Tentacular Festival. Geocinema

If we want to understand the extreme conditions that the Earth is enduring today under the pressure of global systems of extraction, we will need new lenses, a form of storytelling that can operate on the scale of planetary networks and infrastructures. In their short films, Geocinema are using the instruments of global capitalism, from cell phones to surveillance cameras, satellites and geosensor, as a distributed filmmaking machine. The characters in their stories are vastly distributed megastructures like China’s Belt and Road Initiative, spanning three continents, or the different satellite systems orbiting over our heads. 

Based in Berlin and Kiev, Geocinema are art historian Asia Bazdyrieva and filmmaker Solveig Suess.Their practice explores the collision between ecological change and infrastructures of migration, work and trade. The project originated as part of their participation in the Strelka Institute program in Moscow in 2018.

Solveig Suess completed her postgraduate degree at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University, London (2017) and was a fellow at Strelka Institute (2018), Moscow. Her practice researches the collision between ecological shifts and infrastructures of migration, labour and trade, paying attention to longer histories of weather and optics co-constructing contemporary infrastructural conditions.

Asia Bazdyrieva studied analytical chemistry at the National University of Kyiv (2009) and art history at The City University of New York as a Fulbright grantee (2017). Her research interests range from histories of modernist utopia to grassroots expressions that challenge dominant historical narratives.