*Image credits: Marcin Liminowicz, In landscape mode, LOOP DISCOVER 2018
Date: Friday, May 24, 2019, at 19.00
Place: Aavora, 180 Ippokratous str. Athens
Entrance free
LOOP DISCOVER Video Art Awards partners with PCAI in the context of Midnight Express Film Club. On Friday, May 24, at 19.00 the ten finalist videos of LOOP DISCOVER 2018 shortlisted by a professional jury, along with the most voted video on LOOP’s online cannel, will be presented at the historical cinema Aavora in Athens.
For this edition LOOP DISCOVER establishes alliances between ecology and video art presenting works that inform inspire, denounce, propose, raise awareness, engage, hold accountable, confront… In short, works that help people imagine and bring forth a more sustainable future.
The theme is much more than an issue, it is one of the biggest challenges we face as species: how can we make Earth a habitable place? How can we direct ourselves towards a sustainable future?
Works by Bianca Kennedy & Felix Kraus, David Mutiloa, Gary Zhexi Zhang, Joan Bennàssar, Marcin Liminowicz, Marina Camargo, Momu & No Es, Natalia Skobeeva, Su Yu Hsin, Young Mee Roh, Viviana Silva Flores
Curated by Gisela Chillida Espinosa and Kika Kyriakakou
More about LOOP DISCOVER
The Discover Award was launched in 2015 by LOOP Barcelona with the support of Estrella Damm, with the aim of recognising and promoting the recent production of films and videos by visual artists through an open call to the international art community. LOOP is a platform dedicated to the study and promotion of the moving image. Founded in 2003, since its creation it offers a specialised audience a curated selection of video-related contents from challenging perspectives.
More about Midnight Express
Midnight Express Film Club in Athens was established in 2017 by film critic Akis Kapranos and takes place in the historical cinema house Aavora in downtown Athens. It includes more than 6.100 members consisting mainly of young cinephiles aging from 18 to 25 years old. Midnight Express screening events were met with overwhelming success whereas every so often film critics, directors, script writers and actors are invited to the events to present films and discuss with the audience.
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1. Bianca Kennedy & Felix Kraus (Leipzig,1989/ Munich,1986)
The Lives Beneath
stop-motion, 3D animation & real live footage
18:27
2018
Kennedy and Kraus depict a world in the year 4000. Plants, animals and human beings form a worldwide super-network of consciousness. The few remaining non-hybrid humans have become obsolete for nature’s plans and are being forced to live underwater cities. The Lives Beneath examines the downfall of a society that refuses to live with nature in harmony. But on the other side is a self-conscious planet, which suffers from the burden of having to think for all eternity.
2. David Mutiloa
(Pamplona, 1979)
I Can Only Tell You a Few Things About What Happened
One-channel digital video
18:36
2017
Offering itself as a science fiction story located in the very near future and based on the transformations that have taken place in the last decades within the dynamics of productive work (digitalization of processes, fractalization of times and spaces, absorption of cognitive and affective faculties…), I can only tell you a few things about what happened shows us a dystopian scenario, a working environment in extreme conditions in which a new type of slavery is put into practice.
3. Gary Zhexi Zhang
(Suzhou, China, 1993)
Parasite
13:04
Digital video
2018
Parasite follows the life-cycle of an amoeba as it multiplies and proliferates through a number of biological hosts. The spores of a slime mould manifests in a human population as a mysterious illness, a skin condition which produces collective sensations of openness and loss. Featuring the slime mould Physarum Polycephalum, the film takes the parasite as the starting point of ecology, as a relation of extraction and exploitation, but also dependency and nurture. The parasite makes its home (oikos, eco-logy) in the host in a material intimacy which connects living bodies to one another.
4. Joan Bennàssar
(Palma de Mallorca, 1990)
Mad Honey
18:52
video HD
2018
The video project of “Mad honey” describes the hallucinations of some hive thieves who have taken too much toxic honey. This honey is poisonous due to the high content of chemicals used in Mexico. In his hallucinations she describes the kaleidoscopic transformation of plastic materials, from the great architectural infrastructures of the 50s to phantasmagoric and immaterial compounds such as the agrochemicals of today in Mexico. The project has been produced by the Fundació Joan Miró of Barcelona in the context of the exhibition “Beehave” at the Joan Miró Foundation Museum.
5. Marcin Liminowicz
(Walcz, Polonia, 1992)
In Landscape Mode
07:17
video HD
2018
When taking a photo, do we influence the natural environment? Raw video registration outstretches a view on short cruise to the ice-covered northern part of Bay of Bothnia. This natural phenomena can be seen as meaningful and unique for times overtaken by global warming. Thick layer of ice cracks under heavy body of a ship as the sun slowly rises. What we investigate directly is an icebreaker trip-tourist attraction. Taking on a role of participant, author observes the active-passive relation between other tourists and surrounding they are immersed into.
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6. Marina Camargo
(Maceio, Brasil, 1980)
Brasil. Extrativismo
10:14
video HD
2017
In “Brasil. Extrativismo” (Brazil. Extractivism) a map from a school atlas is erased until its colors and regions start to fade. The title of the work is the same as the erased map. The action is registered in video, showing its vanishing process. Cartography is a recurrent subject approached by the artist, who sees the maps as political narratives as well as graphic constructions.
7. Momu & No Es
Eva Noguera (Barcelona 1979)/ Lucía Moreno (Basilea 1982)
Global Windshield, The Musical
18:55
video HD & 3D animation
2018
"Global Windshield, The Musical" replicates the state of hypnosis produced by the prolonged driving in a highly predictable environment in order to rethink, propose and imagine preferable futures. A trip in a scenario in completely disconnection with nature that investigates from the most human the sensation of loss of control, failure and impotence. The songs in the video explore how we ignore the signs that manifest around us to live in a world anesthetized by the promises and hopes that technologies offer us. If the traces of our past have become virtual and our present is delivered to a world whose greatest treasure is the data archived as zeros and ones. What proportion of reality remains tangible?
8. Natalia Skobeeva
(Vladimir, Rusia,1975)
Biographies of Objects
06:13
video HD
2018
"Biographies of Objects" approaches the biggest contemporary crises of today – ecological crises – through linking and interrelating complex and disparate seeming ideas of quantum physics and migration. The work establishes alliances between the particles and the waves of the known universe and the human footprint of Anthropocene, while disclosing the tools (technology) that has been used by the human kind. The work denounces the separation of humanity from its actions and proposes new way of looking for the possible solutions.
9. Su Yu Hsin
(Taichung, Taiwan, 1989)
Water Sleep
08:54
video HD
2018
The visual culture of the techno-utopians reinforces humanity’s mastery of nature through digital satellite photography. “Water Sleep” is an comparative approach to the water phenomenon in Junin and Akiyoshidai. In Japan, local farmers strived on Akiyoshidai Plateau, a Karst-topography-formed landscape. From the other side of the world, Junín, a city in Buenos Aires Province Argentina, is surrounded by four lagoons which are still growing nowadays. The coverage of surface water is growing, and it brings back the animals, but is the habitat still natural or artificial?
10. Young Mee Roh
(Seoul, 1982)
Parsley Girl
07:40
video HD
2018
A lot of data such as documents, sounds, pictures, voices(tts*), and moving images from the World Wide Web is gathering to play the Old Italian folk tale. They share their own stories (about copyright-free sources) through Parsley girl; whose story is about the independence from the beings who claim to be her master. Also in an age of data-richness like today, this work suggests a new kind of upcycling.
*11. Viviana Silva Flores
(Santiago de Chile, 1985)
Pescando incertezas
06:02
video HD
2016
A metaphor and the process of weaving collectively to gather stories and memories led us to share various problems of the Island of Lemuy. An island in southern Chile, which has not only changed its landscape but also its local culture since the emergence of the aquaculture industry and the consequent exploitation of natural resources. While weaving together different narrations around this problematic appeared. The changes in the ways of inhabiting the territory, the disappearance of marine species, pollution, the loss of local identity traditions. The progress?, the certainties?
