So German!
Goethe-Institut Montreal
1626 boul. St-Laurent
Bureau 100
H2X 2T1 Montreal, QC
Video Art and Short Film Series
2023, the Goethe-Institut Montreal is hosting a NAO robot and takes this as an opportunity for a multi-perspective examination of the topic of robotics, artificial intelligence and human-machine interactions.
The film and video works assembled here partly draw on AI processes, thematize them, or are themselves the product of such processes – and yet can stand on their own as a cinematic art form. Art and artificiality seem to be mutually dependent here and thus open up a new approach to questions of authorship and the definition of art.
The program is intended both as an invitation to discourse and to raise awareness of current technological developments and their creative potential. The cinematic qualities of aesthetics and technical innovation seem to be directly linked here, as they are both in the eye of the viewer.
The individual works will be shown on our windows after dark for two weeks each from May 7 to August 12, 2023. In parallel, the works can also be seen during our regular opening hours at the Institute (1626 boul. St-Laurent, H2X 2T1 Montreal, QC).
05/07- 05/20/2023
DE/USA 2021, 7’34
Direction & Script: Halina Kliem
Who owns your Code? Sometime in the near future human and non-human entities discuss predictability, the dynamics of bias, and the human mind.
Halina Kliem’s short film The AIs is an experimental tale on learning and unlearning, mind and labor, dynamics of bias, and a dialogue between human and non-human entities. The film explores the beliefs of humans about themselves and looks into feedback loops, chaotic systems, and historical-pattern-replicating machines. To be continued…
05/21- 06/03/2023
2020, Video, 3’48
Direction: Dagmar Schürrer
The narrator in the moving image work GALAXY is technology itself. The story is generated by an algorithm and offers an interpretation of an encounter of love and disappointment, by telling about the brief meeting of the two characters Touch and Long Swipe. Small deviations in the language and the narrative logic reveal our social imprint of how stories are expected to be told and how technology is programmed to follow these perceptions. The mise en scéne is a computer-generated galaxy of objects and images reminiscent of the organic, but dismembered and fragmented, reflecting on the possibility of creating new worlds and stories in digital space by following a subjective system of ordering.
06/04- 06/17/2023
2017, 2’09
Written and directed by ZEITGUISED/f°am Studio Direction: Julius Steinhauser
Concept, design and production: ZEITGUISED/f°am Studio
Auto Nom is a lighthearted essay on machine autonomy, illustrated by an example of a self driving car. Rolf, our global classic german car protagonist painted in tasteful yellow, enjoys his unadulterated freedom from mundane tasks in a world devoid of organic life forms. Not reduced to a vehicle getting humans from A to B, he rules a city that seems to have been taken over by a rogue AI and rampant phygital matter overgrowth.
06/18- 07/01/2023
DE 2018, 2’55
Director/Producer: Nikita Diakur
Drone. Stunt. Rave.
A party on the outskirts of town. Rave and drone, ice cream and sausages, everything there. And then a stunt without regard for losses. Simulated and animated according to templates on YouTube.
07/02 – 07/15/2023
DE 2020, 13′
Direction & Concept: Rainer Kohlberger
Catastrophe finds a relentlessly repeated performance in cinema, from which reveals the status of the collective psyche. The prospect of spectacular destruction that briefly interrupts the dull monotony of consumerism is symptomatic of both the longing to overthrow the status quo and the opposite desire to find it instantly restored.
07/16- 07/29/2023
UK, DE 2021, 8′
Direction, Concept & Development: Einar Fehrholz, Studio Above&Below | Daria Jelonek, Perry-James Sugden
Aquateque is a short film exploring the river Ruhr through a variety of new media technologies. The project combines AI and AR tools to explore sustainable ways of creating digital materials which merge nature and computation.
The diverse ecosystem of the surrounding is captured through audio, visual and 3d programming tools and transformed into a generative augmented space.
07/30- 08/12/2023
DE 2021, 5’05
Experimental Film
With: Tsuki
Hysteresis intimately weaves a transformative fabric between Robert Seidels’s projections of abstract drawings and queer performer Tsuki’s vigorous choreography. Using machine learning to mediate these lagged re-presentations, the film intentionally corrupts the AI’s strategies to unveil a frenetic, delicate, flamboyant visual language of the hysteria and hysteresis in this historical moment.
