«(Re)connect» at Ausstellungsraum Klingental

(Re)connect presents ten films by artists and filmmakers with practices that consider historical narration and constructed collective memories. Their works explore the traditional and vernacular knowledge enshrined in oral histories, myths, and songs which inform a contemporary audience of the crucial but dwindling memories of the past — all while opening our eyes to new possible paths toward the future. From its inception, moving image and the evolution of cinema continue to play a decisive role in representation throughout history and everyday perception across cultures. The depiction of time and space has become a critical component in storytelling, as cinematography is now a language that navigates our understanding of real and imagined moments. Here, the artists blur the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, expanding striking visuals and vast soundscapes that intersect the genres of sci-fi, experimental cinema, documentary, and video art. Doing so enables their audience to create awareness about complex histories and oft-overlooked legacies, fostering a sense of community and a collective narrative. The supernatural and slippage of reality also come into question throughout the films, allowing stories to unfold where animism and illusion permeate the landscapes. For artists like Patricia Domínguez, Ursula Biemann, and Dorota Gaweda & Egle Kulbokaite, the boundaries are also crossed between spiritual and parallel worlds (quantum realms), merging ancestral knowledge with contemporary science, where lives unfold on the cusp between the living and the dead. Others, like artists Tai Shani and Laura Huertas Millán, look to botany to reimagine plants and fungi as new visions of society and futures can emerge. Nature is both stage and character across the ten film and video works screened for (Re)connect. Traditional narratives—varying here from Indigenous communities, ancient mythologies, or Slavic folkloric traditions—portray how people across cultures relate to their landscapes. But the land isn’t simply scenery, but rather a character with its own agency, that shapes the plot of these cinematic works. Meanwhile, the protagonists of these films navigate and confront the past and their inherited trauma; challenging the prevailing but reductive relationships between nature and culture, men and women, ecology and technology.

Artists and Films:

Ursula Biemann – Forest Mind (2021)

Patricia Domínguez – Three Moons Below (Tres Lunas más Abajo) (2023/24)

Dorota Gaweda and Egle Kulbokaite – Brood (Scene 5) (2024)

Rachel Rose – Wil-o-Wisp (2018)

Tai Shani – The Neon Hieroglyph (2021)

Juliana Curi, UYRA – The Rising Forest (2022)

Laura Huertas Millán – Jíibie (2019)

Katarzyna Machalek & Lukasz Machowski – Day and Night (Dzien i Noc) (2022)

Shirin Neshat – Mahdokht (Women without Men Series) (2004)

Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser) – As Grand As What (2021)