Selection #7

Taxonomic
Encounters

70 mins
In attendance: Mariane Moula

Focusing on third sight interactivity between animal-human-technology, the following selection of films exposes the brutality of abuse inherits within systems of power between said interrelation. The performativity of the film is used here as a methodology to uncover unexamined human inclinations and cultural habits. Humans’ relationship to animal kingdom established by technological tools abides with deadly processes and taxonomic encounters. An underlying posthuman discourse aims for a shift in mindset from the human-centric to the nonhuman-oriented. The authors’ gaze in these film works is not merely attempting to move away from the trap of geometrical optics, but rather to create filmic maps where the aftermath of human-animal-technology entanglements come into sight.

N.S.

Sat 25 May

17:00h / ACUD STUDIO

Mike Hoolboom
3 Dreams of Horses
Canada, 2018, 6’ 20’’, Super8/16mm > HD video , colour / b&w, sound, German Premiere

"A triptych in which the figure of the horse becomes a medium for meditation on its various incarnations as symbol, domesticated animal for human domination, and its abstract power as spirit." Images Festival

Karel Doing
The Mulch Spider's Dream
UK , 2018, 14’, 16 mm, colour, sound, German Premiere

In 1974 Thomas Nagel published his famous essay "What is it like to be a bat?" arguing that there is a specific mental state to each organism. Besides his critique toward the materialist theory of mind, the paper also explores the differences between human consciousness and the awareness of bats. According to Nagel subjectivity can not be shared. However, cinema might be a tool to do exactly that; sharing a lived experience of another creature. This film attempts to kindle the vision of a spider by using experimental phytochemistry; creating organic shapes, rhythms and colours directly on expired 16mm film.

Matthew Ripplinger
Sir Bailey
Canada, 2018, 8’ , 16mm > HD video, b&w, sound, European Premiere

A portrait of the filmmaker's old friend. The film's surgical cutting and state of decay symbolizes Bailey's suffering of bone cancer, consisting of home made photographic emulsion, contact printing, and reticulation. Sir Bailey embarks on an existential journey through the shattering photo-chemical plane during his last day of life.

Carole Thibaud
Trilogie Carnassière (1)
France, 2018, 3', 16mm, color, sound, German Premiere
Music by Mariane Moula

The first part of this carnassial trilogy is a chicken slaughter. This film was made with a JK optical printer, of 30 meters of 16mm color negative, shot in a small farm in Maine-et-Loire. It was print, re-print, cut, edited, sometimes manhandled. To bring out the beauty and the music from images of struggle and blood. Made at Mire lab (Nantes), Crater-lab (Barcelona) and L'Abominable (La Courneuve).

Derek Jenkins
Livestock
Canada/USA, 2019, 12’, 16mm, b&w, sound, World Premiere

“Livestock” is a documentary study of one stage in the production of motion picture film. Most of the animals at the Warren Livestock Auction will end up sold for industrial meat production. Their bodies will be slaughtered and processed, their bones prepared for rendering into gelatin that might one day suspend silver halide on a strip of acetate.

Laurids Andersen Sonne
Passerine in Time
Denmark / USA, 2018, 7’ 53’’, 16mm > HD video, colour, sound, World Premiere

Passerine in Time is a study of the gestural encounter between the hand of man and the entrapment of birds in it. The film investigates the haptic encounters between man and bird, where the hand becomes an embodiment of man’s desire for knowledge about something other, through the methodical labor of the hand as it repeatedly captures, inspect, measure, band and logs migratory birds before their release. Something other in nature which by a mere flick is capable of something man has reached for in eternity; the freedom of flight.

Carolina Charry Quintero
Blua
Colombia, 2017, 21’42’’, 16mm > HD video, colour / b&w, sound, German Premiere

Humanity and animality are enigmatically confronted and entwined.Combining rich high-contrast 16mm images with crisp digital color scenes, BLUA composes an uncanny entry into the relationship between human and animal existence. Unfolding like a tapestry, its montage complicates the relationship between observation and fiction. Reaching for equal beauty and strangeness, BLUA is an assertion of the uncanny, a cine-poetic philosophical speculation.

Taxonomic
Encounters

Sat 25 May

Thu 23

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Sat 25

Sun 26

Taxonomic Encounters

Sat 25 May

Thu 23

Fri 24

Sat 25

Sun 26

Taxonomic
Encounters