Aleph Null

A person spends most of their life mourning the things they have lost, unable to move on. They frequent a silent but helpful medium and embark on a spiritual journey where they linger among their past lives.

Set in a Tuscan eden, Rocca Dell’s short film “Calcio” develops a contemporary digital mythology by setting four “calcianti” – players of Florence’s historic form of football, the Calcio Storico Fiorentino – against the rich and harmonious landscapes of Tuscany, while expanding both space and time in order to convey the artist’s very personal dreamscape: a hybrid of the natural world, or rather a synthetic, artificial interpretation of it.

data-verse is a data-driven audio-visual trilogy by artist and composer Ryoji Ikeda which marks a two-decade culmination in the artist’s research. The trilogy addresses the layered dimensions of our world, from the microscopic, to the human, to the macroscopic. Through Ikeda’s process, massive scientific data sets have been transcribed, converted, transformed, de/re/meta-constructed and orchestrated to visualise and sonify the different dimensions that co-exist in our world between the visible and the invisible. Each variation immerses visitors in the vast data universe in which we live, capturing hidden facets of nature and the vast scientific knowledge underpinning our existence. This large-scale data-driven trilogy is generated by extremely precise computer programming and features a minimalist electronic soundtrack, harmonised with Hollywood-standard, high-definition, 4K DCI video projections of scientific data onto a large screen.

data-verse is a data-driven audio-visual trilogy by artist and composer Ryoji Ikeda which marks a two-decade culmination in the artist’s research. The trilogy addresses the layered dimensions of our world, from the microscopic, to the human, to the macroscopic. Through Ikeda’s process, massive scientific data sets have been transcribed, converted, transformed, de/re/meta-constructed and orchestrated to visualise and sonify the different dimensions that co-exist in our world between the visible and the invisible. Each variation immerses visitors in the vast data universe in which we live, capturing hidden facets of nature and the vast scientific knowledge underpinning our existence. This large-scale data-driven trilogy is generated by extremely precise computer programming and features a minimalist electronic soundtrack, harmonised with Hollywood-standard, high-definition, 4K DCI video projections of scientific data onto a large screen.

In her celebrated video art serial, Whispering Pines, video and performance artist Shana Moulton tells the ever-evolving story of Cynthia, an anxiety-ridden hypochondriac whose constant search for health and happiness leads her towards fad cures and new age kitsch, creating situations in turn comic, contemplative, and surreal. The mundane objects in Cynthia's world act as portals into her own overactive subconscious, wherein hallucinatory sequences explore the nature of material and spiritual concerns in contemporary culture.

Mountainous images accompanied by the song "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen.

This live show features the energetic analysis of television network news by Brian Winston. Winston looks at the news as a unique institution, governed by its own conventions and constraints.

How does the "cultured" gorilla, i.e. Koko, come to represent universal man? Author and cultural critic Donna Haraway untangles the web of meanings, tracing what gets to count as nature, for whom and when, and how much it costs to produce nature at a particular moment in history for a particular group of people.

Furio’s Furious Fragments & Friends - Furio Jesi (1941 Turin -1980 Genoa), enfant prodige moving between a plethora of disciplines – egyptology, history of religions, German philology, literary criticism - passed away prematurely, not without leaving bright fragments which throw light on mechanisms beneath many socio-cultural practices, for instance regarding cultural belonging, the functions of myth in modern society. He saw kind of “mythological machines” at work underneath our cultural production of meanings, historically determined, departing from a void, something that is still in culture but as residue, a missing link to an alleged authentic experience nowadays compromised up to the point to became just rhetoric, a byword, which is in no way neutral, but a tool, a macchina, for maintaining the status quo and serving the power apparatus. As in the case of holidays, celebrations and festivals.

Strange things occur tonight whether the paranormal phenomenon is the invisible invasion of aliens from outer space or light flashes of another dimension? We will never know. Are we alone or may we encounter extraterrestrial species that are coming at night to conquer our dreams, our body and mind? What are you afraid of?

Skin Shade Night Day explores the daily routine and rituals practised by the artist’s Cambodian-Australian family, which are reperformed and documented through a process of embodied empathy. Acts of service, such as gardening and cooking, play out as echoes from the past across a sound and image installation displayed in a shadehouse. Spectres, shadows and aural textures conjure up impressions of a place that remembers how its inhabitants once lived.

Jonas Mekas recites poems of his, both in English and Lithuanian. Exclusive Mekas interview by the poet Sparrow. The legendary poet-film critic and film diarist waxes philosophical in rare extended setting exhibiting his transcendental poetic humor. Jonas attacks the crass world of TV advertising and sell-out commercial filmmakers. Contributes zen anecdotes and filmmaking advice. Choice clips include Mekas' Film Diaries with deceivingly formalist amateur "home movie" style, but in small bursts of expression in a quick collage. Footage from Jonas' homeland as well as clips of famed pop figures John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Tiny Tim.

Filming reworked electronically to make a dream story more real. You just have to let yourself be submerged by the waters of the Arno.

"Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?" sang the rapper known to his estranged mother as Marshall Bruce Mathers III, but better known to the rest of us as Eminem. That the Philadelphia-based artist Alex Da Corte was attracted to the early-noughties icon is perhaps unsurprising, given Da Corte’s long-held interest in artifice and pop culture, masking and makeup. After a friend noted a passing resemblance, Da Corte started to ‘embody’ the persona of the musician, not least bleaching his hair, in the hope that by taking on these outward signifiers, he might better understand a figure whose politics Da Corte profoundly disagreed with.

This final digital version is based on the performance TABULA SMARAGDINA which I played together with the musician Thomas Köner between 1997 and 2004. For more information look at Performances. - In 2008 I started to digitize the 16 mm originals frame by frame in high definition just to reorganize the materials and give them after all a form for a linear progression. Contents are cristallized salts and dyes wich are changing rhythm and structure constantly between moving images. Inside the chemical elements of the film appears the bizarre richness of its materiality. (Jürgen Reble)

Around a water scoop are ordered images of old, expressionistic films and archaic evolutionary motives. Inbetween, like a veil, are embeded chemical substances which were not washed out during the developing process. The narration dissolves more and more in the abstract metric of the materials. (Jürgen Reble)

Some documentary material shot in the surroundings of Bonn is superimposed with found footage from Timbuktu. By chemical influences during the developing process the material gets an painterly quality evoking an atmosphere somewhere between dream and reality.

Arktis is a poetic approach to the bizarre landscape of ice, rock, and water; a journey to the arctic ocean and surroundings, with images and sounds. Seventy one-second scenes of the arctic serve as the original material, which is then transformed in its texture, time lapse, color and light qualities to create a material reminiscent of landscape painting. The sound collage uses fragments from sounds of nature and samples from a piece of music for violin and song, which are also transformed in a manner similar to that of the visual pictures. (Jürgen Reble)

David’s beach experience within a motion image.

Shot between Hong Kong, Japan, and the US, this short is Joshua Gen Solondz’s most ambitious work to date, a portrait of the home and the world that is dense, textured, creepy, anxious, noisy, silly, and confounding, but always tender.