Underskog

Heavy weather, a saturated sky, claustrophobic nature, the smell of wood and mud. From a twig to a volcano, from an unseen presence to a teeming city – we are on a journey through the elemental and rural to the hand-made to the metropolis. A collection of works held together with the gravity of powerful atmospheres. Come and see.

A place To Come (Un luogo a venire) Flatform (IT/ 2011 / Mini DV / 8 minutes)

A man with two dogs crosses a field. A person walks along a ridge, other people run while nature shrinks back to its enigmaticness. A “voice over” describes the reality to come.
In this piece landscape doesn’t evolve according to simple time curves, but according to the appearance and movement of fog. 


The Coming Race Ben Rivers (UK /2006 / 16mm /
5 minutes)

A hand processed film in which thousands of people climb a rocky mountain terrain. The destination and purpose of their ascension remains unclear. A vague, mysterious and unsettling pilgrimage fraught with unknown intentions

Earth Of Delightful Gardening Francien Van Everdingen (NL/ 2009 / 35 mm / / 6 minutes)

A shimmering visual feast. The viewer takes a walk through a garden in which time and space cease to behave in a linear fashion, where natural forms seek their mutual correlations in a gently fragmented overall picture. Silhouettes of plants, stammering elements and geometric peepholes thread themselves together in a stream of diversity.

Swamp Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson (USA / 1971/ 16mm/ 6 minutes)

Holt wrote: “This film deals with limitations of perception through the camera eye as Bob and I struggled through a muddy New Jersey swamp. Verbal direction cannot easily be followed. As the reeds crash against the camera lens blocking vision and forming continuously shifting patterns, confusion ensues."
Holt walks through tall swamp grasses while filming, guided only by what she can see through the camera lens and by Smithson’s verbal instructions.

Filter Beds Guy Sherwin ( UK / 1998/ 16mm/ 9 minutes)

In Filter Beds, tiny changes in focus explore a tangle of trees, reeds and sky. Sherwin’s manipulation of the camera lens allows him to mimic the activity of looking, isolating small details and guiding the viewer’s gaze.
The soft rich grain of the muted image lends it a dreamlike timelessness. The recorded image always hovers at the edge of abstraction.

Sørdal Ben Rivers (UK / 2008 / 16mm / 8 minutes)

The solitary person in this Norwegian landscape is the unseen one behind the camera. After a long hike, he comes through a storm down into a valley facing the sea. There, he discovers a group of abandoned buildings built in the late 1970’s for a film adaptation of a novel by Knut Hamsun.

Blood Orange Sky Jem Cohen (USA / 1999 / video /26 minutes)

The ocean at 5 a.m., the fish market, the seller of pornographic films, the woodworker, the elephant statue, the housing projects, and a young girl in an orange sweater. 
 A portrait of Catania, Sicily, people living in the shadow of the volcano Mt. Aetna.
Original soundtrack music by Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse) and local Catania musicians.