Film Screening & Artist Talk

This evening, Kunstraum Schwaz is showing the short films Æqualia and Sirenomelia by Emilija Škarnulytė. Afterwards you're invited to participate in a Zoom talk with the filmmaker. The conversation will be led by Anna Ladinig (IFFI).


Æqualia
R: Emilija Škarnulytė, 2023, 9'
In Æqualia (2023), a posthuman chimera (part pink river dolphin, part mermaid) swims through the six kilometers of the Encontro das Águas. The Encontro das Águas, the "meeting of the waters", is the confluence of the Rio Solimões and the Rio Negro, from which the Amazon arises. Together with the pink dolphins (botos), it glides through the milky white waters of the Rio Solimões and the murky black Rio Negro. The rivers connect in endless eddies. Here the boundaries between reality and myth blur. In the guise of the posthuman chimera, Škarnulytė reveals the consequences of human hubris. In her embodiment, she presents visions that go beyond the perceptual limits of our species and encourage reflection on the consequences of our actions. Just a year after the film was completed, the Encontro das Águas dried up and led to a mass extinction of the botos.

Sirenomelia
R: Emilija Škarnulytė, 2018, 12'
Sirenomelia is set in the far north, where cold, arctic waters meet rocky cliffs where radio telescopes record fast quasar waves. A mermaid, here a mythological posthuman being, dives through the ruins of Cold War nuclear submarine tunnels above the Arctic Circle. The film examines invisible structures that surround us, from the cosmic and geological to the ecological and political, and sketches out possible posthuman mythologies. It reveals a future free from military and economic structures, where relations between humans and non-humans have been rethought.


Emilija Škarnulytė is an artist and filmmaker born in Vilnius, Lithuania. In her films and immersive installations she explores the depths of time and invisible structures, from the cosmic and geological to the ecological and political. Winner of the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize and the 2023 Ars Fennica Award, Škarnulytė represented Lithuania at the XXII. Triennale di Milano and was part of the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Most recently she presented works at MORI Art Museum, Kiasma, Gwangju Biennale, Helsinki Biennale, Vilnius Biennale, Henie Onstad Triennale and Vilnius Biennale of Performance Art. She has had solo exhibitions at Ferme-Asile, Sion (2023), Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel/Bienne (2021), Den Frie, Copenhagen (2021), National Gallery of Vilnius (2021), Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2017) and Contemporary Art Centre CAC in Vilnius (2015). Her films are in the collections of Centre Pompidou, Kadist Foundation, HAM and IFA. Her work has been shown at the Tate Modern and the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and numerous film festivals, including Rotterdam, Busan and Oberhausen. She is co-founder and currently co-director of Polar Film Lab, a collective for analogue film practice in Tromsø, Norway, and a member of the artist duo New Mineral Collective.
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