Els van Riel & Jelle Martens + Chimera
’24
Ciné Rio (De Koer)
Meibloemstraat 86
B-9000 Gent
Fugue, A Light’s Travelogue © Els van Riel
Ciné Rio (De Koer)
Meibloemstraat 86
B-9000 Gent
In her work, the Brussels-based filmmaker Els van Riel explores the basic elements of cinema. She often works with 16mm film and experiments with the technique and simultaneous use of multiple projectors. Her films, videos and installations explore the impact of detailed changes in moment, movement, matter, light and perception. The registration of natural phenomena and the manipulation of time play a central role in her work.
In the performance Traversées, Jelle Martens engages in a live dialogue with two of Els van Riel’s films. In his practice as a visual artist, sound is a crucial element in terms of rhythm, repetition, texture and montage. For some time now, Jelle has been experimenting with sound himself. In this he focuses on the dialogue between the mechanical and the human through repetition and reproduction.
Els van Riel and Jelle Martens also chose to show the film Chimera, “a quest for light and shadow, and for all the elements that make this quest visible.”
Organized by Ciné Rio in collaboration with Art Cinema OFFoff.
Els van Riel
DoUndo / recycling G
Live Soundtrack: Jelle Martens
An audiovisual work composed of different layers that become visible due to manual changes of light. The hot air on a landscape’s horizon shimmers in tune with the viola tones.
Els van Riel
Fugue, A Light’s Travelogue
Live Soundtrack: Jelle Martens
The film Fugue, A Light’s Travelogue is a result of trying to understand the complexity of light. Through this work I started figuring out what light and the importance of its energy is all about.
Physicists responded with an unsatisfying “that’s a philosophical question”, philosophers returned with the same “this is a question for physicists”. So I wandered through the history of its science and constructed a film that piles up details of it, in order to sing for its existence in an essay. I believed that if I projected and re-filmed images associated with the history of the science of light, and then re-projected and re-filmed these films again, and repeated this process over and over again by adding a potentially infinite number of new layers, I would eventually arrive at a sensible insight. – Els van Riel
Fugue, A Light’s Travelogue © Els van Riel
Haris Epaminonda
Chimera
Meditating on time, place, and memory, Haris Epaminonda’s Chimera is an experimental audio-visual travelogue. Following the rays of the sun and tracing its shadows, the film acts as an optical mirage. Chimera oscillates between reality and fantasy, nature and culture, light and darkness. Epaminonda worked in collaboration with sound artist Kelly Jayne Jones to create the ambient electronic score.
The film earned Epaminonda the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale 2019.
“Chimera is a quest for light and shadow, and for all the elements that make this quest visible.” – Els van Riel and Jelle Martens about their choice for this film.
Chimera © The artist & Rodeo London Piraeus; Casey Kaplan, New York; Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia