A Demonstration
25 min / 2020 / in collaboration with Beny Wagner
“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.
Exhibition list:
Premiere: Berlinale Shorts Competition 2020
Solo exhibition: CIAP Kunstverein, Genk, Belgium, 2021
Nominated (runner up) for German Short Film Prize, 2020
Bucharest Experimental Film Festival, Romania, 2020 - awarded Best Visual Concept Prize
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
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
Related:
All Thoughts Fly: Monster, Taxonomy, Film
Monster as Medium: Experiments in Perception in Early Modern Science and Film
Conjuring the Perceptible Unknown
As installed at solo show A Demonstration, CIAP Kunstverein, Genk, Belgium, 2021
