Matters of Being is a filmscreening series at iii curated by Nele Brökelmann. The series presents experimental films by artists and independent filmmakers, and documentary films about artists, thinkers and scientists. Matters of Being allows our minds to wander and stumble upon new associations in the illuminating darkness of the cinema setting.

This Matters of Being edition explores different ways of belonging. Going into how we humans remember certain events, belong to what surrounds us and what the attempts to capture moments really unveil. Catherine Ostraya’s super 8 multimedia installation With Every Exhale Lost (2022) invites us to perceive the passing of time by taking us on a contemplative journey through memories that are not our own. Finn Stevenhagen’s 3D animation When fox and rabbit say goodnight. (2021) makes a detachedness tangible. Clumsily looking for connection the protagonist dwells through their hollow world. Astrid Ardagh’s documentary Har du sett ho / Have you seen her (2023) investigates what there is to learn from the perspectives gained by living in darkness for two months every winter.

After the screening of the individual works, Nele Brökelmann will moderate a conversation between the artists and the audience.

14:30 With Every Exhale Lost (installation, 2022), Catherine Ostraya

15:00 Welcome by Nele Brökelmann

15:30 When fox and rabbit say goodnight. (2021), Finn Stevenhagen

15:50 Har du sett ho / Have you seen her (2023), Astrid Ardagh

short break

16:15 Conversation with Astrid Ardagh, Catherine Ostraya and Finn Stevenhagen

Catherine Ostraya

Catherine Ostraya is an artist based in The Hague. Her upbringing spanned across many places, but she was born In Moscow, Russia. Much of her work lies between performance and video, where she uses herself as a catalyst for explorations in time perception, memory and identity. She believes that the most important role of the artist is to be receptive to the less visible undercurrents of life, which she attempts to tap into using curiosity and honesty as her compass.

With Every Exhale Lost (2022)

With Every Exhale Lost plays with the human desire to control and preserve the flow of time. A found home video tape depicting people (who have most likely already passed away) on holiday is set up in a way that it gets slowly destroyed. The ongoing visual process of destruction is accompanied by contemplative subtitles. It describes Ostraya’s own process of discovery and letting go of this private artefact, as well as her interpretation of which emotions, ideas and fears humans run into when considering our time on earth. Fascinated by how humans use technology and the necessity they feel to capture time, it becomes apparent that no moment is like the other. The present escapes us, but when reflecting back it is easier to see the gentle undercurrent of love that pertains our lives. Like the flow of moments the video goes on, revealing time as a tangible source of joy.

Finn Stevenhagen

Finn Stevenhagen is a Netherlands-based audio visual artist who uses computer generated imagery and animation to explore the limitations of human expression. He explores narratives and their meta-narratives through the form and quality of their presentation, predominantly through the medium of film.

When fox and rabbit say goodnight. (2021)

When fox and rabbit say goodnight. is a short film following a boy on his search for love and constancy. The film appropriates the hollow animation aesthetic of early 2000s’ video games to explore the themes of neglect and grief through the limited dialogue, body language, and the depiction of characters. Negligence during the modeling, texturing, and animation stages has become the basis for the unspoken narrative and reinforces the themes. Juxtaposition of the characters’ limited ability to express themselves with their desire to do just that, presents clearly artificial depictions of humans as closely to their real counterparts.

Astrid Ardagh

Astrid Ardagh is a mixed-media artist and filmmaker from Northern Norway. Her films and social projects immerse the viewer in experimental narratives: seeking to guide a questioning gaze towards the social codes and environmental phenomena that govern our lived experiences. Her work is characterised by a poetic visual language, drawing parallels between community, nature, and our sense of belonging in an increasingly urbanised and individualised society.

Har du sett ho / Have you seen her (2023)

Set on a rugged Arctic island where the sun sinks below the horizon for two months every winter, ‘Have you seen her’ is an aesthetic investigation into our perception of darkness. It points an explorative lens at a remote island community, whose inhabitants know exactly at what place, on what day, and at what time they can see the sun again for the first time after the darkness of the polar night.

Nele Brökelmann

Nele Brökelmann is an artist, writer and researcher. Deeply intrigued by the human need for structures of meaning, the perpetual search for and fabrication of meaning are recurring themes in her practice.

 This research finds another playful outlet in Brökelmann’s collaboration with June Yu: waterybeings. Together they research and speculate on how an understanding of our human selves as watery beings would challenge us to live with our environment, rather than engineering it to selected human benefits.

 Apart from her artistic practice and curating Matters of Being, Brökelmann writes for the contemporary art magazine Metropolis M, and is working together with the writer’s platform and artist in residence Witte Rook (Breda, NL) on a research project into artistic processes: Proces is een Octopus.

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