Marge Monko
Dear D, 8’, 2015.

The voice over text of the video is based on a fictional love letter which touches upon different aspects of contemporary love. The text includes several references to the writings of Chris Kraus, Siri Hustvedt and Andre Gorz, as well as the well-known song ‘Something’ by The Beatles and sociological research by Eva Illouz. The video is recorded on the computer screen and shows the process of writing the letter, interrupted by browsing the web and exploring image files. 

Marge Monko lives and works in Tallinn, Estonia. She has studied at the Estonian Academy of Arts and at HISK (Higher Institute for Contemporary Art) in Ghent, Belgium, and works with photography, video and installation. Her works are inspired by historical images and influenced by theories of psychoanalysis, feminism and visual culture.

Polak Van Bekkum
The Ride / De Rid, 12’, 2019

It’s a clear and starry night. Road markings are lighting up with reassuring regularity. We only see the view through the windshield, but from the sparse dialogue we know we are in the company of a man and a woman and that they’re on an island. They’re on their way to a place where something bad had happened long ago. The visual landscape of impersonal Google Earth satellite images counterbalances the emotional charge of the short, low-key sentences and the sound of amplified heartbeats.

Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum work together as an artist-couple under the name PolakVanBekkum. Rooted in the history of Dutch realistic landscape depiction, they express personal experiences of moving and space. Their projects are often informed by collaborations with participants, be it humans, animals or the rays of the sun.

Persijn Broersen and Margit Lukács
Forest on Location, 12’, 2018

Forest on Location is a virtual replica of the last remains of the primeval forest Białowieża. The 11,800 year-old Białowieża forest, located in the border region between Poland and Belarus, has been a wellspring of European imagination for centuries, forming the backdrop for legends, myths and fairytales. Throughout its history the forest has been assigned various roles: from a cultural and historical construct to a fought-over economic resource and a political hot potato. Despite its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, its continued existence, until recently, was threatened by extensive logging. Using footage shot on location, Margit Lukács and Persijn Broersen created a digital ‘back-up’ of the disappearing forest, converting two-dimensional photographic documentation into a three-dimensional environment that forms the backdrop for the performance of Iranian opera singer Shahram Yazdani. 

Margit Lukács and Persijn Broersen are artists based in Amsterdam. Much of Broersen and Lukács’ practice is informed by the questions deeply rooted in the interest in and the workings of media and technology, intertwined with the politics of depicting landscapes, culled from political, mythological, (art)historical and filmic sources. 

Allison Henriquez
Nocturnal Motion, 4’, 2019

Nocturnal motion explores the enigmatic nature of deers and how they’ve captured the collective imagination with their metaphorical essence. In many cultures, a deer is a symbol of spiritual authority. One of the reasons for this could be its physical characteristics –– its gaze, its agility, its speed and its antlers –– which inspire associated values and symbols in the imagination of humans. A sacred animal with the spirit of gentleness and softness, a messenger, a shaman, personifying conventional ideas of femininity.

 Allison Henriquez is a poet and video artist. She is presently pursuing a Master’s degree in moving image at the Sandberg Instituut. She has worked at the International Film Festival Rotterdam for a number of years. Her practice seeks to examine the relation between poetry, moving and sound. Currently she is interested in exploring poetic memory, a practice which eschews conventional notions of linearity and accuracy in order to uncover the human subject’s intricate relationship with a past that cannot be fully known.

Mariano Blatt and Eduardo Williams
Parsi, 23’, 2018

The Go Pro serves as a pendulum in the space created in the film. Like a nib of the pen, it writes as it follows people, bodies and their movements in impossible angles, it travels with protagonists in cars and skateboards, through the streets and avenues of Guinea-Bisseau. In this film, artist Eduardo Williams and poet Marianno Blatt extend every expressive possibility of video poetry, establishing a strange and immersive correspondence between the rhythms of pop music and the visual measures of the camera, which are brought to life by the characters.

Eduardo Williams (b.1987, Argentina) is a filmmaker and artist whose works explore a fluid mode of observation, looking for shared relations and spontaneous adventures within both physical and virtual networks.

Mariano Blatt (b.1983, Argentina) is a poet, literary editor and co-director of Blatt & Ríos, an independent publishing house. His ongoing poem No es is a lifelong writing project.