Federico Adorno’s film La estancia was awarded the Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen at this year’s International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. In its statement the jury said: “Through a succession of subtly constructed tableaux, this powerful film is a profound critique of systematic oppression. Instigated by a massacre amidst a land-rights conflict in Paraguay, this haunting work transcends the local context to voice the struggle for essential freedoms.”Many years ago, while he was working at the Swiss NGO “Helvetas Paraguay”, Adorno travelled long distances into the countryside to film short documentaries with peasants, whom he taught how to use a camera and write short stories, which they then shot together. His last two short films are about land rights and property, and how the extensive ownership of land by just a few landowners gives rise to serious conflicts and problems in rural communities. Isla Alta is about the tensions that surround a community when a wealthy rancher goes missing; La estancia depicts the aftermath of a massacre and is based on true events that happened in Paraguay in 2012.

The Film Breed and Educate is based on a collaborative performance with a class from the Hector-Peterson-Schule Berlin Kreuzberg and the HAU. In numerous task based rehearsals eight pupils between 11 and 13 years explored the possibilties of self-education. Based on various materials from found footage to documentary and staged scenes the film circles around the relationship of controlling and self-empowerment in educational systems. Breed and Educate is circling around the question of how lessons should be organised in times of network and algorthim-based learning. Algorithms and neuronal networks have to master problems only once, after they achieved their goal, results can be duplicated and copied any number of times. Kids on the other hand side have to learn everything step by step, the accumulated knowlede can’t be transfered from on kid to the other by „copy and paste“. An allopoetic system is a trivial system, which can be potentially fully explored, controlled and operated by an observer. With a similar theory in mind, the Prussians started to organise schooling in 1717, to prepare pupils for the Prussian Military Academy. What happens almost 300 years later in a school in Berlin, when the relationship between control and self-empowerment is inverted by postmigrant pupils who breed robots, are educated by them and vice versa? “ In Breed and Educate an automated dionsaur is introduced by a twelfe year old boy: “It’s easily trainable”. While he explains the mode of operation, one sees the parallels: the school wouldn’t have any problems with pupils equipped with a suitable operating system downloaded from the internet. Sounds like an uncanny utopia.” (Katrin Bettina Müller)

A boy is portrayed with a video camera for an hour on a tennis court.During this time the camera turns through 360 degrees. Meanwhile, the whole space is recorded piece by piece. The boy follows the camera movement slowly thus remaining constantly in the centre of the picture.

In Halle-Silberhöhe in East Germany, the camera records peri-urban area architecture, prefabricated buildings that are deserted and destined to be demolished. The commentary evokes a film editing technique used by Michelangelo Antonioni in his film, L’Eclisse (1962).

In Fade to White, Biggs delves into the desire to explore remote lands. To create this work, the artist embarked on an expedition in the high Arctic, traveling aboard an ice-class, 2-masted schooner, built in 1910. During the voyage, Biggs filmed Fade to White, focusing on a crew member as he navigated the ship through iceberg filled seas, and paddled a kayak past glacier walls and polar bears. As she photographed the explorer, Biggs tested her own will and endurance. The visual tension of her uncompromising imagery bespeaks their mutual struggle to maintain balance and purpose. Yet, the video also reveals the myth of the solitary white male explorer. Biggs explains, "The desire to hold onto the notion of the 'great white north' as a blank space awaiting interpretation only reinforces the idea of the colonial polar hero. The 'virgin' north has now been mapped, surveyed, and mined, but increased knowledge has not replaced endless fantasies of discovery." Loss and change are implicit in the video's title, Fade to White, which refers to an editing technique used to evoke death or transcendence. Biggs integrated her Arctic imagery with sound and video footage of counter tenor John Kelly, whose age, androgyny, and mournful voice parallel the vanishing Arctic landscape and signal the waning of male dominance.

The »The Tallest« shows pictures shot on-site of the currently tallest buildings in the world. The high-rises are shown as set pieces of global capitalism, visually disappearing into abstraction. The reduced images are reminding of 3D rendering. The simulated image of these buildings circulates in the media for representational and advertising purposes, becomes a substantial object and the actual spatiality becomes a mockup. The narration is undertaken by a computer voice, it describes the competition for the tallest tower at such divers places as Chicago, Dubai, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Mecca, Nanjing, New York City, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Songdo and Taipei.

A moving digital light drawing illuminates a white wall. A hand painting a black square on the white surface becomes visible. At the same time the light drawing is painting a light square. In the end the light of the digital light square illuminates the finished black oil painting.