Temperature of War
Screenshot from Iroojrilik (2016) by Julian Charrière
© Julian Charrière. All Rights Reserved.
Film program: Temperature of War, 2019
November 6, 19:30 at Filmhuis Lumen Doelenplein 5, 2611 BP Delft
Part of Conference Mediating The Spatiality of Conflicts November 6-8, 2019, Organizer TU Delft
Julian Charrière – Iroojrilik, 2016, 21 min
Charrierè’svideo work captures the structures of the Bikini Atoll ́s atomic-industrial architecture decay, its manner of editing further suggesting morphological overlaps with the monstrous wrecks lying on the bottom of the Bikini Atoll lagoon, assailed by tide and time. Making no use of archival material –its original underwater images captured at depths far below standard dive profiles –Iroojrilik is unquestionably a unique, and comprehensive, perspective on the maritime ruins of Bikini. Yet, rather than explicating individual vessels or buildings, the cumulative impression is that of an Atlantis or lost civilization –architectural features of one ship cut together with those of others, such that it appears as though a submerged mega-structure has been discovered.On a more general note, the film employs another series of elisions and substitutions. Through a series of montages, mixing sunsets and sunrises, it proposes an uncertain distinction between daybreak and nightfall –first light of a new day in Pacific history, and the waning of another: Visions of multiple suns and endless dawns stretch across the horizon. Pictorial energies shift and sway, like palm trees and coral ferns growing on cannon mounts, between construction and destruction; transporting the viewer to a ‘non-place’, or the beginning of a brave new world.
A film still of Iroojrilik (2016) by Julian Charrière
© Julian Charrière. All Rights Reserved. A film still of Iroojrilik (2016) by Julian Charrière
© Julian Charrière. All Rights Reserved.
Emilija Škarnulytė – Sirenomelia, Lithuania, 2017, 12 min
A woman born with sirenomelia, a mythological posthumanbeing takes us on the journey to the Cold War submarine base above the arctic circle. She exposes a future liberated from the military and economic structures that oppress the present, a future in which relations between humans and nonhumans have been transfigured, a future in which the cosmic dimension of an earthly coexistence is interlaced within the texture of the social.Sirenomeliaexplores questions of the beginning of the universe in relation to the geological ungrounding processes, invisible structures, geo-traumas and deep time. It is a fictional visual meditation about contemporary science and a cross sections of the larger systems of power and the politics of desire. By performing inSirenomeliaherself, Škarnulytė becomes a measure for biosphere, magnetic fields, photons, minerals and gravity waves.
Filipa César and Louis Henderson – Sunstone, Portugal, Brazil, France, 2018, 35 min
Sunstonehas the structure of a collage made up of instances in history and geography that create a loose narrative, relying on the viewer’s capacity of extracting meaning from her own link-making. Sunstone intersects the history of lighthouse building with seemingly timeless laws of physics, being inserted into history through the ownership of the military. It proposes optics as a moving image and pushes it further, suggesting the moving image as an accessible archive owning the potential of narrating a different –yet still militarized –version of its application.