114 research outputs found
Artist Talk and Screening
No full textScreening of Constant (2022) and A Demonstration (2020) by Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner, with an introduction by the filmmakers
State of Statelessness
No full textA group show that set out to manipulate the ambiguous notion of statelessness.
With:
Sabrina Chou
Marijke De Roover
Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (Chris Dreier & Gary Farrelly)
Yuki Okumura
Meggy Rustamova
Eleonore Saintagnan
Gen Ueda
Jonathan Vinel
Beny Wagner
Justyna Wierzchowiecka
Curatorial Team:
Romuald Demidenko
Maxime Gourdon
Alicja Melzack
Open City Documentary Festival
No full textConstant
Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner | 2022 | Germany, UK | 40’ | digital | English spoken
This essay film by Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner interrogates moments of change within the history of measurement standardisation. Complex social and political contexts are traced: land surveying, the invention of the metric system at the time of the French Revolution, and more recent digital innovations. Radical and democratic forms of knowledge are possible in this new landscape, but this is problematised by the accompanying possibilities of control and demarcation.
LiDAR scans portray the omnipotent possibilities of digital measuring systems. These point cloud visuals are set against staged speculations and live action performances of Enlightenment scientists at work in French fields, and early mapped projections of the earth from above. Corporeal embodied forms of measuring shift from tangible space to a newly quantified and abstracted landscape. The resulting film explores how systems of measurement radically alter our lived experience of the world
First Look 2022
No full textConstant
Dirs. Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner. Germany/United Kingdom. 2022, 40 mins. DCP.
Constant is a formally inventive essay film that explores the historical search for a universal standard of measurement. The artist duo Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner (A Demonstration) use a combination of beautifully rendered 3D animation, documentary footage, live action, and diagrams to relate this search to the production and control of knowledge and power. They trace the evolution of the science of measurement from its basis in the body, through the Metric Revolution and settler-colonial efforts to possess and enclose land, to a more “democratic” valuation that can be cast in platinum. With playful narration by filmmaker and actress Cynthia Beatt, Constant asks us to see more of the world than first meets the eye, and to perhaps remake the world again. North American premiere
LIMA Presents: Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner
No full textThe screening was followed by a Q&A with the artists. The evening concluded with the opportunity to catch up at LAB111’s cafe in attendance of the curators and the artists.
Constant is a journey through the social and political histories of measurement. For most of recorded history, the human body was the measure of all things. Constant asks: what led measurement to depart from the body and become a science unto itself?” The film explores three shifts in the history of measurement standardisation, from the land surveying that drove Early Modern European land privatisation, to the French Revolution that drove the Metric Revolution, to the conceptual dematerialisation of measurement in the contemporary era of Big Science
IndieLisboa 2022
No full textConstant
Dirs. Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner. Germany/United Kingdom. 2022, 40 mins.
A film about something as seemingly simple as the issue of measurement reveals something insidious about the existing systems. And a line is drawn between the standardization of how something is measured to systems of power, democracies and censorship
My Want of You Partakes of Me
No full textFilmmakers Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner are joined by author Elvia Wilk for a conversation about their oeuvre.
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This conversation takes as its starting point Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner's most recent film, My Want of You Partakes of Me. The film, which is on view as part of the exhibition at W139, is the third instalment of a trilogy. It proposes that digestion is a fundamental condition for organisms to be in the world, a process with physiological and psychological dimensions as well as spiritual and literary implications. Told through a nonlinear, multiperspectival narrative, the film presents a political poetics of incorporation. The filmmakers will engage in a close dialogue with author Elvia Wilk, who writes about corporeality, decomposition, and transformation through such diverse lenses as mediaeval mysticism, horror, and science fiction. Wilk, Litvintseva and Wagner share a deep interest in historical excavation as a means of engaging the present moment, and will expand on the many meeting points between their work across genres
Constant (Festival World Premiere)
No full text"Constant is a journey through the social and political histories of measurement. The film explores three shifts in the history of measurement standardization, from the land surveying that drove Early Modern European land privatization, to the French Revolution that drove the Metric Revolution, to the conceptual dematerialisation of measurement in the contemporary era of Big Science. Each chapter traces the relationship of measurement standardization to ideas of egalitarianism, agency, justice, and power.” (Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner)
In/Visible Measures
No full textRanging from considerations of perception to histories of measurement, these works question the boundaries between the visible and invisible to better understand the relationships between humans, nature, and technology.
Programme lineup
Yantra (James Whitney, 1950–57, 8 mins., 16mm)
Constant (Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner, 2022, 40 mins., DCP)
Spook Sport (Mary Ellen Bute, Norman McLaren, and Ted Nemeth, 1940, 8:05 mins., digital video
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