More-than-human gaze
Screening event

“What is often at stake in non-human narration is the ability to acknowledge similarity and otherness at the same time, to recognize the ratness of the rat, the monkeyness of the monkey and the humanness of the rat and the monkey as well as the ratness and the monkeyness of humans.” – Lars Bernaerts, Marco Caracciolo, Luc Herman, Bart Vervaeck “The Storied Lives of Non-Human Narrators”.

The screening event “More-than-human gaze” at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw is showcasing different approaches to exploring more-than-human perspectives in contemporary video art. Whether through storytelling, visual meditation or scientific examination, the invited artists use the video medium as a vehicle to challenge anthropocentric ideologies and break away with the human desire to catalog and measure nature, instead immersing audiences in the worlds of more-than-human actors: animals, objects, plants, minerals, otherworldly creatures, viruses and machines. Their works offer pathways for empathy, understanding and recognizing similarity and difference: I am the other, the other is me. In their mind’s eye, there are no clear boundaries between human and more-than-human realms, and the conventional, human-centric viewpoint is just one of a myriad of possible ways of looking at reality.

The event will consist of three screening sessions of videos and a sound performance by the collective Grounding Radio.

The event is open to the public and does not require registration.

All movies will be presented in their original language with English subtitles.
 

17:00
The Blind Point / Dario di Paoloantonio / 11’10 min / 2021
watch them pour out of the test tube / Weronika Zalewska / 11’08 min / 2023

17:30
Grounding Radio

18:15
Ellie’s Eye / Jeamin Cha / 11 min / 2022
Notes For Les Sanglières / 17 min / 2021

19:00
Pyroclasts Are Eloquent Storytellers / Riar Rizaldi / 21’32 min / 2022
A Demonstration / Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner / 25 min / 2020
Curating: Marcin Liminowicz
Video: Elsa Bres, Jeamin Cha, Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner, Dario di Paoloantonio, Riar Rizaldi, Weronika Zalewska
Performative reading: Grounding Radio (Anna Jurgielewicz, Agnieszka Cieszanowska)

Elsa Bres, “Notes for les Sanglières”

“Notes for les Sanglières” uses the form of an essay-film to explore the possibility of alliances between wild boars and humans, toward the ideas of ´boarcentrism’ and communism of the living. From the blank page to the black screen and until the color moves, it gathers research and fiction tracks related to a film to come, situated in the french rural region les Cévennes.

Jeamin Cha, “Ellie’s Eye”

Ellie’s Eye is an essay-video comprising found and original footage. Ellie is the name of an AI therapist in development at the time of writing, as well as the name of one of the dogs featured in the work. Dogs and AI avatars are similar in that both are dependent on humans. *Ellie’s Eye* examines how technologies invented for medical treatment relate to the human desire to see through, and into — such as x-rays, through-wall movement sensing, and AI-assisted psychotherapy. In the process, the work intertwines facts and fiction about the eye, eyesight, and the act of seeing. Medical scans and image technologies, tools that produce evidence of physical health or the lack thereof, have made rapid progress in the recent past; meanwhile, technologies for mental diagnosis are also developing at a similarly fast pace. This work interrogates how future societies and technologies can approach psychological issues of different individuals, and whether we are objectifying the human psyche itself.

Sasha Litvintseva & Bary Wagner, “A Demonstration”

“A Demonstration” is a monster film with no monsters. Inspired by the existence of taxonomies of monsters at the heart of Early Modern European science, the film explores and reinterprets a way of seeing the natural world that is almost impossible to imagine from today’s vantage point. Early Modern naturalists were guided by a logic in which scientific truths were discovered through visual analogy. The word ‘monster’ comes from the latin ‘monstrare’, meaning to show, to reveal, to demonstrate. “A Demonstration” picks up on these themes in a poetic exploration of the boundaries of sight and the metamorphosis of form.

Dario di Paoloantonio, “The Blind Point”

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 the 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.

Riar Riazldi “Pyroclasts Are Eloquent Storytellers”

“Pyroclasts Are Eloquent Storytellers” observes the notion of prediction—where humans always have their own methods and apparatus in constructing their predictions for the future. In this context, this film focuses on the eruption forecast of one of the most active stratovolcano in the world: Mount Merapi. For many human who live around the volcano, Merapi as a geological entity is a symbol of a contingent future. Pyroclasts are eloquent storytellers delves into the psyche of the mountain as well as examines the practice of prophecy performed by people who live around the volcano with their multimodal approach to worldviews.

Weronika Zalewska, “watch them pour out of the test tube”

Watch them pour out of the test tube (2023) speaks about toxic embodiment, medical complex and more-than-human biopolitics. For an extended period of time, during her residency at Dum Umeni, Zalewska has been filming aquatic invertebrates at the Masarykov University in Brno, Czech Republic. Her goal was to question the ethics of commercialized science, instead proposing situated knowledges (Donna Haraway) and politics of location (Adrianne Rich) that may be linked with scientific methods - bringing up possibilities of weird readings and reflections on the processes occurring inside and in between bodies - towards posthumanist ethics. A health-related coincidence made it so that during her filming Zalewska also saw, for the first time, a piece of her own body in formaldehyde in a jar. This (not only) esthetic experience was a point of departure for her transcorporeal narrative. After all the questions of whose body? what body? where? in what? why? for whom? constantly determine the lives of both individuals and entire ecosystems.

Grounding Radio

With the theme of non-human, Radio Uziemienie invites everyone to take part in a listening performance that transforms written excerpts into sound waves. Echoes, imitation, and misunderstandings create a soundscape that navigates between inner/outer and know/imaginary representations (as we are reminded of while playing the children's telephone game).