how enjoyable a short form can be. With this web series, it gives me a destination to show similar work and instantly share it online.

EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA VIDEOBIENNALE/15

aurèle ferrier

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Aurèle Ferrier's art reveals both the architectonic and gestural nature of the artistic act. His refined film Infrastructures is an immersive experience: in Aurèle's hands, the camera becomes an instrument for contemplation. The viewer is given a strong sense of emptiness, a sensibility which is very different from the manipulative approach of mainstream productions. We are glad to present Aurèle Ferrier's film for this Videofocus Edition: Aurèle, how did you come up with the idea for Infrastructures?

It started nearly four years ago when doing some tests filming urban landscapes, and also experimenting with emptiness. It’s true that deserted landscapes and architectural sites often appear in my work. I work with issues addressing the lines and spaces dividing civilization and nature.

I started to do tracking shots obsessively back then, and experimented with different camera techniques to get the quality of tracking shots and I was looking for.

The idea for this film grew over a longer period of time, as is often the case with projects of scale. But at some point, while prowling around with the camera, I realized that this built world, which I was filming with no people in it, is constantly talking to me. So, you could say that this was an essential moment for this film, this journey through the landscape of infrastructures. Infrastructures are very talkative sites: They have an idea, their history––they are built to stand for something in a certain way. And in themselves, they have their structures, arrangements, specific surfaces, forms and designs. They speak to how we live, about values, I think. That drives me. For this film I was looking to find an arrangement which allows the viewer to come into a dialogue with the chosen places, their elements, structures and so on.

You often use specific locations as inspiration for larger emotional and philosophical inquires. Your use of temps mort is indeed an attempt at a more abstract narrative cinema, and your films often approach the sheer lyrical quality of visual music: could you introduce our readers to the way you explore the concepts of space and time in cinema?

When traveling as a kid with my family, we would often follow construction sites and houses of importance in architectural history, since my father is an architect. So when you go there, you are often alone in these spaces.

This has an effect on a person, the perception of your existence and of the the world drifts slightly in opposit directions. You take another perspective. Those moments were kind of stages of thoughts for me, and still are. Later on, I found this also in the deserts I’ve been working in for the last few years. Working in the desert also causes one to clarify ideas and intellectual priorities, but that’s an other thing...

To come back to your question, I think the most intense way of experiencing time is probably the state which can be described with the metaphor of „the playing child“. It is interacting with its fantasy, creating reality in that very moment and in an exchange with things and others, right? So this concept of time, or this use of time is an enormously lively and creative act.

Then we are fully interconnected. As a person I need this „temps morts“ to go there, insofar as I suggest to think of the „temps mort“ as a very active and crucial moment. Some people describe „Infrastructures“ as a photographic film. I like this. When we look at a photograph, we don’t get the full story and you can’t find the secret contained in it, unless you get involved.

A similar thing can potentially happen

Subtitolos, Photo by Nauan Barros

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Photo by Paul Vernon

with a film that has no, or not much narrative, that has not many things happening in it. This actually is one of the secrets of all kind of art, I think. It only can unfold a beauty and radicalness in the active, creative and unique interaction with the viewer. It needs to include that potentiality to reach these moments of lyrical quality, like a visual music, as you call it. So again, we should think of it rather as a potential „temps un-mort“!

How did you select the locations for this project?

For this project, I would film from the beginning locations, which are usually packed with people. That caused problems, especially when I wanted to have daylight in the shots, which is when people were going about their day to day business in these spaces. So I started to sneak in unusual solutions. But often I had to go along tedious processes of explanation and efforts of persuasion to get filming permissions. Finally, I chose the kind of infrastructures that are common to an everyday reality of routine.

Part of the criteria was that potential viewers should be able to find a strong personal connection to the site. (Some people mentioned the concept of Marc Augé’s „Non-Places“ when I told them about the selection of the locations. But after having spent so much time - for example in all kinds of shopping malls - I think they are rather not like this at all.

Instead, I actually found places where teenagers and whole clans of families really spend their days).

An other criteria was that the architecture of these locations should not be exotic, extraordinary or stunning in terms of „exciting“ or „good“ architecture, since I wanted to this film to be a piece where people could deal with themselves and society rather than with architecture as something to look at.

Then, it became important to me that the film contained neither just a few, nor hundreds of locations but instead a „landscape of infrasructures.“ So it involves sites of living, working, market.

The film goes through locations where a lot of people spend many hours during their daily routine.

The first and the last „scene“ in the film

are a little different though and can be seen as prologue and epilogue. The first one contains a huge construction site and goes along the axis on a flat fundament, where the very first architectural elements become visible. The idea behind this is to introduce the main actors of this piece of world we are going through in this film. And also the last scene is atypical to the rest. It contains a tracking shot on a plain concrete construction site, resembling a kind of a bridge (for a future railway). In that last scene you have less elements than in the ones before––just this lane, the concrete and the sky. I wanted the film to end quietly after all the „noise“ of objects we heard before.

Your work is rich of references: just think of Kubrick's tracking shots, Jacques Tati's use of wide angles in his masterpiece Traffic and Antonioni's long shots. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?

During this project, I watched tons of

architecture (and other) films, like, you name it, some very interesting works. The most important ones for my own actual work were the films of James Benning. He is a master in watching and listening. His works are not only highly poetic, but also incredibly precise.

Also, I stumbled over a book by Bruno Latour. There always was, and still is, the fight between the subject and object in the discourse. In „Parliament of Things“ he underlines the importance of objects and suggests that they should be seen as equal players, for example in chains of associations. I don’t think you are really surprised, when here I say, I agree.

In Infrastructures, drama is stripped down to its essential elements to introduce space, gaps and temps mort, in which the viewer projects his own emotions: you create a timebased work that allows the viewer to abandon himself to his associations.

Could you introduce our readers to this peculiar aspect of your cinema?

When I go see contemporary dance theatre, for example, sometimes I have these moments – the ones that allow me to switch back and forth (or almost dance) between reflexive, intellectual thoughts and an associative flow. This flow is actually the interconnection I mentioned before, referring at the metaphor of The Playing Child. I mean specifically to say that child is not necessarily cute, but it is definitively very active and creative. This Playing Child is like an emancipated and liberated viewer, or let’s call it an interaction-being and a real part of the „thing“. I like films, and art in general, that have strong impacts, that have intellectual anchors and references.

But also this involving associative part is essential. Then the silence becomes intense.

Tracking shots require a long and hard process: realizing a feature film like Infrastructures is an incredible effort, no doubt. How long does it usually take to finish a piece?

That differs enormously. In these project I

had luck, time and also could generate some funding to work with and learn from others. There was, for example, Peter Bräker, the sound designer, foley artist, and most important collaborator in this project.

He really was indispensable to this piece.

We produced the whole audio line, based on original recordings. We did a lot of experiments and I definitely have a different ear than before. Then there was Bergsteinn Björngulfsson, an Icelandic steadicam operator and also DOP of great cinematic works. He was part of the team for two shootings. But my thanks go to all the people that helped to bring this piece to what it is. We started three years ago, and at the end of last year it was already part of two art exhibits, and now, after just having completed the DCP, last week it was running at a film festival in Bangalore, India. Sadly, I couldn’t attend, but I love the idea that this film, void of people, was playing at some place in which I imagine every scenery filled with thousands of people. This must have been a special moment in the theatre, I guess.

So yeah, three years, more or less. There were locations I was looking for for months.

I spent a lot of time in all kind of infrastructures, travelled a lot, others I found faster. Once they were found, the film permits took their time, as mentioned before. The single shootings themselves lasted only between 2 to 5 hours.

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

I do a lot of reading, watch films and stuff. I try to not stay comfortable. I go outside the art scene. I like to meet new people and have different experiences every once in a while anyway. All this is important to me.

And I write too. It is a good way to clear up, to start to select. But also, at some point, when I get lost in the masses of things, thoughts and fragments, I rest. Even though I am not very good at it. This isn’t really a plan or a strategy. But I witness that actually it is often during these breaks, after some excessive work, that things come together. Yeah, beginnings of projects... you know, it’s not really that there is a project and afterwards there’s nothing. Even though I try to really be focused on one thing (which contains thousands of other things) the process of a new idea starts

while still working on a current project and is related to past ones. There is a line of interests, a process I am in, my artistic and personal realities. The material I work with is somehow similar or connected to things before. Sure, there is a slight shift in perspective, in the setting of experiments, in the questions, in each new work. I love this moments when I finally feel something is coming to me. When it feels like something I might, I will fall in love with... and then it’s hard work again.

Thanks for sharing your time, Aurèle, What's next for Aurèle Ferrier?

First, I hope that there are some more film festivals with a profile or interest to program this kind of film. Also, I really would like to exhibit in Reykjavik, which stands in a special relation to this project. It all started there... Then I am preparing an extended journey to work in the Areas Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the southwestern deserts, in the end of 2015. Therefore, I am doing research and I really should start trying to get funding. Then, maybe next time I’ll talk more about space. This was more about time, I guess.

m

EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA WOMENSBIENNALE/15

jaclyn slimm

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Multimedia artist and eclectic personality working as designer, photographer, singer and ballet dancer, Jaclyn Slimm embraces surreal aesthetics. In her work, she invites the viewer into a dreamy filmic mystery marked by a sheer visceral, decorative quality of baroque excess. We are glad to present for this Videofocus Edition "Phase Break," an experimental video for acclaimed electronic ensemble Mahogany's single, realized through her unique visual and aural imagination.

Jaclyn, how did you get started in visual arts?

I began ballet at the age of three and have kept the discipline since. I joined a theater group, entered art fairs, won several awards, and, beginning my visual inquiries in parallel to dance, completed my undergrad a year early.

While collaborating with the photographer Douglas Mellor in Philadelphia and working in fashion in New York City, I met my musical partner, Andrew Prinz, who encouraged me to start working in video and music and invited me to join Mahogany. We immediately began intense selfdocumentation while traveling out of Philadelphia and NYC by rail to Montreal, Austin, and Seattle, creating our first collaborative effort, "Keystone Sonata," at the behest of SXSW in 2012.

In Chicago, we composed and assembled "Phase Break," also commissioned by SXSW — so in fact, scenes captured in all of these journeys are laced together in the work.

"Phase Break" features a psychedelic scenario taking the viewer through a roller coaster of characters and emotions. We want to take a closer look at the genesis of your film: how did you come up with the idea for "Phase Break?"

As our first collaboration, it was inherently an exploration. A 'phase break' is a neutral

section of catenary (overhead wire) on electric railroads which exists as a 'coastthru' area between substations to avoid short-circuit. We began to explore this idea of free momentum and inertia as a necessary part of forward progression, as we have both always experienced a divinity in wanderlust.

We built the song with an intense amount of versioning. Andrew first laid down pure sine wave tones and minimal electronic percussion, then adding Arp synthesizer.

From an immense amount of multitracking, the arrangement emerged: essentially four sections revolving around the root key of C major, though the third section moves to Eb major. It was also within interest at the time to work in Renaissance-era tuning, so the composition is actually tuned around a 419 A instead of today's standard 440 A. This gave us access to smoother transients and warmer upper-order harmonics.

To meet the growing demands of our rapidlysprawling concept, we wrote lyrics and vocal melodies; Andrew notated a traditional score for cello, sequencers, wavetable synthesizers, bass, and live percussion. I began my work extemporizing with electric 12-string guitar, a shimmering, resonant instrument that has more in common with piano or harpsichord, really.

Between the neutral "break” periods of travel, compositional aspects, and sitespecific choreography, the video we accrued aligned serendipitously with the flow of production. We sought to describe a world not necessarily connected to the digital now and to present a scenario outside derivative contemporisms.

How did you develop your visual imagery?

I knew I wanted to show “Phase Break” in a way which featured both me and Andrew.

Previous Mahogany videos rarely featured Andrew, which had always shocked me. I wanted Mahogany listeners and anyone viewing the video to feel Andrew’s presence

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Subtitolos, Photo by Nauan Barros

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in a way they hadn’t from the earlier Mahogany works, which typically feature a more narrative theme.

Aside from the aforementioned imagery brought together during travel, scouting locations together led to more development. Forging through the elements became key. One standout morning in the middle of January, with heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain, we agreed nonetheless that we should trek to the city center to create a dance sequence inside Chicago’s gorgeous Amtrak Union Station. At completion, travelers gave us a standing ovation, which was unexpected but certainly welcome.

The previous "Keystone Sonata" video had concluded with a shot in Union Station, too. Being inexplicably drawn to certain places became a facet of the wanderlust; the episodic continuity, an outgrowth of intuition, and coalescent insight.

"Phase Break" presents a stunning balance between order and chaos: each shot is carefully orchestrated to work within the overall structure, yet at the same time the whole piece is marked by a vivid and unpredictable atmosphere. How did you achieve this balance in your work?

Perhaps the balance stems from the free, generative aspect in the compositional premise of the music, though after recording, we would then engage in deep critique and self-examination, redacting elements we felt were even slightly cursory. Andrew knew when he was producing the track that it needed to 'break out' into each successive section to dovetail our intentions.

The music became the first step on a reciprocal staircase of inspiration; the next section of video work would then play out. The performance aspect

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Photo by Paul Vernon

seemingly placed itself beneath the textural layers and motion which makes up the perceived “chaos.” Cued by form and observing synchronous elements, a cohesive distillation took shape.

Stylistically, the film owes more to the psychedelic fantasy world of the 60s than to the surreal imagery of Jean Cocteau. Who among international artists and directors influenced your work?

We have an abiding interest in classic, artist-driven avant-garde — Duchamp, František Drtikol, Xenakis, Věra Chytilová, Tarkovsky, Lang, Man Ray, Jeanloup Sieff — as well as visual technique and optimistic spirit expressed in collectives, firms and movements like Superstudio, UFO, and De Stijl.

Andrew and I have always been highly similar in our attraction to a certain indescribable color gamut, a love for whimsical, daydreamy, psychedelic edge layered upon hard, modern graphics, and often-overlooked beauty — overgrown infrastructure, post-urban metamorphosis, abandoned areas — environments full of latent potential.

We have also always been attracted to, and inspired by, the Mod and Psychedelic scenes in London and France, and of course the cinema and music of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg. I love Roger Vadim’s films. Peter Whitehead’s “Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London” documentary is important to me because of the pace of the filming versus the pace of the club and nightlife being cut together for the viewer.

How did you conceive the choreographed dance sequences for "Phase Break?"

To research the character and hone my fundamentals, I was taking classes at the Joffrey Academy. I developed the choreography for the third movement of the song based on the lyrics I was writing, and presented it to Andrew as he shared the current mix of the track.

You are also a 12-string guitar player and singer. Music has always been a fundamental part of your life, the starting point of your artistic research and practice. Could you introduce our readers to the multidisciplinary nature of your art?

The struggle of perfecting anything is the real unseen craft. My approach has always

been to absorb from my idols and mentors.

If I like something, I'll accept it in my own fashion. I am most interested in having the end result be beautiful, organized and wellresearched. It's not about “having fun” while creating, but giving everything before letting it go into the world, where it can be reviewed quite microscopically. This also means that one must have an authentic grasp on the mission inherent in the work.

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

Thank you. Andrew and I are currently at work on a series of videos to accompany songs from Mahogany’s EP recording 'Electric Prisms.' A full-length double album and feature film 'Frontiering' is now in production as well as other projects in development.