Geocinema’s Framing Territories explores the vast network of sensing structures, in China and beyond, monitoring the earth’s atmosphere as well as the flow of people, data and information. Tabita Rezaire’s Mamelles Ancestrales looks to the past and to ancient cosmological beliefs, particularly in Senegal and The Gambia, as a way to understand our present.

Geocinema: Framing Territories (2019)
HD 15’30”

Framing Territories is an investigative documentary into large-scale systems and infrastructures amidst growing ecological and political anxieties. Starting inside the Chinese Science Academy, the films traverses outwards across landscapes of earth sensing. Satellites, surveillance cameras, seismic and geosensors constellate as new international collaborations take shape. They are driven by a shared need to predict the future of the Earth’s increasingly volatile climates. At the same time, plans are drawn by China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to synchronize the continuous sampling, surveillance and quantification performed by a polyphony of instruments situated in territories spanning between Asia and Europe. Together these initiatives measure the limits of the planet to gauge how it is changing and how it can be changed.

Geocinema consists of art historian Asia Bazdyrieva and filmmaker Solveig Suess. Bazdyrieva studied analytical chemistry at the Kyiv National University (2009) and art history at The City University of New York as a Fulbright grantee (2017). Suess completed her undergraduate in Visual Cultures at the Glasgow School of Art, with her postgraduate at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University, London (2017). Bazdyrieva and Suess started their collaboration at the New Normal think-tank, Strelka Institute, Moscow (2018).  

Tabita Rezaire: Mamelles Ancestrales (2019)
HD 61′

Drawing inspiration from the megalithic landscapes of Senegal and The Gambia, archaeology, astronomy, numerology, theology and African understandings of the cosmos, Mamelles Ancestrales strives to establish pathways between heaven and earth, between the living and the dead, in a world where celestial bodies, mineral life and spirits sing together.The film is the result of the artist’s research and expeditions to four megalithic sites: the stone circles of Sine Ngayene and Wanar in Senegal, and Wassu and Kerbatch in The Gambia. Gathering stories from the guardians of the sites, local populations, astronomers, archeologists, and theologians to probe the mysteries of the thousands of stones circles scattered across Senegambia, Mamelles Ancestrales goes in pursuit of an ancient African Megalithic civilization to better understand our own.

Tabita Rezaire is a cross-dimensional new media artist and tech-politics researcher. In her work she explores the possibilities of decolonial healing through technology. Both offline and online she considers the prevalent matrix of coloniality and how it affects matters of identity, sexuality, technology, health and spirituality. Her works have been shown at the 9th Berlin Biennale, Tate Modern, London, and Museum of Modern Art, Paris. She is a co-founder of the creative agency NTU, forms half of the artist duo Malaxa Andis the mother of the energy house Seneb.