Ecologies and Terrains
Sunday, April 13
2:45 - 3:45 PM
Canady Creative Arts Center
Bloch Hall Theater
Niches
Janelle VanderKelen | Unite States
Year: 2024
Run time: 7:10 min.
Synopsis:
Whether it be doing yoga with ants, printing with plants, observing the quantum physics of cats, or considering the travel of an apple: not all teachers are human in a bustling Spanish farmhouse. While instances of interspecies care are enacted beneath the cool stone arches of this rambling structure, the ecological niches (or roles) of various beings shift along with their unexpected environmental relationships. In a heavily altered landscape composed of serrated mountains and meticulously-maintained olive groves, human intervention is readily apparent; however, sometimes trees bear knowledge in addition to green fruits, and humans shape and are shaped by their environment in equal measure.
Bio:
Janelle VanderKelen is an artist, curator, and educator currently based in Knoxville, TN. Her films and intermedia installations imagine alternative acts of relation between imperfect bodies (human, vegetal, geological, or otherwise) and make visible the agency of plants through experimental time-based media processes.
VanderKelen’s work has been exhibited at institutions including the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, CO; Anthology Film Archives in New York; and Bow Arts in London, England. Her films have screened at Ann Arbor Film Festival, True/False, Athens International Film + Video Festival, Revelation Perth International Film Festival, IC DOCS, San Diego Underground Film Festival, and Antimatter [Media Art] Film Festival.
Recent awards include juried awards at the 2023 Ann Arbor Film Festival + 2023 Thomas Edison Film Festival.
Website
No time of deep time
Eric Souther | United States
Year: 2025
Run time: 9:02 min.
Synopsis:
If we could witness the Earth across deep time, the ground beneath our feet would oscillate, revealing the dynamic nature of our planet—what feels permanent to us is actually in constant flux when viewed on the geological timescale.
No Time of Deep Time explores Michigan's Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in the Upper Peninsula as a site of geological deep time. I use custom software to transform audio waves into complex patterns that weave and cut across vantage points of the site, exploring the aged relationships between water and rock. A contemplation of imperceptible movements that have shaped these iconic sandstone cliffs over 500 million years.
The images work as metaphors to visualize geological processes, that reveal hidden rhythms in what appears static. Patterns that seek to feel erosion, sedimentation, and metamorphosis—processes that continue unabated beyond human perception.
Bio:
Eric Souther (b.1987, Kansas City) holds an MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and an BFA in New Media from the Kansas City Art Institute.
His creative research draws from a multiplicity of disciplines, including new materialism, anthropology, ritual, deep time, and toolmaking. These areas are read through one another and coalesce in technological assemblages that form emergent systems or software for exploring relations. I instrumentalize these systems so that they can become performative ways to navigate unexpected images/meaning making. My work takes many pathways, which include interactive installation, audio-visual performance,single-channel video, and software.
His work has been featured nationally and internationally at venues such as the Museum of Art and Design, NYC, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY, and the Museum of Art, Zhangzhou, China. His work has screened in The Athens Digital Arts Festival, Athens, Greece, Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival, Beyoglu, Instanbul, Cronosfera Festival, Alessandria, Italy, the Galerija 12 New Media Hub, Belgrade, Serbia, the Simultan Festival, Timisoara, Romania, and the Festival ECRÃ of Audiovisual Experimentations, Rio de Janeiro. Souther is an Assistant Professor of Kinetic Imaging in the Gwen Frostic School of Art at Western Michigan University.
Website
Instagram
Stone & Mystics
Dominick Michael Rivers | United States
Year: 2024
Run time: 7:38 min.
Synopsis:
"Stone & Mystics" is an exploration of ancient sites and the mythical narratives that surround them, all through the lens of an inquisitive yet unreliable narrator. This film challenges conventional notions of memory and its fallibility, prompting viewers to ponder what truly warrants remembrance. Embracing the aesthetics of slow cinema, "Stone & Mystics" offers a meditative journey that leans into the absurdity of human perception and the stories we construct around historical landmarks and folklore.
Bio:
Dominick Rivers is an experimental filmmaker and moving-image artist whose video work, framed by larger installations, examines the popular media used to capture and sentimentalize memory. His research is focused on developing eco-friendly substitutions for alternative photographic processes that can be implemented with motion-picture film. These substitutions demonstrate that commonly accepted techniques can be made more accessible, promote environmental sustainability, and remain emotionally exigent. His contributions to the analog film community have led to performances, workshops, exhibitions, and residencies for Mono No Aware XVI (Brooklyn), LIFT (Toronto), CICA New Media Arts Conference (Seoul), and No Name Cinema (Santa Fe).
Underneath it flickers
laura "lau" persijn | Belgium
Year: 2024
Run time: 18:52 min.
Synopsis:
The jay, the train, the moss, the soil, trembling. how to listen to a space considered empty? ‘underneath it flickers’ takes different perspectives on la friche josaphat, a verdant fallow land in brussels threatened by real estate development. by questioning our ways of looking and listening, the film seeks to connect with the land as a single body inhabited by many creatures.
Bio:
Lau is a filmmaker and cultural worker based in brussels. they studied art history at the university of ghent and filmmaking at kask school of arts ghent. lau likes gardening, hiking and reading. if they’re not doing this, they're probably working in one field fallow (community and artistic research space in brussels) or for courtisane (platform for film and audiovisuel arts in ghent).
Tears for Lost Frequencies (I)
Monica Duncan & Senem Pirler | United States
Year: 2024
Run time: 5:06 min.
Synopsis:
Tears for Lost Frequencies explores our complex relationship with plastic through the act of improvisation. Our intention is to highlight plastic as a matter that cannot be separated from the “natural”: a material everywhere and becoming our “nature” and our “uninvited” collaborator. In Tears for Lost Frequencies, microplastics found in tears become material witnesses to the experience of one’s grieving moment, such as hearing loss, and a speculative space for plastic healing.
Bios:
Monica Duncan and Senem Pirler have been collaborating since 2017, creating audiovisual performances that investigate everyday objects, concepts of agency and queer potentiality. Their collaborative work has been shown in numerous festivals and venues such as Revolutions Per Minute, Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music, Transient Visions, Light Matter, Athens International Film + Video, Intermediale Festival of Audiovisual Forms, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Festival ECRÃ, Fisura, International Festival of Experimental Film & Video and CURRENTS New Media Festival. Duncan and Pirler performed their audiovisual performance, “Surface Connection” at the 61st Ann Arbor Film Festival's Expanded Cinema program and exhibited their work in the LEAF2023 Sync Exhibition. They have been artists-in-residence at Signal Culture (Owego, NY), PACT Zollverein (Essen, Germany), Institute for Electronic Arts (Alfred, NY) and LMCC at Governors Island (NYC). Most recently, Duncan and Pirler were awarded the 2024 New Works Artist Residency for their multimedia performance installation “Plasticity.”
Todo Lo Solido (Solid)
Victor Jimenez Verduzco & Kissel Bravo Hernandez | Mexico
Year: 2024
Run time: 7:39 min.
Synopsis:
Hybrid animated short film is a visual account of the notions of personality and relationships that are elaborated with the mechanisms of signs and power structures. Discursive formations here appear as rules that determine what can be said and thought in a given context, asking how we are produced within these discursive formations.
Bio:
PhD in technology and sound art, Master's degree in modern and contemporary art studies; he works in Universidad Michoacana de San Nicol√°s de Hidalgo as a professor and researcher at the faculty of arts.
His work and research topics are developed at the intersection of disciplines visuals, preferring mobility, interaction and the dilution of divisions rigid, that is why it uses resources such as photography, digital image, collage, mixed techniques, video, animation, sound art or projection of images, with the intention of building a creative project nomadic. The discourses of confrontation, the juxtaposition, assembly, contrast of the images of life contemporary, preferring the traces of use, disuse, the passage of time, wear, human presence, abandonment and disorientation among others. His Work has been presented in various festivals and art biennials.
Website
Instagram
From and to Nature, We Return
Bishoy Adel | Egypt
Year: 2024
Run time: 2:03 min.
Synopsis:
In a mesmerizing visual journey, it explores the deep connection between humanity and Mother Earth, calling us to reconnect with nature and live in harmony with its cosmic rhythms.
Bios:
I grew up in the heart of a bustling city, in a country that neglects nature and cuts down its trees, where everything beautiful is destroyed. People are accustomed to running after money and skyscrapers, believing that this is the essence of life. But inside me, there is a constant voice telling me: this is not life. That’s why I created this project, which I consider a cry of love for Mother Nature. I made it to shout at the human world to awaken and reconnect with the earth that has given us its life. Because, sadly, my country does not value nature and beauty; here, there is no one to defend the rights of nature or humanity.
I want my message to reach every pure-hearted person, so we can share in crying and shouting, seeking authenticity and peace, and call for the return of beauty, as we collectively tear down everything that is ugly.
As a 22-year-old filmmaker and musician, Bishoy Adel is driven by a passion to express his feelings and beliefs through his art. With over five years of experience in the film industry, Bishoy has had the privilege of working on a wide range of projects, from short films to documentaries, as a cinematographer due to his love of cinematography and to learn more about the field. He is the winner of the First-Place Award at the El-Keraza Festival in Egypt and Sudan for the documentary film "Kelia" (2022), which was his first documentary as a director. He also directed his first short narrative film, "The Monkey," in 2024, which was selected for international film festivals and received honorable mentions.
DIN 18035
Simona Obholzer | Austria
Year: 2024
Run time: 13:12 min.
Synopsis:
A soccer pitch emerges based on a process standardized down to the last detail. Layers of sand and soil are piled up and leveled, pieces of turf are rolled out and cut to size. Nothing is left to chance. Only when nature has been cast into shape can the game begin.
Bio:
Simona Obholzer born 1982 in Tyrol, Austria, lives and works in Vienna. She is a visual artist working with graphic, text, photography and video.
She graduated from the School for Artistic Photography by Friedl Kubelka in Vienna and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Video and Video Installation, where she received her diploma in Fine Art. An exchange at the Glasgow School of Art in the department of Fine Art Photography is also part of her educational background.
Simona Obholzer received several grants, latest the most promising award for contemporary art of the federal state of Tyrol (2016), the START-grant for Video and Media Art by the Austrian ministry for culture (2015), the OE1 Talents Scholarship for Fine Arts (2013). In 2015 she held a residency scholarship at the Cité Internationale des Arts Paris. Her work is nationally and internationally shown in exhibitions and at film festivals.
