In Ictu Oculi

A look at the evolution of life and finding our purpose.

What We Never Forget For Peace Here Now is a personal peace memorial produced in the United States, a country that does not have war memorials dedicated to peace. This video explores how we forget and how we remember memories of war. I think about who are my survivors and witnesses of war, and the deep impressions they've given me, becoming a part of me. Drawing inspiration from peace activists young and old, I ask viewers to join me in a practice of peace, here and now.

For this work Alÿs purchased a gun in Mexico City then walked through the city streets with the weapon in his hand. After eleven minutes he was arrested by the police. The following day he repeated the action, this time in cooperation with the police. By presenting a record of this dramatic action alongside footage of its reenactment, Alÿs blurs the boundaries between documentation and fiction. Questioning the concept of authenticity, this work demonstrates “how media can distort and dramatize the immediate reality of a moment,” the artist has said. Gallery label from Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception, May 8–August 1, 2011.

Featuring one of the most monstrous personalities to grace the screen, "Me and My Victim" follows the tumultuous romance between its creators, Billy Pedlow and Maurane. In their feature debut, they have created a new genre using a blend of podcast-style audio recordings and visual fragments. "Me and My Victim" is like turning over a rock and witnessing a full ecosystem of bugs scattering in the light. It'll make you cringe, but it'll be hard to look away.

This short film shot in a small town in Sweden navigates themes of nostalgia through an original monologue, reflecting on gender identity struggle and the pursuit of a new beginning in a foreign land.

47 Days, Sound-less by Vietnamese artist Nguyễn Trinh Thi is a film that explores the relationships between sound and silence, vision, language, colours and their absence. Nguyễn identifies “peripheries”—including natural landscapes used as backdrops, uncredited characters and soundtracks from American and Vietnamese movies—that reveal more-than-human perspectives. Offering new ways of looking and listening, 47 Days, Sound-less invites audiences to reflect on the inextricable relationship between a place and its inhabitants.

A whirlwind of improvisation combines the images of animator Pierre Hébert with the avant-garde sound of techno whiz Bob Ostertag in this singular multimedia experience, a hybrid of live animation and performance art.

The Karikpo masquerade - a traditional dance of the Ogoni tribe - is transposed onto the remnants of a faded oil industry programme in the Niger delta.

A collection of images taken on 35mm film with a point-and-click Holga135BC during the year after I dropped out of school.

Dancing Plague, a GTA V mod, flips the script. Holding H key forces male NPCs to dance uncontrollably, revealing the game's biased animations where female characters (often sex workers) have the flashiest moves. This disrupts the game's gender roles, making masculinity both playful and challenged. Interestingly, female characters ignore the male dance frenzy. This is a humorous critique of the game's gender politics. The mod's soundtrack, by Azu Tiwaline, blends electronic music with trance traditions, deepening the critique and adding an immersive ritualistic feel.

3STIGIA

Vickie and Zhenya are identical twins in the process of transitioning. They live in the small city of Norilsk in the far north of Russia. Their entire life is condensed into the space of their small room. The film is constructed as a methodological manual for the creation and arrangement of a living space, and the placement of various objects there. The room of Vickie and Zhenya is examined as an ideal example of the intimate private space capable of authentically reflecting its hostess. The film is based on a video-letter that Vickie and Zhenya sent to their friend Valya. Vickie and Zhenya got to know Valya at the clinic where they underwent their sex reassignment. Since then, Valya has been their constant—though invisible—witness of their life. They report to Valya on all the changes they go through in the process of their transfiguration into Beautiful Ladies.

An experimental short film about wind and sunlight sweeping across tree leaves.

Bounded Intimacy (part of the trilogy of Super 8mm shorts It’s Just Business, Baby) examines the histories of various forms of body labor across the Chelsea and Tribeca districts, renowned as a sites for sex work, sex clubs and illicit sexual activity. Bounded Intimacy explores the seduction of a nameless woman and the camera. The relationship between the two remains unknown and ambivalent as to whether or not the encounter is “authentic.” The nature of their relationship is irrelevant as the camera captures the authenticity of the desire in the encounter between the two. (Ayanna Dozier)

A loose sequel to "Self Reflection", "Inner Reflection" is about art, memories, filmmaking, and the director themselves, told through disconnected visuals and a man suffering from violent delusions.

Pedro is Mallorcan, born to a mother from Burgos and a father from Mallorca. Due to his distant relationship with his father, Pedro doesn't fully master Mallorcan as a language. He turns to the works of Damià Huguet to remember his father, as only his poems can fill the void left by his death. The poet's words transport Pedro to his childhood and his roots, even though many of the words are unknown to him, despite them belonging to his language. This becomes the driving force behind the protagonist's search for his own identity, his origins, what it means to be a man, father-son relationships, collective identity, and "mallorquinness". Pedro constantly questions the emotions stirred by Huguet's poetry, and, most importantly, who he is and where he belongs.

Unconventional portrayal of mining in the Swedish Lapland ore fields, a powerful image and sound symphony that can be experienced both as a documentary and symbolic work.

Experimental video art shot in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle

HRV

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