This particular anonymity series features seven anonymous individuals who have strong affinities with nature and are also colleagues and next of kin of Leonardo Co, a Filipino botanist and the foremost authority in ethnobotany who was killed by the Philippine military while examining trees in the forests of Kananga, Leyte. In this project, Anading reached out to individuals with close ties to Co. He began this project by first getting in touch with Ronald Achacoso, an artist and curator of the Arboretum at Pinto Museum, Antipolo, with whom Anading also shared the same mentor in the arts, Roberto Chabet. Conversely, Achacoso also found a mentor in the botanical sciences in Leonard Co. Anading came in contact with Achacoso by attending the latter’s activity of walking a group of people through the trees at the University of the Philippines (of which their colleagues they call it a “tree walk”) whilst educating the audience about trees and pressing upon the importance of the conservation of Philippine Native Trees. During the tree walk Achacoso also discussed the connection between growing trees and of common art materials such as pencils, wooden braces and canvas frames, materials that are all made from trees. Anading’s participation in Achacoso’s tree walk led him to get in touch with the six other individuals from the tree planting community, individuals whom are either colleagues or familial relations of Co. Anading eventually asked each of these individuals to have their footage taken, to be shot by him while they stood under the canopies of trees they have particular bonds to. In this project Anading looks for parallelisms between photography and botany; how both depend on light to develop and function, and how both strive to preserve life and memory. This work could not have been done without the intermingling elements from both humans and nature: the subjects, the sunlight, artificial objects such as the mirror and camera itself, the setting and the tree — all are elements that dependent to one another to form and preserve images drawn from light.

For the past three to five years, Martha Atienza’s ‘Tigpanalipod (The Protectors) 11°02’06.4”N 123°36’24.1”E’ has emerged alongside necessary acts of remembering and demands for participation. Proudly standing on the fishing boat, “nong” Antonio Dacomos Turib and his family came from the surrounding islands of Cebu and Negros in the last century. They came to Mambacayao Dako with the fishing season, and decided to settle permanently on the island generations ago.
It brings to light longstanding issues of land ownership and class, as families like Antonio’s are currently being forced to relocate to off-island government and nongovernment public housing projects.
Antonio joins the Fluvial Parade of Mambacayao Dako Fiesta yearly. He decorates his boat and is one of the only people that dresses in complete costume to match. On the day of filming, he arrived in costume.

Born to a Dutch mother and Filipino father, Martha Atienza (b. 1981, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Bantayan Island, Philippines) has moved between the Netherlands and the Philippines throughout her life. Constantly oscillating between these two cultures has had a profound influence on Atienza’s focus as an artist.

Atienza’s practice explores installation and video as a way of documenting and questioning issues around environment, community and development. Her work is mostly constructed in video, of an almost sociological nature, that studies her direct environment. Often utilizing technology in the form of mechanical systems, Atienza explores the immersive capacity of installation in generating critical discourse. Her work tends to be collaborative in nature, working with people from different backgrounds and expertise as well as residents of Bantayan Island, where her family is from, whose narratives are intricately woven into issues such as environmental change, displacement, cultural loss, governance and socioeconomic disparities.
Atienza’s practice explores installation and video as a way of documenting and questioning issues around the environment, community, and development. Her work is mostly constructed in video, of an almost sociological nature, that studies her direct environment.

Somewhere in Italy, among the mountains, not far from the border with France, a pair of discount sports store boots is put on by a man from West Africa. Once he wears them, he will undertake the night-time crossing of the border, in Montgenèvre, the oldest French winter sports resort. Bought in Turin by Italians committed to the cause of migrants, these boots have been worn by hundreds of black men before him. Brought back to Italy by committed French people, they will be used by many others after him. Passed on from hand to hand, from hand to foot, and from foot to hand, the circular path of the boots unveils a mountain territory on the borders of France and Italy, where exchange and solidarity connections are tied in the harshness of winter.

In this video a face is filmed close-up from a low angle shot resulting in a bizarre effect of immersion. Thus entrapped the face asks in the three languages Christine Barbe uses: “I don’t know how I can face it? Comment faire face ? Ik weet het niet?”

The piece has such power the viewer is drawn into a very private place, somewhere between introspection and aliénation.

I don’t know how I can face it _ I don’t know how I can do it _ Ik weet het niet _ Je ne sais pas comment y arriver _ I don’t know how to deal with it _ I don’t know how to realize that _ Je ne sais pas comment faire _ Ik weet niet of ik er zou aankomen _ I don’t know how what to say _ Je ne sais pas par où commencer _ I don’t know where to put myself _ Idon’t know I have no idea _ Je ne sais pas si je peux le faire _ I don’t know what else _ I don’t know which way to turn _ I don’t know nothing about it _ I don’t know how

Biggs’ most recent work Eclipse (2022) is based on her December 2021 trip to the Chilean coast of Antarctica to view a rare total solar eclipse. Enveloped in dense layers of fog, Biggs and her shipmates confront something quite different from their expectations—an element of serendipity that provided her with an entirely new—and decidedly different—narrative. In Eclipse Biggs interweaves footage from her voyage—in which the entire purpose of the trip is subverted by the dense fog—with those of navigational methods used throughout time to identify one’s place in the world and poetic texts drawn from myriad sources including her personal memories of her mother’s struggles with the Sundowner Syndrome she suffered within her Alzheimer’s Disease; accounts by the Yakut people of Eastern Siberia on local weather conditions, the writings of Lt. James Melville Gillis, An Account of the Total Eclipse of the Sun, Published by Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 1859, and psychological studies of people in extreme isolation. The overt line of inquiry in Eclipse is the demanding, physical, and adventurous voyage; the subtext is introspection, and the meaning of the various ways in which the word ‘eclipse’ can function: light blocked; identity obscured; significance, power, and prominence deprived. – written by Terrie Sultan

The notion of deep time confirms that it is in the space where the value of time is stored. An attempt to “read” the time of the earth in a fractured landscape. The loop begins with the words: “In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds” attributed to Ralph Ingersoll; but the essence of this quote is found in the Qur’an, (Sura 27, Aya 88). Using the antipode as a geographical metaphor the camera « reads » slowly through the stratigraphy of an eroded mountain, making a parallel between a « geological construction » and a « human construction ». What you see upside down is a rammed earth wall found in a state of ruin near the outskirts of Bogotá. The second text as we go across the ground: « this world with all its details has been elaborated and annihilated, and will be elaborated and annihilated: infinitely”, comes from Borges quoting Hume.

Choreography by Yztok Kovak
Film & music : Thierry De Mey
Production En-Knap

Prize for best editing Festival Lublijana, 2002 & Main Prize Mediawave, Budapest 2002.

The film is a veritable technical feat, as the dancers (and the camera) defy the laws of gravity by moving vertically up a cliff face, using a rope system to hold them by their waists. The choreography upsets all the viewer’s points of reference, supported in this vertiginous undertaking by the choice of camera angles. But very quickly, the fast-paced cutting moves away from acrobatic performance to focus on the movements of a choreography as rigorous as it is inventive.

A Belgian composer born in 1956, Thierry De Mey is a composer and film director. He has collaborated with choreographers such as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Wim Vandekeybus and Michèle Anne De Mey. Founder of the contemporary music ensemble Maximalist!, he participates in other major ensembles such as Musiques Nouvelles and Ensemble Ictus, for which he composes several works. In 1993, he joined a class at Ircam, where he developed several computer music programs. He was composer-in-residence at the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Strasbourg and at the Festival Musica in 2001 and 2002. He is currently associate composer at Ircam’s Cursus de composition et d’informatique musicale.

Shown at MOMA and the Venice Biennale

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s solo to the music of Steve Reich (Violin Phase) is one of the choreographer’s earliest works.
This hallucinatory dance embraces the music’s swirls and infinitesimal shifts. The path of the dance, filmed from above, is inscribed in white sand on black ground: the path, made visible, forms a rose-shaped mandala. – For the Top Shot installation, these images are projected onto the exhibition hall floor, which is covered in white sand.

A Belgian composer born in 1956, Thierry De Mey is a composer and film director. He has collaborated with choreographers such as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Wim Vandekeybus and Michèle Anne De Mey. Founder of the contemporary music ensemble Maximalist!, he participates in other major ensembles such as Musiques Nouvelles and Ensemble Ictus, for which he composes several works. In 1993, he joined a class at Ircam, where he developed several computer music programs. He was composer-in-residence at the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Strasbourg and at the Festival Musica in 2001 and 2002. He is currently associate composer at Ircam’s Cursus de composition et d’informatique musicale.

While investigating an event that profoundly changed the landscape of the Sahara, Abdessamad El Montassir is confronted to the silence of previous generations who remain haunted by a story they are unable to tell.
With Galb’Echaouf, El Montassir focuses our attention on landscapes, plants and poetry, in search of answers or elements that could participate in the reconstruction of this amnesia and the transmission of the narratives.

In the video All things are inside, Gupta films the meagre personal effects of migrant workers leaving for the Middle East and the little bags their belongings fit into. On another screen, sequences from Bollywood movies featuring a wide variety of bags scroll by. Baggage acquires metonymic value, symbolising the entire life of its owner.

Views of terrestrial phenomena and of small fragments of the universe converge in this project, forming a polyphony sung in Nahuatl, in French, in sound, in English, in Spanish and in Haitian creole. By mixing several different temporalities, the artist explores the relationship between micro and macroscopic, harmony and cacophony, precision of scientific imagery and invocation of pre-Columbian or African goddesses, between the birth of life and that of speech. 

The music created for the installation, get their inspiration out of the cosmic organ conceived in Musurgia Universalis (1650) by Athanasius Kircher. Scientific tools, study of tongues and mysticism converging at a single point. Here, Vir Andres collaborates with Jérôme Nika (IRCAM) for sonic creation: using a hybrid artificial intelligence memory whose ranges sounds according to duration and intensity. He also works at the core of a microscopy laboratory specialized in the science of materials. Vir Andres draws attention to heterogeneity, which evidences the semantic dominance and its harmony/cacophony. Lucie Menard. 

Vir Andres Hera – Born in 1990 in Yauhquemehcan (Mexico), lives and works in Savoie, France.
Training : DNSEP, MO.CO. Esba, Montpellier (2015); Post-diploma Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing (2020); PhD in Cinematographic Theory and Practice, Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains, in co-tutelle with Université du Québec, Montréal (2020)

The video Embrace, which is part of Time and the Other (exhibition and book), is a single shot of a couple in an urban landscape. As the camera gets closer, instead of providing further “indications” the shot becomes more and more abstract. The idea of Embrace is based on the ambiguity and violence projected onto any act, at that singular instant when the real and the non-real are indiscernible.

El Chinero is a site in the Desert of Baja, California. Despite its name, little proof exists about a tragedy that took place here in 1916. Hundreds of Chinese migrants died while fleeing violence in mainland Mexico. How can one fill the void with images, construct an archive where none exist?

Ryoichi Kurokawa

1978 in Osaka (JP). Lives and works in Berlin.

Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa is a true poet of the transformative cinema, lyrically transfiguring the analogue representations of perceived nature into digital streams of vertiginous imagery & emotion. The architecturally crafted precision of his sensitively synched fragmentary images placed side by side on our retina, tends to displace the persistence of blurred memory under the effect of boundless luminosity.

Audio and visual concordance are key in Kurokawa’s works. He considers both the audio and visual element as different vectors of a unique piece and insists that they have to flow together to enter a collision at the same time. 

As can be viewed from his works, Kurokawa states that nature is his principle source of inspiration. All of his works lie in this notion of hybridization. Between analog and digital, but also between time and space, the full and the fragmentary, the simple and the complex, the reactive and the contemplative, the auditory and visual.

Whether the recordings of waterfalls obliterate into white noise while simultaneously forming an almost spiritual and reverential stillness around the viewer, or whether field recordings in combination with computer generated structures like glitch minimalism coexist in harmony in an un-harmonious terrifying world of war and destruction: Ryoichi Kurokawa invents and presents an audiovisual language where complexity and simplicity alternate and combine in a fascinating synthesis.

Some of Kurokawa’s significant solo and group exhibitions, performances and permanent works include  Lithi, Kamu Kanazawa (Japan 2020), s.asmbli[wall], OCT_LOFT China 2020), objectum, Takuro Someya Contemporay Art (Japan 2018), unfold, Minsheng Art Museum (China 2020), Coder le Monde, Centre Pompidou (France 2018), The Dream Of Forms, Palais de Tokyo (France 2017), Ordered Disorder, Espacio Fundacion Telefonica (Peru 2015), Turbulences, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton (France 2012), One of a Thousand Ways to Defeat Entropy – The 54th Venice Biennale (Italy 2011), transmediale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Germany 2010), and Synthesis, Tate Modern (England 2007).

Statement 

Aesthetics of conversion

The work of the Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa is in-keeping with a trend, or an aesthetic of multiple contours, that could qualify as the aesthetics of transcription or conversion, which runs through much of art history for almost a century.

Over the last fifteen years, in the field of digital art, many artists have endeavoured to materialise (in sensitive, audible or visual form) installations and audio-visual concerts in order to capture our imaginations regarding digital data. Others, from a more synaesthetic perspective, seek to showcase the concept of signal: aiming to visualise sound signals with the help of machines, and turn images into sounds (willingly abstract and geometric) through calculations on computers. This wave began in the 1920s at a time when many artists were trying to give birth to time-based visual works whose range of movements, abstraction, geometry, and occasional concrete figures, seemed to adhere more to the dynamics of music. Pioneers within this approach include Walter Ruttman, Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Lazio Moholy-Nagy. In more recent decades, through the power of visual music, Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye and Norman McLaren have explored some of these principles.

From the late 1960s to the end of the 1980s, artists were given access to computer and video equipment in laboratories, studios and institutions dedicated to research and creation. This gave a new impetus to the ideas initiated by the avant-garde at the beginning of the century, and evoked the films and videos (sometimes in the form of a study) of John Whitney, Ed Emshwiller and the duo, Steina & Woody Vasulka, all of which continue to pace up and down the territory of abstraction, while filmmakers such as Robert Cahen and Gary Hill explore the boundaries of portrayal and language.

Since his early work in the mid-2000s, Ryoichi Kurokawa has followed the same work process: distorting (with the help of software) images and sounds that he himself records in natural environments, such as urban spaces. Through digital manipulation, his source materials gradually move away from their original form, gaining abstraction, revealing a visual and auditory universe of tints and tones, sometimes poetic but more often dynamic, animated with light convulsions and hypnotic pulsations. Technological and innovative as they may seem, in effect, his works originate from the most concrete reality and more still from the surrounding nature that the artist considers « not from a romantic point of view, but rather formal », drawing inspiration from « its structures and its movements ». 

His works are often modelled on the numerous Japanese practical artists whom, from calligraphy and poetry to theatre and dance, often develop their work within a willingly animist relationship with nature: its rhythms, forms and seasons. However, the novelty of this work is that here, Kurokawa’s approach originates from a more scientific viewpoint than in the past. 

The artist walks through the space he lives in with a camera on a dolly attempting to get as close to objects in the space as possible without hitting anything that may be in his way.  The audio is the artist describing the experience of being in the space.

Feu 2: Fire 2, the meeting of the combustion of a log and the center of a large Indian city.

The function of this weathervane, an object created to ward off birds, goes beyond its simple function as the wind blows through it.

It thus becomes both a sensor and a revealer of invisible forces.

Vortex 1 is a process of the appearance of a phenomenon and its deployment in a volcanic space.

The landscape is filmed as a privileged place to witness a « lesson of things ».

Human beings act on nature in order to keep their lives.
From their activities, several streams are generated and landscapes are transformed.
I focus on the beauty of transformation created through the relation between human activities and nature, and want to express the beauty as a kind of visual ballet.

A three-story building. Long corridors. Almost empty. Its halls and bedrooms used to house large numbers of Latin American soldiers educated in violence by the United States government. Located in Panama, The School of the Americas’ classrooms produced several of the most brutal dictators in Latin America and a systemic aggression that spread throughout the continent.
Today, its walls contain a hotel and their past history is difficult to verbalize. 

Artificial intelligence—fed with military manuals, archival images, the hotel’s architecture, textures and the surrounding jungle—resonates with the vibration of walls that do remember. 

Sensations of memories arrive. A performance of the artificial intelligence of the walls that remember.

Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation

–

Panamanian multidisciplinary artist in the fields of film and performance. 
She was artist in residence at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains and is currently in residence at the Cité des Arts in Paris. She was chosen as Berlin Talent 2023 for the Berlinale.

She worked on the restoration of part of the Panamanian film archive at the Filmoteca de Catalunya and on the creation of the « Festival de la Memoria », a series of performative installations in urban spaces with political archive images and sound performance.  

She has also worked mixing audiovisual and performance formats, such as the piece « Bla Bla Bla »: an audiovisual installation, accompanied by a performance created for the 30th anniversary of the invasion of Panama by the United States, presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Panama. 

Her piece « House Type 104 » is also an immersive experience of sound and dance through binaural sound and live animation. Presented at the Panorama exhibition at Le Fresnoy.

Her works with musical artist Floy Krouchi on a series of sound performances edited for France Culture and presented at the Centre national de création musicale in Reims.

« Panquiaco », his first feature film, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. His latest short film, « A Love Song in Spanish », participated in the official competition at the Berlinale and at the MoMA.

Her first virtual reality film « Mosquito: A Wound Story » premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Her latest sound and visual installation  « The Walls Know » was presented at the Ars Electronica 2022 Festival. 

Based on the ancient animistic beliefs and shamanic rituals in Mongolia and Siberia, the film explores the indigenous worldview and wisdom. Against the backdrop of the modern existential crisis and the human-induced rapid environmental change, there is a necessity to reclaim the ideas of animism for planetary health and non-human materialities.