Alchimie
A short film program curated by Chantal Molleur
Screening Venue: Kunstraum Baden

Thursday, April 23rd, 2026, 7:00 pm

Alchimie is a screening of short films presented as part of the events accompanying Shifting Matters. The exhibition, curated by Patrizia Keller and Chantal Molleur and featuring works by Vanessa Billy, Maya Bringolf, Jannik Giger, and Zimoun, provides the context for this selection of six films exploring transformation from different perspectives.

Alchemy traditionally describes a process of transformation—an attempt to turn one state into another through sustained engagement with materials and uncertain conditions. The short film program Alchimie brings together films that explore what it means to navigate such transformations across different contexts. Across material, social, emotional, and political contexts, the selected works trace forms of change that are uneven, often unresolved, and shaped by ongoing negotiation rather than clear outcomes.

Yuyan Wang’s Green Grey Black Brown (2024) opens the program with a montage of images drawn from industrial and natural environments. Factories, extraction sites, and polluted landscapes appear alongside organic textures and processes of decay. Using found footage, Wang reworks and layers these images so that they gradually blur and begin to resemble ink paintings. The film links ecological crisis with image-making, suggesting that the ways we produce and use images are closely connected to how natural resources are extracted and transformed.

Nicolas Gourault’s Their Eyes (2025) focuses on the hidden human labour behind artificial intelligence. The film introduces online workers who train self-driving systems by labelling street images. Through repetitive tasks—clicking, marking, correcting—they shape how machines interpret the world. What appears automated is revealed as the result of continuous human input.

Maryam Tafakory’s Daria’s Night Flowers (2025) explores desire and repression through a collage of scenes from Persian-language cinema. Fragments of bodies, gestures, and domestic spaces are layered with voice, colour, and text. Rather than stating things directly, the film works through suggestion, showing how emotions and experiences can be expressed indirectly when they cannot be openly articulated.

In Sans Voix (2024), Samuel Patthey follows a young man immersed in techno culture. Through raw, hand-drawn animation, the film traces his shifting emotional state as excitement, anxiety, and tension begin to overlap. Faced with the prospect of becoming a father, moments of intensity give way to hesitation, as panic and inner conflict become increasingly palpable.

Matthias Schüpbach’s Searching for the 5th Direction (2023) moves through digitally constructed spaces that resemble memories or dream-like environments. Virtual landscapes—forests, structures, shifting terrains—are subtly disrupted by glitches and breaks in continuity. These moments unsettle the image, suggesting that memory and perception are continuously reshaped.

The program concludes with Mona Jelić’s documentary on a proposed lithium mining site in Serbia. The film observes a landscape shaped by competing interests: environmental concerns, local livelihoods, and the demands of green energy production. Rather than offering resolution, it presents an ongoing situation in which different forms of transformation remain in tension.

Across these works, transformation appears in different forms—through material processes, technological systems, emotional states, and contested landscapes. Together, they draw attention to how change is lived, perceived, and negotiated across different contexts.

Upcoming film program

The exhibition and the events are kindly supported by:
Aargauer Kuratorium
Department of Culture Basel-Stadt
Municipality of Ennetbaden
Canton of Zurich Cultural Promotion/Swisslos
Migros Culture Percentage