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BIO
Stéphanie Roland
Stéphanie Roland is a belgian / micronesian visual artist and filmmaker.
Working between documentary and the imaginary, Roland makes films and installations exploring invisible structures, hyperobjects and deep time; from ecological and political to the geologic and cosmic.
After graduating from La Cambre and following Hito Steyerl’s class in UDK Berlin, she completed post-graduates studies at Fresnoy - Studio National. Her work is regularly shown at international level, her projects have been included in exhibitions from major institutions among these Louvre Museum, Benaki Museum, Botanique, Kampala International Art Biennale, Bozar and Wiels. Breda Photo, Belfast Photo festival, Manifesto, Encontros da Imagem, BIP Liège, MOPLA and Unseen are amongst the festivals dedicated to photography in which she took part.
In 2017, she was selected in the group exhibition of the Antarctica Pavilion for the 57th Venice Biennale.
Her films have been screened in international festivals such as Visions du Réel, FID Marseille, ZINEBI, FEST New Directors / New Films, Rencontres Internationales Paris / Berlin, among others. Her second short film, Podesta Island, had its world premiere at FID Marseille, where it wons the Alice Guy Prize. The empty sphere won the TËNK Award at Visions du Réel 2022.
BIO
Laura Colmenares Guerra
Laura Colmenares Guerra is a Colombian artist based in Brussels, working with installation, sculpture & digital narratives in the field of 3D (animation, Virtual Reality and 3D printing).
Laura explores the intricate relationships between contemporary Western societies and the natural world, encompassing ecosystems, the environment, and all living beings. Her artworks pivot around a profound exploration of the intersection between these domains, leading her to create immersive settings that relate to the politics of landscape and the notions of territory. She explores the constructions of the concepts of nature, natural and language as a foundation medium for reality.
The empty sphere, Stéphanie Roland, Film 2022, 19’
The empty sphere, Stéphanie Roland
In general, a hero of Science Fiction leaves for somewhere else, another planet, a solar system, he moves away from the planet for many possible reasons. Here, we also explore unknown lands, but the movement is reversed, the space object returns to the earth, dives into the water and returns to the heart of the earth.
In the same way, I wanted to make a journey into the materiality of cinema. We start with contemporary 4K Digital Cinema, typical of SF films, and then return to the archive, both real and fictional, in film. The abstract images were made with a homemade camera which mixes the properties of a sonar and an instrument to analyze exoplanets, linking here the ocean and space.
The vast majority of SF's protagonists are white Western men between the ages of 30 and 50. It is important to me that the only character here is a scientist woman in her fifties, an age and gender range that is underrepresented in science as well as in film representation in general.
Production : Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains
Ecdysis, Laura Colmenares Guerra
Ecdysis, Laura Colmenares Guerra & Jana Irmert
Ecdysis is the natural process through which reptiles and insects moult, shedding their old skin or exoskeleton multiple times during their lifecycles. In this animated piece, a slow-moving camera meanders through a 3D reproduction of the Amazon Rainforest's topography, creating an abstract fluidity that simultaneously evokes a profound sense of vastness and the outstanding likeness to the texture of an animal's skin.
Upon closer examination, the intricacies of the Amazon basin's topography reveal an uncanny resemblance to the skin of a living, colossal creature. Indeed, with its rich diversity of river ecosystems and rainforests, the Amazon can be envisioned as an immense and interconnected organism.
The animation was developed using the 3D reproduction of the Amazon basin's topography, created within the framework of the Ríos Trilogy project.
The sound composition was made entirely from field recordings in the Amazon using hydrophones and ultrasound recordings. Through various processing methods, the sound elements are extracted from the dense jungle environments and transformed into melodic formations and rhythmic patterns.
Credits
Laura Colmenares Guerra, 3D animation
Jana Irmert, field recordings and sound composition
In collaboration with iMAL
iMAL is a space for artistic practices around the creative and critical use of new technologies. iMAL connects a community of artists, thinkers, makers and citizens from Belgium and abroad.
Photo credit: Alejandro Escamilla