ROHSTOFFAUSBEUTUNG – Drei Positionen aus der Medienkunst

In the organizer's words:

Naoko Tanaka, Viktor Brim, Au Sow Yee
Focus on: ROHSTOFFE - Buried Secrets

Three video works will be shown:

Billions of Years of Echoes by Naoko Tanaka (2023, drawn essay film, 11 minutes)
The essay film is based on drawings from Tanaka's journey to the contaminated exclusion zone of Fukushima. There, radioactive minerals that have leaked to the surface from the depths of the earth have caused catastrophic and irreversible damage to the local ecosystem. The artist transforms her real-life encounters with people, animals and natural objects in Fukushima into magical narratives. In the analog process of drawing, etching and photographing, the pencil drawings that emerge and fade continuously develop a life of their own. The ideas of creation, the forces of nature and mankind differ radically from conventional narratives.
Language: German with English subtitles

Dark Matter by Viktor Brim (2020, experimental film, 20 minutes)
Dark earth is dug up, transported and removed. In "Dark Matter", various images, which are brought into context depending on the situation, create a post-apocalyptic landscape that intensifies and challenges the audience's sense of time. In gloomy, silent tableau shots, Viktor Brim shows the environmental destruction and precarious working reality in one of the world's largest diamond mines, Mir, in Sakha in north-eastern Siberia (Yakutia). Technology and ideology go hand in hand here and leave their mark. The mine is operated and monitored by both the local company Alrosa and the government. Among other things, the mining is linked to dozens of nuclear bomb tests carried out by the Soviet government in Sakha between 1974 and 1987. Radioactive material, traces of heavy industry and rocket parts have turned the region into a toxic landscape.
Language: Without language

Kris Project I: The Never Ending Tale of Maria, Tin Mine, Spices and the Harimau by Au Sow Yee (2016, experimental film, 15 minutes)
"Kris Project I" questions the 'cultural subjectivity' of Malaysia and its neighboring countries, which is strongly influenced by their colonial past and the commodities trade. The film mixes present and past, combines mythical narratives with archive material from the 1950s and 1960s and thus dissolves linear historiography. Figures and plots from the Indian epic Ramayana and other folklores are deconstructed and retold at the same time. In this way, the history of rubber plantations and tin mining under British colonial rule, which is often on the fringes of collective memory, is brought back into focus. Au Sow Yee creates a 'pseudo-film' by separating sound and image, dissolving space and time and encouraging the audience to develop their own reading of the story.
This work was created with the generous support of the Rockbund Art Museum.
Language: English and Chinese
PRODUCTION MANAGER Alison Khor
CINEMATOGRAPHER Lim Chee Yong
VOICEOVER Shanthini Venugopal
MUSIC Sandra Tavali

Funded by Perform Europe as part of the project "Buried Secrets - Responses to Raw Materials Exploitation"