InterPlay

Beny Wagner, Sasha Litvintseva | 25 mins | Germany

Exploring the attempts of early European scientists to understand the natural world, this experimental wonder steps away from dissection and classification to work in the grey area between what is known and unknown, through a contemplative collage of sound and images. Pointing more to the unyielding mystery of life than to any clear resolutions brought by early naturalists or even current knowledge, A Demonstration shakes the foundations of what we think we know.

Shirin Shakhesi | 2 mins | Australia

A vibrant sensory experience, Melbourne-based artist Shirin Shakhesi draws you through a vivid, jewel-toned ecosystem which is home to several insect and animal species threatened by population decline. Though brief, we are left to reconcile with the knowledge that these tiny universes can soon become mere memories in our rapidly deteriorating climate crisis.

Jona Gerlach | 11 mins | United States

Filmmaker Jona Gerlach takes us on a journey to a former copper mine in Butte, Montana: the Berkeley Pit. Bear witness to what mining (and its waste) can do in film, literally, as Gerlach has crafted a unique experience presenting hand-manipulated original and found footage using the same contaminants that were found in the water of the pit.

The Pit serves as a stark reminder of the impacts of mining, while also providing a distorted portal to the past. Juxtaposing then with now, the film offers striking context for our future.

Sylvia Schedelbauer | 13 mins | Germany

Staccato perambulations through a technicolour forest; a tactile, hypnotic journey through temporality, memory and consciousness. Wishing Well taps into the sense of inhabiting the wild. In evoking the sense of awe, curiosity and wonder that these spaces inspire, the film hints at the magnitude of real loss - physical and cultural - as these spaces disappear.

Contains flashing imagery.

Anita She is an emerging contemporary artist living in Australia and China. She completed four-years academic training in theatre art during her undergraduate period and before undertaking the Master program in Curating and Cultural Leadership at UNSW in 2020. Currently, Anita is an HDR student at RMIT University.

In the recent research, Anita focuses on interdisciplinary research in performance art, sociology and anthropology (autoethnography) to discuss her own cultural identity as a member of a minority group in Southwest China and expound on the significant traditions. Through her practice methods such as walking, cooking and planting a variety of buckwheat, she digs into emotional connections among individual stories and collective memories, which are embedded into the natural landscape and ancient philosophy.

Bixiao (Frankie) Zhang is a digital artist and Ph.D. candidate at RMIT University. Her practice-led research, a fluid entity that she termed “The ElectroPoetics”, explores a cross-pollination of eco-poetic, post-humanist readings of Emily Dickinson and aspects of Buddhism, for guiding performative engagements with the emergent subjectivities of the digital environment.

Bixiao has mainly engaged in public art projects and residencies in the Asia Pacific, such as Hong Kong Cattle Depot Art Village (2017), JMMK #12 media festival Indonesia (2020), and Hua Niao Island International Art Festival, China (2021). These projects are interested in the influence of the digital environment’s emergent subjectivities on a specific physical site. Bixiao won the 2021 Dean’s Award for her Master of Fine Art project at RMIT University and held a Bachelor of Media Arts at Flinders University. Her latest project in 2022 includes group exhibitions at Blindside Mobile (Melbourne), an upcoming project at Testing Grounds (Melbourne), and a research residency at Posthumanist Art Network (San Francisco).

the-electropoetics.com

Rosina Yuan is a New Zealand artist of Chinese descent who works across drawing, painting, digital mediums, and installation to explore modes of interactivity in both public and private spaces. Rosina moved to Melbourne, Australia in 2017 and completed the Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours at RMIT University. She is continuing her artistic practice as a PhD candidate at RMIT University, her research investigates different modes of spatial relationships through artistic practices of public projections and augmented reality, and virtual reality by working with local and natural environment.

rosinayuan.com

Sherry Liu is a current PhD candidate in the School of Art, RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Sherry's artistic practice investigates how affective engagement operates for rebuilding connections among nature, people and the community, and how creative practice illuminates the value of multi-cultural communities. Her works focus on affect, socially engagement, community reshaping, exploring the relational aesthetics and connective aesthetics to challenge the public to reconsider our community and environment.

Recently, Sherry collaborated with the art director of the Huaniao Island International Public Art Festival and initiated the socially engaged art project on the Island. She is exploring how multicultural communities live together and adjust to the new community environment. She pursues affective dynamics among people, community and the environment in her social practice, which is impelled by her affection for the natural environment, and a desire of perceiving life and build connections with others. Her texts have appeared in the Public Art Journal (China) and Journal of Artistic Research.