Överföringsdiagram nr 1 (Diagram of Transfer No. 1) – Lina Selander – Sweden – 2018 – 9 min

What this little film presents to the viewer is a modest, but as well articulated as is within its capacity, attempt to make itself, i.e. nothing else than the series of images and the occasional sounds, into a kind of recitation of precisely that: its repetition, as from memory, in a strictly formal manner. There are sets of images, correspondences, movements that resembles each other; summed up perhaps by the words Nostalgia, Violence and History, or (corresponding) Memory, Hope and Technology; there are, intersected and interrupted by their own dreams, or mutations and deformations, the images of the destruction of books and other memory devices, and the twin practice of piecing together again the fragments, in search of a redeeming knowledge, a kind of soul, that would be a past turned inside out, a sun that never set. This is what this film, in the course of its duration, does not want to be or take part in. Undulating like a snake on the ground, it is what is immediately apparent; or if something else, a pure outside, the fleeting fantasies and abstractions of others. Coincident and incompatible with itself as well as them, you, us, and what we know and take to be real. Whether successful in this ambition or not—if possible at all—may be less important than the ambition itself, although it is uncertain. It would be helpful though, if every image be carefully viewed and contemplated while it lasts; the bust of the king of Uruk, the dove and the parrot, the seventeenth century engraving, the two dogs, if two is the correct number, the children dancing, and drawing, the Ouroboros in the guillotine (that seems to have a choice, hard to make admittedly, one that has to be made alone and where we can cannot be but bystanders and witnesses, but that highly concerns the film, what to make of it), and of course the warming fire at the end. It should be mentioned that this film originally was made as a comment, a kind of stop button, on an earlier work, When the Sun Sets It’s All Red, Then It Disappears (from 2008), which, in its turn, took Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (from 1967) as its starting point to examine the dreams and hopes and misfortunes related to the 1968 student revolt and its representation and present significance for the “left”. Lastly, it would also probably not be entirely unconstructive to view Diagram of Transfer No. 1 in some relation to Gilles Deleuze’s “Postscript on the Societies of Control”, especially regarding the role of the images and the way they are regarded or presented as constituting a whole—between the system of discipline and that, advancing, of control—in this film as well as in others: as containers, enclosures, tunnels, connectors, managers, information, modulating principles, actors or actions, services, commodities or statistical entities perfectly adapted to the current and coming order … or the heralds or of some new, unnameable forms of resistance against that order, the societies of control? Capable of threatening the joys of marketing? It’s up to us to discover what we’re being made to serve. The coils of a serpent are even more complex that the burrows of a molehill.” (Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control” (1992))

Lina Selander’s work often focus on junctures in history where a system or physical place collapses and something new begins to emerge; the narrative of mechanical cinema giving way to that of digital video, or a political or economic system plummeting into a new one. Her works revolve around images as memories, imprints and representations. Selander’s work has been shown at Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), London; Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; VOX – Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montréal, Galleri Riis and in international group shows such as Venice Biennale 2015; Kyiv Biennale 2015; Seoul Media City Biennale 2014; Manifesta 2012 in Genk, Belgium; Bucharest Biennale 2010; and at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

Oscar Mangione (b. 1971) works with Lina Selander and has participated with her in several exhibitions. From 2006 to 2012 he edited and wrote for the magazine and art project Geist and took part in numerous exhibitions, performances and projects in venues such as the Reykjavík Arts Festival, the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm and the Venice Biennale.

A Camouflage of the Mind – Patrick O’Hare – USA – 2016 – 12 min – Silent

What’s there, what’s not, what lies behind. All implicated by sights seen and unseen, always alluded to but rarely acknowledged. Camouflage is a moving collage of textures, landscapes and surfaces that hovers at the edge of perception. The film moves through, and layers together everyday scenes of the urban, rural and suburban, small spectacles and various visual phenomenon.  Undercurrents of the ominous and occasional beauty coalesce on the margins. Cinema as prelude to a disappearing act.

Patrick O’Hare is a filmmaker and photographer exploring the modern landscape. His photographs have been exhibited at  MoMA PS1, Parsons School of Design and the Rhode Island School of Design. His photographs and book, “Slipstream” are included in various collections including The New York Public Library, MoMA Library, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art Research Library,  and the Samuel Dorsky Museum. He screened his films, Little Raptures for the Uncommitted, 2014 and Fissures, 2014 at UnionDocs in Brooklyn, New York in 2015.

Letter Inside a Bottle – Renato Pérez – Chile – 2018 – 8 min – Silent

Landscapes along the Highway number 5 From Curico? to Santiago in Chile, March 2018. Transitory spaces on the side of the road are fixed with the camera, forcing the spectator/driver to stop their movement, seeking to capture that fleeting moment. A message from the past managed to travel inside a wall. The human need to leave record is shown quixotic against the passage of time.

Renato Pérez was born in 1986 in the city of Curico?, Maule region, in the southern center of Chile. Renato received his degree in filmmaking from the Universidad del Desarrollo in 2010 . His first feature film, his degree project, Anonymous gets premiered in San Sebastia?n Film Festival in 2011, along with other festivals such as Valdivia Film Festival, Festivalissimo of Montreal and Latin Film Festival of Utrecht among others, it was shown in the MALBA museum in Buenos Aires in a contemporary Chilean film cycle. In 2012 he participate in the Berlinale Talent Campus. In 2014 he was the second unit director for the historical Miniseries Port Famine. In 2015 he won the Chilean National Fund for the writing of the script of his second feature film. After two experimental short films focused on landscape Ring and Letter inside a bottle, he is filming a third short film, recording the Tiergarten park in Berlin throughout a year.

The Spectre Watches Over Her – Rajee Samarasinghe – Sri Lanka/USA – 2016 – 14 min – Silent

“A reaction to the seminal text by Swiss anthropologist Paul Wirz entitled Exorcism and the Art of Healing in Ceylon, this high contrast hand processed film considers a history of colonialism and ethnographic practices in South Asia. At my mother’s village, I restaged an exorcism once performed on her in the early 1960s when she was a little girl. Possessed by the lecherous entity known as the Kalu Kumara, the Sanni Yakuma healing ritual was performed over a 12-hour period.” – RS

Rajee Samarasinghe is an award-winning Sri Lankan visual artist and filmmaker. Some of his recent work examines contemporary ethnographic practices through associations of family and heritage. He received his BFA from the University of California San Diego and his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Rajee’s work has been exhibited at venues internationally.

Transitions – Aurèle Ferrier – Switzerland – 2017 – 13 min

Transitions is a journey from the civilizing void of the desert to a maximal urban, capitalistic and hedonistic density, which in the case of Las Vegas assumes some bizarre expression. The film is a contemplation without any people or moving machines in it, focussing on the built and designed. “The work Transitions (2017) by Aure?le Ferrier examines the traces left by human civilisation – the conquest of the unwelcoming hostility of the desert ends in the surreal and hedonistic consumerism of Las Vegas. The camera leads us, with a menacing languor, through a backdrop of deserted city-outskirts. The buildings, cars and billboards speak of people’s dreams as they strive for a version happiness. The prevailingly eerie, apocalyptic mood draws you along on this filmic journey. These traces of humanity seem increasingly laughable and helpless, they vibrate with a peculiar melancholy. Where have the people disappeared to? One has the impression a catastrophe has occurred, an epidemic, or maybe it is simply an empty film set after a shoot? The film with its calm and assured grasp on image and sound is able to produce a refined suspense. The film takes the viewer on an odyssey, one that could also be a metaphor for the boundaries of human endeavor. The human culture and civilisation that emerged from the desert, will in the end be desert again.” – Text by Esther Eppstein & Elodie Pong

Aurèle Ferrier (*1975 in St.Gallen, CH) lives in Zurich. He obtained an MA in Fine Arts at Zurich University of the Arts. With his video and cinematic works, actions and interventions he explores the borders of civilization. His works have been presented in more than 30 countries and won, among others, a Grand Jury Award at Slamdance Film Festival.