Program 5 | Anechoic Orations
5:00 PM | Sunday, July 20th 2025 | Woodland Pattern
720 E Locust St | Milwaukee, WI, 53212
Στο βουνό / To The Mountain, James Bridle, 7 min 30 sec
Synopsis |
Στο βουνό / To The Mountain (2023) is a short meditation on more-than-human relationships, originally commissioned by the Serpentine Galleries for Infinite Ecologies.
Artist Bio |
James Bridle is a writer, artist and technologist. Their artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. Their writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Wired, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, the Guardian, and the Financial Times. They are the author of 'New Dark Age' (2018) and 'Ways of Being' (2022), and they wrote and presented
"New Ways of Seeing" for BBC Radio 4 in 2019. Their work
can be found at http://jamesbridle.com.
Translocations, Nick Jordan , 14 min 44 sec
Synopsis |
Centred on sphagnum moss, Translocations highlights the mutual aid and reciprocal exchange that exists between species in the restoration of a lowland peatbog. Featuring the voice of botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer, and a tactile soundtrack score, the film documents the human and more-than-human life, energies and actions that are transforming an intensively farmed and damaged terrestrial environment back into a flourishing wetland habitat. The film is structured around volunteers moving ('translocating') gathered balls of sphagnum moss from replete to deplete areas of the bog, enabling a keystone species in peat formation and carbon sequestration to thrive and rejuvenate a vital part of the biosphere.
Exploring the luminous and vivid characteristics of this rewilded, transitional terrain, the film depicts the abundance of re-introduced sphagnum moss and the dynamic mosaic of co-dependent species that are now thriving both above and below the surface of the bog, from flowering cotton grasses and carnivorous sundews to dragonflies and silk-moths.
Artist Bio |
Nick Jordan is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the interconnections between cultural, social and natural ecologies. The artist’s work has been exhibited widely at international exhibitions and film festivals, including Innsbruck International Biennial; Videonale, Kunstmuseum Bonn; British Textile Biennial; CPH:Dox; Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur; Kassel Dokfest; Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival; Tampere Film Festival; Whitstable Biennale; Documenta Madrid; BFI London Film Festival; São Paulo International Short Film Festival. Artist residencies & commissions include Headlands Center for the Arts, (San Francisco); British Textile Biennial; The National Trust; The Manchester Museum; Book Works; Newcastle University / Stasi Archives (Berlin); ICA; Thackray Museum of Medicine; Art Gene; British Society of Aesthetics; Arts & Heritage; University of Manchester; NHS; European Society of Human Genetics (Austria). Nick Jordan studied Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University (BA) and Manchester Metropolitan University (MA). He is curator of the annual Braziers International Film Festival and is based in Manchester, UK.
Dedos do Demo, ollos de cabalo, Nela Fraga, 14 min 45 sec
Synopsis |
“Dedos do Demo” (“Devil's fingers”, Clathrus archeri) is a rare fungus native to our antipodes that arrived in Europe during World War I, on the boots of Australian soldiers. Its unsettling appearance earned it its name and its nauseating smell - of decomposing flesh - is an omen of its presence. This first discovery is the starting point for a brief ascent of the line that links the San Roque do Eirixado Fountain, the Naraío Waterfall and the Racamonde Geodesic Vertex (in San Sadurniño, Galicia, Spain). A deep trail of this land, from which energies that are not neutral emanate. To move through the telluric San Sadurniño facing a mirror to the visible, giving back to light and shadow what they project, seems, more than a path, an immaterial ploughing furrow. To stalk like this is to open up the Earth and leave exposed the Evil and the Good it contains, and, in this way, to think about its nature and our role in it, making it patently clear that its simple observation can teach us how to take a side.
Artist Bio |
Nela Fraga (1988) always take the longest way home: before coming to cinema, she studied Philology, Master in Cultural Studies, Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature, Master in Cultural Management and worked in communication and cultural events, mainly cinematographic. Since 2017 she works all year in the (S8) Mostra Internacional de Cinema Periférico: her door back home. There she helps other creators to fulfill their dreams. Here she try to fulfill hers.
At the beginning of 2024 she released her debut features 'EXPOSED' and 'Dedos do demo, ollos de cabalo'. She premiered the first one for 400 young folks in the (S8) and then at Curtocircuíto Film Festival and in the 20th Experiments in Cinema (Albuquerque, NM, US). There is no turning back now.
ONDULEUR MINERAL, Alexandra Levasseur, 2 min 15 sec
Synopsis |
ONDULEUR MINERAL is a project inspired by the writings of Nikola Tesla. This animated choreography presents ornamental combinations reflected to infinity by imaginary mirrors. The title refers to electrical energy and the use of ceramic stoneware for the creation of the sculptures. ONDULEUR MINERAL (Mineral Inverter) is the anagram of UN SEUL RAYON DE LUMIÈRE (A Single Ray of Light ) in french. The era of energy transition we are going through inspires me to develop this phase of a multimedia project that highlights animated transitions between human figures and natural landscapes. I want to discover links with the notions of physics and biology that speak of the transformation of matter, the production of energy and the role of humans in the protection of natural resources. The hierarchical way we imagined the world no longer seems adequate or accurate.
Artist Bio |
Alexandra Levasseur is a painter, sculptor and animated filmmaker born in Shawinigan, Canada, in 1982. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Costa Rica (2006), a Master's degree in Illustration and Communication from EINA in Barcelona (2008) and a Major in animated film from Concordia University in Montreal (2014). She has received academic excellence scholarships from the Blairmore Foundation (2013) and Turtle Creek Asset Management (2014). In 2017 and 2023, she received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts to carry out animation and sculpture projects.
Since 2010, her work has been exhibited in various art galleries and museums including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (2014), Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in Berlin (2023) and the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (2022), as well as at art fairs and film festivals around the world. In 2018, her film La singularité was awarded the Spira prize at the Fantasia Film Festival, in Montreal.
She has participated in multiple collaborations as a visual artist, notably with London fashion photographer Nick Knight during Milan Fashion Week in 2014; with Lena Mejova (Jenesaq) for a ready-to-wear collection inspired by her work and for the visual of the show at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in 2022; with musicians such as Transviolet (Sony Music), Enzo Ferreira Martinez, Jorja Smith (visuals for Redbull Music Academy), and as a set designer for the dance collective La tresse, in Montreal in 2019. She has created the illustrations for the latest edition of Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar in 2022 by Folio Society of London.
Her work has been published in numerous art, fashion and design magazines including AnOther Magazine, Allure/Vogue, Elle, Metal Magazine, Booooooom, Juxtapoz, 24 images, Widewalls, Vice and ArtMaze Mag. She was a guest artist at Concordia University in Montreal and Goldsmiths University in London for the MFA student critiques in 2022, and was guest speaker at the Cut Out Fest Animation Festival, in Mexico in 2019.
No Moon Tonight, Laura Ohio, 16 min
