A Paper folded in half with a pen punched through it

Sentient Encounters film night

Tuesday 29 November '22 AKI Enschede, auditorium
(archive)

taal: English spoken
It’s a pleasure to share with all of you our third film screening program A Paper folded in half with a pen punched through it in the series Sentient Encounters. We will be joined by our guest, curator and writer Erik Martinson, who will share with us what thresholds can mobilize in our encounters as sentient beings, and will speak on how in each of these films thresholds play a pivotal role.
"At times these thresholds are crossed, back and forth, all while crucially giving these in-between spaces their due and room to breathe. At other times these thresholds allow glimpses toward the further beyond, just out of our senses’ reach. From thresholds there are known-unknowns. Perhaps as a species and through our particular grouping of sentience, human beings (an already tenuous category teeming with unique perspectives) can configure a space for the agency of the unknown, an ever-shifting holding place that we can imagine into existence. Difficulties arise when one tries to fill in that space with approaches from within our understanding. We can get stuck in our own sentience, turning around in circles. Through creating frames (writing/making art/literal frame of the camera lens and resulting screen image…) around the stopgap of the unknown, perhaps we can have hints or blips of what an “alien” agency might be or do, via how we would interact with it. It seems that by allowing for the space to be a moving openness in our stories, not filled in with too much detail that ultimately situates the “alien” too far inside our understanding, we can conceive of/work with/through that which defies our own understanding.”
- Erik Martinson
Please feel welcome to join us and writer and curator Erik Martinson for a wonderful night accompanied with good food and enriching conversations on Tuesday November 29 @ AKI Auditorium, 16:30-19:30.

Sentient Encounters is a collaboration between Sjoerd van Oevelen (Department head of Moving Image, AKI Enschede), Agnieszka Anna Wołodźko (initiator and lecturer AKI BIO MATTTERs), and supported by ArtEZ Studium Generale.
Openings !!!, Petra Szemán, 2022, 18:06
Openings !!!, Petra Szemán, 2022, 18:06
Openings !!!, Petra Szemán, 2022, 18:06

Screening Programme

Openings !!!, Petra Szemán, 2022, 18:06

“Inhabiting the interstitial zones of anime credit sequences, video game loading screens and regional train journeys, Openings !!! (2022) intensifies the gaps between the layers of animated imagery in an attempt to grasp the kinds of experience that may lie beyond human perceptual boundaries. The video follows the protagonist ‘Yourself’ as they ride local trains through intermedial landscapes. From this uniquely conceived and drafted kinetic viewpoint, fragments of different worlds segue into view, signalling perceptual ruptures that seemingly force subjectivity outside of itself, into strange new relationships of interdependency and intoxication with the moving image.

Part of the artist’s ongoing exploration of the radical potential of animation and fandom, Openings !!! rejects its own filmic boundaries, surrendering instead to the free play of a multi-planar and ultimately elusive meta-worldview.” (PS)
Portal: The Disappearance of Francis Lain, Felix Rose Kawitzky & Marianne Thesen Law, 2016, 27:31
Portal: The Disappearance of Francis Lain, Felix Rose Kawitzky & Marianne Thesen Law, 2016, 27:31
Portal: The Disappearance of Francis Lain, Felix Rose Kawitzky & Marianne Thesen Law, 2016, 27:31
Portal: The Disappearance of Francis Lain, Felix Rose Kawitzky & Marianne Thesen Law, 2016, 27:31

“On the 1st of September 2016, the day of the Solar Eclipse, paranormal research enthusiast Francis Lain mysteriously vanished.

Their comrades from the anarchist, portal-hunting collective, The Warp Demons, have mobilised to try and locate their missing friend.

The Warp Demons suspect that Francis may have found the portal they’ve all been searching for.

Perhaps in finding their friend, they’ll end up stumbling into another dimension…

Meet Flamo, Zethu, Radar Jones, Farron, Cosmos the Traveller, Titus the dog, Shredder Orpheus and Josh Stan as they search for an interdimensional gateway, and begin to discover what lies beyond.” (FRK & MTL)
Luces del Desierto (Desert Lights), Félix Blume, 2021, 29:58
Luces del Desierto (Desert Lights), Félix Blume, 2021, 29:58
Luces del Desierto (Desert Lights), Félix Blume, 2021, 29:58
Luces del Desierto (Desert Lights), Félix Blume, 2021, 29:58

“Some strange lights appear at night in the Mexican desert. The residents tell us what they’ve seen: fire, a fireball, lights flying, lightning falling from the sky and a flash. The singularity of each experience builds a complete story narrated by a choir of people. An encounter with this strange phenomena can be surprising, dangerous or even fatal.

The night isn’t as dark as it seems. The desert is full of all kinds of living beings. This emptiness is the place for everyone. Desert Lights invites us to open our eyes wide in the twilight and to listen to the sounds hidden in the blackness. A horror movie, in the darkness of the desert.” (FB)
The Golden Chain, Adebukola Bodunrin & Ezra Claytan Daniels, 2016, 13:20
The Golden Chain, Adebukola Bodunrin & Ezra Claytan Daniels, 2016, 13:20
The Golden Chain, Adebukola Bodunrin & Ezra Claytan Daniels, 2016, 13:20
The Golden Chain, Adebukola Bodunrin & Ezra Claytan Daniels, 2016, 13:20

“The distant future. A Nigerian space station in a remote corner of the galaxy orbits an artificial pinpoint of matter so dense it cannot exist in our solar system. It is a recreation of the birth of the universe itself, contained for the purpose of study, and overseen by Yetunde, sole crew member on the space station Eko.

The Golden Chain is a first time collaboration between experimental filmmaker Adebukola Bodunrin and graphic novelist Ezra Claytan Daniels. Fluent in very different disciplines, the two artists found common ground in their passion for Afrofuturism. Bodunrin has thrived exploring the loose structures and formal play of experimental cinema, while Daniels has met acclaim with rigid, cerebral science fiction graphic novels.

The Golden Chain finds the two artists intertwining their contrasting aesthetics to revisit the themes of the Yoruba creation tale. Obatala’s descent from the heavens to create the earth and mankind becomes an astronaut traveling to the edge of the galaxy to create a new Heaven. Blending traditional motifs with hard science fiction, Bodunrin and Daniels create a world at once fantastical, yet almost plausible, in order to ask the question: "Where will we go, given where we came from?"” (vtape.org)