Welcome to our audio section, a continuously expanding collection of audio interviews from our previous film programs featuring artists, filmmakers, curators, writers, and programmers. Delve into the creative minds of these talented individuals with this additional gateway into their work.
WF Online Series 2024:
Focus collectif_fact
In this past focus, we engaged with Annelore Schneider and Claude Piguet of collectif_fact. They lived and worked between London and Geneva and taught respectively at Goldsmiths MA Design and HEAD Geneva, Image-Sound Pool. Their work, primarily video, reflected on contemporary image economies, surroundings, production, and consumption. Their practice investigated the pervasive, alienating, and ecological impacts of images on our contemporary lives using speculative worlds and fiction production.
Collectif_fact used narration, cinematographic codes, and editing to speculate and investigate how narratives could be appropriated, disrupted, and re-edited. Their videos mixed a complex set of references from 3D scans, snippets of film dialogues, and archival images to sound extracts. A collage of familiar and recognizable images emerged, with a multitude of allusions to our visual culture. Collectif_fact played with our desire to be drawn in and deceived by these images, encouraging the viewer to critically reflect on the habits that conditioned our perceptions of reality.
We explored the staggering statistic that more than 15 billion images were generated using text-to-image algorithms last year alone. This phenomenon starkly contrasted with the 150 years it took for photographers to produce the same number of images from the inception of photography in 1826 to 1975. This unprecedented surge raised significant questions about the role and impact of images in our daily lives, especially as they permeate our screens for over 7 hours each day. Scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature, W. J. T. Mitchell asked: “Why do we behave as if pictures were alive, possessing the power to influence us, to demand things for us, to persuade us, seduce us, or even lead us astray?”
Annelore and Claude helped us understand what it means for contemporary artists to navigate this flood of visual content. They reflected on how this abundance of imagery affected our perception, behavior, and even our beliefs.
We uncovered the complex relationship between visual culture and technology through the lens of collectif_fact. Their unique approach to deconstructing cinematic codes and narratives offered a compelling critique of our image-saturated world, encouraging us to critically reflect on the habits that shaped our perceptions of reality.
WF Online Series 2024:
Focus Dayna McLeod
In this past program, we featured a selection of works by Dayna McLeod, a Montreal-based performance and video artist. McLeod's oeuvre explores themes of feminism, queer identity, and sexuality, often employing humor while examining the social and material conditions of the body through mediums such as cabaret, duration, remix, video, and installation practices.
McLeod delves into personal experiences, technology, and identity to explore themes related to self-awareness, surveillance, and the intersection of digital and physical realities. Her recent artistic focus centers on the subjects of sleep and dreams, which were explored through a curated selection of video works in this program. Additionally, she experiments with herself as an AI actor and produces video essays analyzing films and her own performativity. Furthermore, McLeod engages in autoethnography, particularly examining intergenerational queer aging and desire. This program offered an opportunity to delve into McLeod's varied artistic explorations, ranging from personal introspection to broader societal themes.
An audio interview with Dayna accompanied the program. We discussed her background, artistic approach, and themes explored in her work. Dayna reflected on the intersection of art, technology, and social media in contemporary performance, examining the impact of AI on storytelling and performance, highlighting challenges and complexities. She shared insights into her ongoing project involving AI and video essays, viewing her artistic practice as a tool for challenging norms and fostering critical dialogue, often using humor to engage audiences.Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
WF Online Series 2023:
Focus: Art of Intervention
The second program of our 2023 WF Online Series highlighted the work of the Basel platform Art of Intervention (AOI). Art of Intervention (AOI) was founded by Dominique Grisard, who is affiliated with the University of Basel's Center for Gender Studies and the Swiss Center for Social Research, and Andrea Zimmermann, from the University of Basel's Center for Gender Studies. This platform serves as a catalyst for exploration, understanding, criticism, discussion, publication, and transformation at the intersection of gender studies, queer-feminist theory and academia.
For this film program, AOI extended an invitation to their long-time collaborator, Roan Ezra Schmid, for this carte blanche in collaboration with White Frame. They have curated a selection of 5 films that delve into the politics and practices of trans experiences. Here is AOI introductory text for the film program.
WF Online Series 2023:
Focus: Filmexplorer
The first program of our 2023 WF Online Series showcased the activities of Filmexplorer. FILMEXPLORER is an online platform dedicated to art films. Through critiques, interviews and podcasts, it develops a multi-media reception of films. Present both in cinema world and art world, FILMEXPLORER aims to build an international community of people looking at film as a form of art, or simply as source of original experiences to share. Within this framework, it proposes critical discussions and curated selections online, but also offline moments of exchange.
We had the pleasure of interviewing Ruth Baettig and Giuseppe Di Salvatore co-founders of the platform, talking about their activities as well looking at some of the core questions in filmmaking today. A program of 7 short films curated by both accompanies the interview.
WF Online Series 2022:
Focus: Filmexplorer
The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen is the oldest short film festival in the world founded in 1954. At the beginning, they focused on eastern films and video art. Today, the festival selects all genre of short films, moving images presented as single channels. The festival has competitive and curated programs (archival, distribution programs and special focuses).
Hilke Doering, Head of the International Competition, the Children's and Youth Cinema and the Market of the International Short Film Festival has been working for the festival for more than 20 years. We have made wonderful film discoveries attending some of the live and online screenings at Oberhausen.
We had invited Hilke Doering for this special focus to chat with Chantal Molleur about her work at the festival. Hilke had also given us a selection of five films that marked her viewing over the years. We were delighted to present them as well.
WF Online Series 2021:
Focus: Video Essay with Johannes Binotto
We had invited Johannes Binotto for this special focus ont he video essay to chat with Chantal Molleur about his work. A selection of his shorts was as well presented for one week on our series platform.
Johannes Binotto (*1977) is senior researcher in cultural and media studies, video essayist and experimental filmmaker. Several of his video essays have been shown at international short and experimental film festivals and have been featured in the yearly Best-video-essay-polls hosted by Sight&Sound and the British Film Institute.
Johannes Binotto teaches film and media studies at the Lucerne School of Art and Design (HSLU) as well as literature and cultural studies at the University of Zurich. In his research and in his video work he has a specific focus on the intersections between film theory, philosophy of technology, and psychoanalysis, as well as on extraordinary bodies and on multi-sensory affects.
Many of his numerous publications, essays, book chapters and videos can be found on his personal website www.medienkulturtechnik.org
He is also leading the research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation: VideoEssay. Futures of Audiovisual Research and Teaching videoessayresearch.org
WF Online Series 2021:
Focus: On sustainability with Dominique Koch
This film program focused on the thematic of sustainability featuring the documentary film Sowing the Seeds for the Future by Dominique Koch
Dominique Koch (*1983) lives and works in Basel and Paris. From 2004 until 2011 she studied photography at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. She understands her installations as “thinking laboratories” that merge different fields of research resulting in hybrid entanglements and unlikely intellectual encounters. Recent solo exhibitions include Holobiont Society at CAN, Centre d’art Neuchâtel, Maybe We Should Rejuvenate the Words rather than the Bodies at Rinomina in Paris and Beyond Chattering and Noise at Centre Culturel Suisse Paris. Her works won several awards and were presented in various group exhibitions at, among others, CCCB Barcelona, STATE Studio Berlin, Shedhalle Zürich, Istituto Svizzero di Roma, Lagos Biennial II, A Tale of a Tub Rotterdam, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Swissnex San Francisco, Kunsthalle Basel, EKKM Tallinn, Copenhagen Contemporary, and Kunsthalle Mainz.
WF Online Series 2021:
Focus: Indigenous Peoples
Bihttoš (Rebel) by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers was part of a focused program on works by Indigenous contemporary artists and filmmakers in 2021.
12/Make It Right from the exhibition, Incomplete Drawings of Decolonization by Anna Tsouhlarakis was part of a focused program on works by Indigenous contemporary artists and filmmakers in 2021.
TSHIUETIN by Caroline Monnet was part of a focused program on works by Indigenous contemporary artists and filmmakers in 2021.