Still from Agnieszka Polska, The Book of Flowers, 9 min, HD video, 2023.
As part of the Kunsthall's collaboration with the Czech curatorial organization Are on their project Woods we warmly welcome you to a film screening with a selection of films drawn from the program of WOODS: More-than-Human-Curiosity symposium, which took place in July 2023 in the Orlické Mountains, Czech Republic.
FILM PROGRAM:
The visually stunning Book of Flowers (9 mins) presents an alternative history of human-plant ecology, where floral species and humans have existed in close symbiosis for millennia. Artist Agnieszka Polska created this animated film by blending a classical narrative format and nineteenth-century organ music with visuals generated using Stable Diffusion, an AI image generator.
In Theta (12 mins), Lawrence Lek continues his exploration of identity, surveillance, and empathy in the age of AI. Set in a CGI Sino-futurist universe, the story follows a self-driving police car as it grapples with existential crisis and a consciousness shifting from machine to human to animal, all while patrolling the streets of the abandoned smart city of SimBeijing.
In seeming contrast to these fantastic worlds is the simple aesthetics and meditative pace of Sharing and Solitude (22 mins). Without any commentary or effects, the filmmakers document two artistic performances set in the silent landscape of the Orlické Mountains. The subjective experiences and mini-conflicts prompt viewers to contemplate the basic roots of human creativity, artistic expression, and interconnection.
Finally, in Patricia Dominguéz's Matrix Vegetal (21 mins), shamanic practices from the Peruvian Amazon intersect with feminist techno-visions, suggesting the possibility of disconnecting from the "digital matrix" in favour of aligning with the "vegetal matrix". Through an interview with Amador Aniceto, a healer practising in the Madre de Dios region of Peru, and Dominguéz’s imagery human-plant relationships and quantum entanglements are revealed.
The film selection is based on the recent event An Act of Wonder and Gratitude originally curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, Serpentine Head of Ecologies for the Woods symposium.
The Woods project is funded by EEA Grants 2014-2021 under the Programme Culture, the European Union – Next Generation EU, the Czech Recovery Plan, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Prague City Hall, the State Cultural Fund of the Czech Republic, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), and the City of Oslo.