31st October
15:00-16:30
Location: iii workspace, The Hague
Doors: 14:30
Entrance: Sliding scale €5-€10
Capacity: 35
Tickets HERE
Please read our health and safety protocols HERE before attending this event

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

As humans we only have a limited understanding of our worldly entanglement, secretly being as unfamiliar to ourselves as the world around us. By bringing three artists’ productions together, we will take a leap into an imaginative dialogue to get a glimpse on our entanglement with the worlds of others. Departing from the exploration of the North Sea as a being in and of herself, we dive into the self being thrown into a vacuum of time and space, before getting acquainted with the tick’s experience of the world.

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15:00 Welcome by Nele Brökelmann
15:10 All was Ocean! All was Joy! (Or, How the Humans Broke the Ocean’s Heart) (2021), Georgie Brinkman
15:30 I need space (2020), Georgina Kosmatou
15:40 The Blind Point (2021), Dario di Paolantonio
15:55 Conversation with Georgie Brinkman, Georgina Kosmatou, and Dario di Paolantonio

All was Ocean! All was Joy! (Or, How the Humans Broke the Ocean’s Heart) (2021), Georgie Brinkman

Patchworking together disparate research sources – including field work, biological reports, poetry, children’s books, archeological lectures and cooking – into an aquatic fairytale, this work presents the North Sea as a being in and of herself. A being who, just like you, can have a broken heart.

Reflecting on the Dutch storm surge barrier – the Oosterscheldekering – as an intervention that cut the ocean’s body in half, we are demanded to question the implications of artificially separating salt and freshwater for the marine life that constitute the watery underworld of the ocean.

Through a dreamt conversation with the North Sea, in a world that exists in the mind’s eye, the barrier is revealed as not only a physical but an allegorical divide erected by humanity in order to separate Fact from Fiction. Here, stories live in the salty depths of the ocean and are filtered through The Fact Checker (AKA the Oosterscheldekering) until the hard truths are revealed and solidified as rock deposits in the freshwater. However, reality is called into question when a group of otherworldly sea slugs become entangled with the story of Nehalennia, the ancient Goddess of the North Sea.

Georgie Brinkman is an artist and researcher whose work treads a precarious ground between science-fiction and science-fact (and the muddy sludge in between), to ask what it means to be human in the age of extinction. By casting other-than-humans as leading protagonists in her films, writing and installations she seeks to pull apart the anthropocentric perception of a division between nature and culture.

Georgie recently graduated from MA Artistic Research at The Royal Academy, The Hague where she was supported through a scholarship from the Leverhulme Trust. Alongside her individual practice she works as part of collaborative duo ZOOX, and founded artist residency The New Flesh.

I need space (2020), Georgina Kosmatou

“I need space” is a film that is approached more as a visual poem. With this film the director is researching the relationship between physical and digital, the idea of perception, and synesthesia. The video starts from a personal voyage to lead to a world connected with the other, the unknown. The film is about the power of language, blend words that are related to ideas of power, existence, and emotions. It begins with a blank image, like a blank canvas and it builds up thoughts, layers, shapes, etc. is a metaphor about like. The installation is a game of light and darkness, which experiments with a minimal audio environment that illustrates a human experience in an isolated environment. Space and Time are transforming to words but they have playful role in the film. The movements and the patterns in the film are movements between abstract notions in thoughts, in a dream-like state.

In my artistic practice, I am strongly influenced by the complexity of my personal struggles, memories and culture. My works explore basic human emotions, aspects of female figures, powerful mythical patterns, and the relationship between conscious and unconscious. I am using motion in different kinds of forms to be critical and sometimes poetic. I am experimenting with different mediums such as video installations, projections, animations, and films. I am using geometric objects and bodies as my tool to create immersive experiences.
In my recent works, I am placing the text and the human body in complex, futuristic scenarios that confound the boundaries between the natural and artificial. The spectator is confronted with a world from another dimension. This, in turn, creates an active spectator provoking a unique exchange between the artwork and the viewer. I believe in the quality of the innermost feelings which are able to contextualize and create a soulful result. My desire is to work about space, alienation, and otherness with the way I see it and perceive it.

The Blind Point (2021), Dario di Paolantonio

Looking closer at the world of the tick, the eyeless blood-sucking parasite, we are asked to adapt our perspective to a weird realm of nature, one that nevertheless shapes us. At this scale we stumble across an uncanny realisation: we are no less alien to each other than we are to ourselves. The tick’s world seems odd to us and hard to conceive, but the human being might be quite unfamiliar as well.
A philosophical reflection through the lens of the microscopic perspectives, The Blind Point ponders on the limits of imagination and representation. Dario di Paolantonio’s visual essay questions the separation that is drawn between humans and non-humans, by taking the viewer through a walk in the forest, or following a tick crawling on skin.

Dario di Paolantonio is a writer, researcher and filmmaker. His work tackles philosophical questions by inquiring into contemporary issues, focusing on media landscapes and the worlds beyond humans. Drawing from metaphysics, semiotics and literature, he builds his conceptual frameworks with different techniques, in the form of video-essays and strong narratives.

Matters of Being #6 is presented by iii with financial support from Creative Industries Fund NL and The Municipality of The Hague.