- Open Format
On Cold Green Tiles
Alexander Maß
28 June 2024 19:00 – 30 June 2024 19:00
"On Cold Green Tiles" is a video art installation based on a socially critical reinterpretation of the myth of the Abduction of Persephone. Poetic dialogues in English are accompanied by abstract natural film images that symbolize a dark underworld, an unearthly everyday world, and the wavy transitional world in between. Aurora Mitsiani's performance gives these three worlds a physical expression.
The 30-minute film is projected onto an iron plate made of black steel in its most natural state. The plate has been carved to structurally imitate a section of the surface of Europa, the smallest of the four moons of planet Jupiter, in order to reflect the moving images in a metallic color scheme.
The experimental cinematic sculpture reflects the threat posed by the increasing authoritarian character structures in a capitalist society and aims to deconstruct it poetically, whereby the sculptural projection surface symbolizes our current plutocratic, money-ruled form of society. The question is raised as to whether destructive, narcissistic behavior is on the rise, and how we can counteract this assault on our judgment, mental well-being, and, more broadly, our environment. Has this character trait kidnapped us?
The 30-minute film is projected onto an iron plate made of black steel in its most natural state. The plate has been carved to structurally imitate a section of the surface of Europa, the smallest of the four moons of planet Jupiter, in order to reflect the moving images in a metallic color scheme.
The experimental cinematic sculpture reflects the threat posed by the increasing authoritarian character structures in a capitalist society and aims to deconstruct it poetically, whereby the sculptural projection surface symbolizes our current plutocratic, money-ruled form of society. The question is raised as to whether destructive, narcissistic behavior is on the rise, and how we can counteract this assault on our judgment, mental well-being, and, more broadly, our environment. Has this character trait kidnapped us?
Biography
Alexander Maß
Alexander Maß is a German author and filmmaker. He studied Environmental Sociology, Economics, and Social Sciences in New Zealand and Berlin. After creating his first film-artistic works in seminars at the UDK Berlin, a theater project at the Theaterhaus Mitte in Berlin, and a documentary short film for an environmental NGO in South America, his short film “A day longer than a day” won several awards at international short film festivals in 2023. His current artistic work gravitates around the connection of natural, social and psychological processes as well as philosophies of knowledge and newness in order to question the very core idea of what kind of knowledge we should strive for and for what purpose.