A Demonstration

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25 min / 2020 / in collaboration with Beny Wagner

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“A Demonstration” is a monster film with no monsters. Inspired by the existence of taxonomies of monsters at the heart of Early Modern European science, the film explores and reinterprets a way of seeing the natural world that is almost impossible to imagine from today’s vantage point. Early Modern naturalists were guided by a logic in which scientific truths were discovered through visual analogy. The word ‘monster’ comes from the latin ‘monstrare’, meaning to show, to reveal, to demonstrate. “A Demonstration” picks up on these themes in a poetic exploration of the boundaries of sight and the metamorphosis of form.

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Exhibition list

Premiere: Berlinale Shorts Competition 2020

Solo exhibition: CIAP Kunstverein, Genk, Belgium, 2021

Featured on Criterion Channel, from April 2022
Baltic Triennial Intro, CAC Vilnius, 2020 

New Nature, Moving Image Museum, New York, USA, 2020

New Nature, Goethe Institut, Montreal, Canada, 2020

Solo screening: Los Angeles Film Forum, USA, 2021

Solo screening: E-flux screening room, USA, 2022

Bucharest Experimental Film Festival, Romania, 2020 
Moscow Experimental Film Festival, Russia, 2020 
Curtocircuito Film Festival, Spain, 2020
Guanajuato Film Festival, Mexico, 2020 

Kasseler Dokfest, Germany, 2020

Dokfilmwoche Hamburg, Germany, 2021

Stuttgarter Filmwinter Film and Media Festival, Germany, 2022

La Roche-Sur-Yon film festival, France, 2021

London Short Film Festival, UK, 2021

Chicago Underground Film Festival, USA, 2020
Vancouver Film Festival, Canada, 2020
Vilnius Film Festival, Lithuania, 2020

Prismatic Ground, Maysles Documentary Center, USA, 2021
Imagine Science Film Festival, USA, 2020

Australian Environmental Film Festival, Australia, 2021

Traverse Video Festival, France, 2021

'Repeated Apparitions' screening, The Horse Hospital, London, 2021
New Holland Island Film Festival, Russia, 2020
Still Voices Film Festival, Ireland, 2020 
Film Festival della Lessinia, Italy, 2020

2020: A Year in Review, AEMI, Ireland, 2020

Kurzfilmfestival Koln, Germany, 2022

Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, 2023

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Awards

Second Place for German Short Film Prize, 2020

Best Visual Concept Prize, Bucharest Experimental Film Festival, Romania, 2020 

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Jury statement for Best Visual Concept Prize, Bucharest Experimental Film Festival 2020: "Through an exquisite sensitive approach, sometimes close to a cinematographic trance, «A Demonstration» shakes up our memories and brings us back to forgotten worlds. The film explores various modes of representation and classification of the natural world, bringing to consideration tropes of visibility and invisibility, expression and suppression, science and myth."

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Related:

All Thoughts Fly: Monster, Taxonomy, Film

Monster as Medium: Experiments in Perception in Early Modern Science and Film

Monsters, Measures and Metabolisms

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