Fascinations

On April 4, 2025, thirty-eight minutes before noon, the Korean Constitutional Court removed President Yoon Suk Yeol from office. Black-and-white footage cut into vertical patterns and rotating targets captures the moment the verdict was announced and the vibrant atmosphere in the streets of the capital city of Seoul. The image, stretched in time into geometric structures, is accompanied by a noise track of collective emotion.

A self-reflective monologue accompanying images of loneliness draws us into an inner world composed of fragments of dreams, memories, and unfinished books, telling a fragmented story of loss, longing, and desire.“I can sometimes hear my house breathing through my mouldy walls. I try to look at the sky and the trees. And they look back at me with contempt.”

Kawaguchi's Aether follows on from his earlier film Air (1992), in which he enlarged 8 mm film material, breaking down the image to the level of individual grains and transforming it into a painting. Now he replicates the experiment through a different medium: a digital camera captures a girl walking away in slow motion, and artificial intelligence transforms the enlarged image, finding patterns in the visual noise and thousands of faces in the blurred image. The immortalization of a single happy moment is transformed into a meditation on digital visuality. “When the deterioration progresses and the loss of information exceeds a certain threshold, an image ‘imagined’ by the AI ​​appears. […] This new ‘noise’ can be said to be closer to an ‘illusion’ in the visual recognition process within the brain. However, in the sense that images are essentially ‘imitations’ of reality, this can be said to be the very nature of images.” — author's commentary

Super 8 footage of hunting and other pastimes from Peruvian archives sinks into absorbing visual whirlpools that absorb both the bodies depicted and the viewers' gaze. This tribute to the legendary Our Trip to Africa (Unsere Afrikareise, 1961–1966) by Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Peter Kubelka, from which this film takes its soundtrack, was created as one of the “variations on intimacy” – a collective project of the MUTA International Festival of Audiovisual Appropriation in Lima. “The film explores the lingering spectres of colonialism and the eerie contradictions of tourism, echoing Kubelka’s radical montage techniques while probing the politics of vision and presence.” — Péter Lichter

A collage of detailed shots of organic textures, tangles of fibres, and swarms of light vibrates with the mystery of life in all its complexity, fragility, and unknowability. Inspired by research into the rhythm of firefly flickering, which is invisible to the human eye, this computer-animated film straddles the line between scientific mockumentary and essayistic horror, suggesting that one form of existence may gradually give way to another. “Something unknown lies beyond the human perception of light.”

The Distant Early Warning Line (DEWLine), an extensive chain of radar stations built by the US and Canada during the Cold War, was intended to detect a possible nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. The video is based on digitized 8 mm films from 1956, which capture the movement of massive military equipment into the pristine Arctic landscape of the Aleutian Islands and the everyday life of workers operating in Inuit areas. Algorithmic interventions in the rewritten images create phantoms of the landscape, people, and military installations. Traces of temporary human presence are gradually overlaid with abstract layers of technological vision.“Lavatelli transforms the 8 mm footage to shift between human perspectives and the inscrutable point of view of technology, presenting an apocalyptic vision as though the worst has already happened. The abstracted, melting, flickering textures evoke radioactive poisoning and atomic destruction. Human figures emerge and vanish, consumed by forces far beyond human control.” — from the accompanying material to the film

A deferred desire that warms but does not burn permeates the slow pace of this tender confession in 16 mm format. A poetic dialogue in two languages, recited by a single voice, forms another layer of the image. Inspired by Marguerite Duras' novella The Malady of Death, the film transforms thoughts of the sun, the body, love, and finitude into the rhythmic concealment and revelation of a landscape in which details appear only thanks to the flickering of solarization—a technique that involves a brief flash of light during film development.“A big dark opening admits the sound of the sea – always the same black rectangle, never any lighter. But the sound of the sea does vary in volume.” — Marguerite Duras, The Malady of Death

The exposed bowels of the earth in a former limestone quarry near Maastricht reveal layers of rock dating back 66 million years, when this part of the planet was covered by a tropical sea inhabited by mosasaurs. The slow rotating movement of the camera, simulating a wide field of view, is accompanied by a smooth transformation of the colour spectrum—from black and white to muted grey-green tones to sharp neon colours—which conveys to the audience a vision different from that of humans. The images were captured by a multispectral camera during three time intervals of the day; the panoramic time-lapse photographs were then combined into a false-colour composition consisting of two near-infrared layers and one ultraviolet. “Most people know false colour photography from NASA/ESA satellite imagery. It is normally used to detect forest fires, deforestation or floods or monitor crop health and earth’s carbon cycle from spacecraft. Colours are assigned to different wavelengths that human eyes cannot normally see, invoking a sort of extraterrestrial, alien viewpoint.” — Michiel van Bakel

Pastel colours of endless horizons and illuminated forests alternate with shots of abandoned hyper-designed nests and high-tech hubs. Post-organic digital dreaming develops a nostalgic memory of a landscape once inhabited by beings capable of emotion. The “negatives of darkness” are inscribed with poetic miniatures by Vladislav Knežević, quoted in various languages. This slow-paced post-apocalyptic vision is filmed with infinite tenderness. "The spawn of light machines For the one of weak essence  On the edge of shattered horizonsWe disintegrate in many fragmentsFrom now on"

A collage of excerpts from Czechoslovak television educational programmes from the 1970s and 1980s devoted to the artificial termination of pregnancy is accompanied by an urgent voice-over reflecting on what really shapes the history of abortion: is it the idea of self- ownership and freedom, the development of medical technologies, state reproductive policy, or market logic? The film paints a complex picture of the reproductive history of socialist Czechoslovakia, in which media representations of abortion—so different from the rhetoric surrounding the feminist pro-choice movement in the US—are transcribed into intimate bodily experience. “We control our bodies. We control bodies. What is ‘we’ when we say ‘ours’? Touch the skin. On my own skin, I discover that I am thousands of others, not my own skin.”

The eye of a thermal camera in the wilderness doesn’t miss a single heartbeat. But who determines its gaze, and how does it transform the possibilities of vision and shape desires? The asymmetry created by this “enhanced” vision easily lends itself to structures of power and translates into the language of brutality. Found footage, a tribute to Harun Farocki, composes phantom shots from the air and the ground—from hunting videos, police recordings and videos of military operations to promotional materials from technology manufacturers—into a visual reflection on seeing and control.“During the 1920s in the US, film recordings taken from a position that a human cannot normally occupy were called phantom shots… We can interpret the film that takes up the perspective of the bomb as a phantom-subjective image.” — Harun Farocki, Phantom Images

In Hohhot, northern China, at the height of the strictest anti-COVID measures, a woman jumped from the window of an isolated house. An animated documentary essay, filmed in the aftermath of a suicide silenced by the state, reflects on the inhumanity of repression and dwells on gestures of grief. Hand-painted animation, constructed frame by frame from expressive brushstrokes, transforms the idea of tragedy into a pulsating image.“In order to stay in reality, I have to keep reliving the past.”

A precise stop-motion collage created from fragments of photographs, films, and illustrations presents impressive and sometimes horrific flashes of human and animal imagery, metamorphoses of bodies, and insect fantasies. The rhythmic visual composition is accompanied by a distinctive sound texture.“I think I said "Yes". I think I said (I... insect... scare... bird... eye... tear... thing... heartbeat... centaur... dream... mylove...) Yes.” — Pere Ginard

The parable, formed by evocative images of unveiled and veiled faces, traditional fabrics, and freely grazing animals, is wedged between the lines of a paragraph from Boccaccio's Decameron. This visual interlude in the story of a girl who, while asleep, drifted from the Aeolian Islands to the North African coast near the city of Sousse in present-day Tunisia, reflects Western ideas about the former Barbary Coast. “The maiden, hearing these Latin words, concluded that a contrary wind had driven her back to Lipari; and, getting up, she looked around her, and not recognizing the country, and seeing herself on the shore, she asked the good woman where she was.The good woman replied:‘My daughter, you are near Susa, in Barbary.’Hearing this, the maiden was grieved that God had not sent her death, fearing shame and injury; and, not knowing what to do, she sat down at the bottom of the boat and began to weep.” Source: Giovanni Boccaccio. Dekameron. 1886. Translated by John Payne.

This film poem was created during Juhannus, the Finnish celebration of the longest day of the year, using cyanotype, a contact copying process that uses light-sensitive iron salts in contact with UV light to create typically blue prints of objects. The illuminated shapes of leaves, stems, twigs, and fluff wander across the film material with increasing intensity, occasionally interspersed with flashes of blossoming flowers and a girl. The visual composition is accompanied by a delicate soundtrack composed of insect voices, the rustling of grass, and occasional jingling.“Over its short runtime, Midsummer becomes increasingly cluttered with complex forms, some of which appear more photographically based than the initial rayographs. This prompts a slight confusion between figure and ground, such that we cannot tell what may have been photographically registered on the film in the first place.” — Michael Sicinski Source: In Rewiew Online.

Shots of oppressive steel and glass facades are initially permeated by almost imperceptible flashes of organic shapes – bare branches, rippling water, dew, leaves. These gradually thicken, pushing out the image of buildings and breaking through into the outline of an unborn child, which remains latently present even upon returning to the urban space. The pulsating images are accompanied by a collage of unsolicited phone calls and associative noises of the city and home.“A tessellating flicker film that seeks to undo the cold, impersonal architecture of the city by dousing it in organic and domestic forms.” — Kyle Joseph PettySource: Kyle Joseph Petty.

This visual-performative essay weaves an associative network of images between the symbolic resonances of pomegranates and the image of grains of sand carried by the wind from the sea and settling in the dunes. A group of young performers scatter sand in urban gardens and ruins, their slow, deliberate movements alternating with surreal images of hands floating above the sea and an island emerging from the sand. Filmed in Morocco, Malta, and Germany, the film opens an imaginative crack in the fissures of real geographies. “Integrating theories by philosophers such as Édouard Glissant and Hannah Arendt, the work weaves together cultural memory, decolonial inquiry, and historiographic critique, offering counter-narratives that resist linear temporality and binary world orders. It opens hybrid spaces for the reimagining of social and aesthetic imaginaries attuned to plural futures.” — from the accompanying material to the film

The narrator of the posthumously published semi-autobiographical short story Haguruma (Spinning Gears, 1927) by Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892–1927) wanders through a city haunted by headaches, fleeting apparitions, feelings of guilt, and resignation. Filmed on Super 8 mm, the film transforms the suffocating atmosphere of the text into several silent scenes in which the hero wanders through the suburban landscape. The camera's gaze is gradually overtaken by an all-pervading horror. “This piece was created as part of my residency at Fujisawa City Art Space under the ‘Artists in FAS 2024’ program, where I was conducting research on migraines. By chance, I discovered that Akutagawa had spent his final years in Kugenuma, Fujisawa, for treatment, and that several of his works, including The Mirage, were written there. The unexpected connection between the physical phenomenon of migraines, Akutagawa's literature, and the place I was working in became the guiding influence for the direction of the work.” — Eri Saito Source: Eri Saito

A dark fantasy inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, interwoven with Lovecraftian allusions, follows a lonely traveler who enters a forgotten realm where reality shatters. Visions of high mountain cliffs, glaciers, and monsters, created in collaboration with artificial intelligence, are accompanied by a voice-over narrating the events in an incomprehensible language. The black-and-white, high-contrast imagery builds an atmosphere of inexplicable horror that accompanies, in Lovecraft's words, “the defeat of those fixed laws of nature which are our only protection against the assaults of chaos and the demons of the unexplored universe.” “There is knowledge that defies words. And a tongue best left uncomprehended.”

Beneath the polished floors of a contemporary art gallery, a new form of life is awakening, gradually transforming the urban space into a living, symbiotic system connecting humans with the realm of plants and bacteria. This speculative docufiction, shot on 16 mm film in response to the We the Bacteria exhibition at the Milan Triennale, imagines an alternative future for architecture told from the perspective of non-human actors. It explores the thorny structure of experimental architect Rachel Armstrong's SPIKA installation, which functions both as a fortress and an ecosystem, and outlines the possibility of urban buildings transformed into metabolic nodes of a new community. SPIKA (Structural Protection for Interdependent Karyotype Assembly): A bacteriophage‐inspired structure housing microbial fuel cells and hydroponics transforms waste into energy and nutrients through electrogenic biofilms and bioreceptive plant systems, reimagining architecture as a regenerative ecological partner. Source: Armstrong Rachel: “Beyond the Petri Dish: Exhibitions as Catalysts for Microbial Literacy-Bridging Science, Culture and Society”. Microb Biotechnol. 2025 Aug.

Digital animation brings to life drawings of the northern lights created in 1839 by French graphic artist Louis Bévalet in the Sami territory in northern Norway. Multiplying curves mark infinite spaces penetrated by a hypnotic ritual yoik performed by indigenous Sami musician Ánnámáret, accompanied by the jouhikko string instrument. The song evokes the memory of Sami ancestors, whose spirits – Vuoiŋŋat – still wander the landscape of Sápmi.“The work is dedicated to the memory of the Sámi people who were exhumed from their graves in burial grounds in Sápmi approximately 100–150 years ago in the name of genetic research that was carried out for racist reasons. The remains of these robbed bodies have only recently been reburied in 2022 in Sápmi in the Inari, Utsjoki, and Nellim territories.” — Marja Viitahuhta

The Deers suggests an image of a gender-polarized society unevenly marked by history. Archival footage of ceremonies from the era of the Uruguayan dictatorship and harsh military exercises clash with intimate images of sleeping girls with intertwined hair, linguistic exploration of fragile bodies, and still-lifes of set tables frozen in time. The film oscillates between the collective memory of dictatorship and everyday intimacy, between power and vulnerability.“The military dictatorship in Uruguay remains in the memory of survivors and families. The wait for justice brings routine into a standstill. The faces come in diffused ways. The image still remains.” — Emiliano Grassi

Recordings of the stories told by a bold and headstrong grandmother, who recounts episodes from her youth without sentimentality, form the basis for hand-made and animated collages of home movies, in which grainy outlines transform into faces and situations. However, the story of a woman who had to grow up quickly, worked hard, entered into a pragmatic marriage, and never fulfilled her dream does not sound bitter. The cyclical rhythm of images and voice opens up space for reflection on heritage, memory, and the feeling of being stuck, which sometimes lasts a lifetime.“Using home movies from her life and mine as the base for handmade animation loops, I repetitively and obsessively listened and drew, while lingering in the feeling of what it means to be stuck.” — Katelyn Rebelo

Heavy words bounce off the images of silent walls like another screen. Black-and-white shots taken with a handheld 16 mm camera follow empty corridors, blind windows, and bars of the former Risiera di San Sabba concentration camp in Trieste. They are permeated by György Ligeti's fragmented and nervous electronic composition Artikulation. The memory of the motionless walls is framed by an excerpt from the Italian translation of Jean Baudrillard's book La trasparenza del male (The Transparency of Evil).“During the 16 mm film shooting and development workshop held by Labbash Film in Trieste, I visited the Risiera di San Sabba, a place I had only heard about until then… I thought about how complex and ambiguous history is, how one question can have ten different answers that contradict each other, and I concluded that whatever I did in the short time I had to make this film had to be as far removed as possible from a rhetorical idea of representing evil.” — Mario BlaconàSource: PerSo Film Festival.