Surrealist Vacation Resort Athens 2024
@ ADAF – Athens Digital Arts Festival // 16-26 May 2024
curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne
screenings on 17, 21, 25 May 2024
List of videos:
Susanne Wiegner (Germany) – Back drop, 2021, 4:03
Heidi Kumao (USA) – Devoured, 2020, 1:08
Isthmaël Baudry (France) – Morphoex-Bettina, 2019, 4:00
Lilia Li-Mi-Yan and Katherina Sadovsky (Russia) – A000000000001000AA011, 2021, 09:00
Laura y Sira Cabrera (Spain) – Alterations , 2023. 7:29
Brit Bunkley (New Zealand) – The Peaceable Kingdom, 2023, 5:28
Maria Korporal (Netherlands) – The Mind’s Egg, 2023, 2:30
Monika K. Adler (UK) – Patriarchal Sabbath, 2023, 3:11
Francesca Fini (Italy) – Paradise Lost, 2022, 6:00
Osvaldo Cibils (Uruguay) – The Subway Acupuncturist, 2023, 11:28
Thomas Vallianatos (Greece) – Athens-the present that didn’t exist, 2023, 3:51
Oliver Griem (South Korea) – A Virtual Death, 2021, 2:11
Details:
Susanne Wiegner (Germany) – Back drop, 2021, 4:03
The video shows that we live in the stage setting of an apparently ideal world. Despite
the current crises and threats, we cling to this illusion of security and idyll, although
we are slowly beginning to sense how fragile this life finally is. The very slow
tracking shot demystifies our way of life.
Heidi Kumao (USA) – Devoured, 2020, 1:08
Absurdist animated quarantine comedy. Isolated at home, facing a barrage of news updates, a character nervously responds.
Isthmaël Baudry (France) – Morphoex-Bettina, 2019, 4:00
By reading the novel “Immortality” by Milan Kundera, the video is trying to create a ghost of Bettina Von Arnim haunting Wolfgang von Goethe as a metaphorical movement, plunging the viewer into another dimension. The masks symbolizing the image of Bettina show – behind the shadow there is window, behind the darkness is light.
Lilia Li-Mi-Yan and Katherina Sadovsky (Russia) – A000000000001000AA011, 2021, 09:00
The artists explore the theme of the possibility of human interaction and connection with other forms of existence. The posthuman possesses not just new systems of defending itself against environmental degradation and destruction, but also new ways of perception and feeling. Still, it appears to have the same concerns: the rights of the posthuman, immortality, love, responsibility, the anachronism of gender and the transcendence of birth and reproduction.
Laura y Sira Cabrera (Spain) – Alterations , 2023. 7:29
The video tries to express how life in the city makes us insensitive, absurd, as
profoundly stupid and mechanical beings, alienated from Nature. We live alterations such
as fires, torrential rains, droughts, unbreathable air… We are hyper-exploiting humans, all
living beings and natural resources, to the point of endangering thousands of living species
and producing a rupture that leads us to our own extinction. The images are tuned to the
music, which gives them the strangeness and emotional tone.
Brit Bunkley (New Zealand) – The Peaceable Kingdom, 2023, 5:28
The Peaceable Kingdom” is a dreamscape of various domestic and wild animals inhabiting human architectural spaces. Absent of humans, the video would depict animals interacting naturally within human settings. Convincingly real but at the same time clearly digital, they encompass a type of animal deepfake ontology.
Maria Korporal (Netherlands) – The Mind’s Egg, 2023, 2:30
The mind’s egg is our subconscious: it contains dreams and ideas, intuition and experiences that may give birth to inventions, new insights or new art forms. The drawn figures seem to come out of the egg, but at the same time they nest the egg in a protected environment. When the drawing is completed, the egg and the figures undergo a transformation. The result is a dynamic digital microcosmos.
Monika K. Adler (UK) – Patriarchal Sabbath, 2023, 3:11
Patriarchal Sabbath is a phase-shifted dream, sequenced from revolutionary surrealism’s mitochondrial DNA. Fragments from the psyches of the women surrealists who sought to unleash themselves from the “male-shaped symbolic order,” and through fascism, war, and exile, found their own voices and community. The figure of an anthropomorphic poodle dog, referencing its appearance in the works of Dorothea Tanning and Leonor Fini, acts as both an observer and latent spectre of liberation.
Francesca Fini (Italy) – Paradise Lost, 2022, 6:00
An alien creature wanders in a dreamlike and mysterious landscape that seems on the verge of collapsing at the first breath of wind.
This film was born from the artist’s desire to tell a recurring dream. In this dream, the unpleasant sensation of falling into the void – which we have all experienced at least once – fades into the feeling of precariousness and uncertainty characterizing our times. From the pandemic to the war in Ukraine, current events seem to mark a kind of countdown to nowhere. This alienating and dreamlike scenario is inhabited by strange and fantastic creatures who seem entrusted with the task of preserving the very essence of our animal nature
Osvaldo Cibils (Uruguay) – The Subway Acupuncturist, 2023, 11:28
Random potpourri of disobedient events around with the subway acupuncturist.
Thomas Vallianatos (Greece) – Athens, the present that didn’t exist, 2023, 3:51
The project “Athens, the present that did not exist” aims at artistic representation through digital generated imagery via Artificial Intelligence (AI art).
Oliver Griem (South Korea) – A Virtual Death, 2021, 2:11
‘a virtual death’ is a metaphysical journey that explores the duality of self in a technology-driven era. It highlights how our digital lives have become an extension of our physical selves, creating a mirror of identities, reflecting our own anxieties over the implications of living in a world where we can manipulate the truth and escape the consequences of our actions.
