suns and stars Equivocal Translational Movie Night
As part of the programme We don’t want to be stars (but parts of constellations), Suns and Stars and Cavia joined in an Equivocal Translational Movie Night, presenting short movies not as a plurality of perspectives, but as a multiplicity of worlds. The night emerged early in the evening with murmurings of restless bodies, earth’s growls, and sonic textures. No dialogue, no subtitles.
We were drawn into the night by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's The Relative Native: Essays on Indigenous Conceptual Worlds. Guided by Marjoca de Greef, we collectivley read excerpts of the chapters OF PIGS AND BODIES and BODIES AND SOULS.
"To translate is to situate oneself in the space of the equivocation and to dwell there … it is to communicate by differences, instead of silencing the Other by presuming a univocality".
More context to some of the images
2.
Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya (2024) by Malena Szlam
Australia, Canada, 16mm to digital, 20’00
Sound recording, composition and mix by Lawrence English.
Tracing a path along the remnants of the ancient Gondwana landmass in the central eastern ranges of Australia, the film Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya animates “alternative cartographies of time” in which we become part of moments of a living planet – engulfed by the orange fiery tides of volcanic flares of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai eruption – sometimes in its armpits, sometimes on its crest, sometimes stretched out, laying on the beach, as time folds in on itself.
We acknowledge the Turrbal, Yuggera, Jinibara, Gubbi Gubbi, Wakka Wakka, Jarowair, Barrumgum, Quandamooka, and Butchulla Peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands where Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya was filmed. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
3.
Journey Of A Piece Of Soil (2013-present) by Trương Công Tùng
Vietnam, HD, 32’44"
The reverberations of an alarming summon stir a journey through ancestral lands and fallen fairy tale cities, with indistinct traces of life and death – a ghost, a ghost, a ghost. A ghost wanders from East to West, from South to North. A ghost is howling. Carried between elsewhere or elsewhen, an unearthed piece of soil enters into a ritualized relationship with its carrier — a bond unfolding through intricate, equivocal relationality, as it inhabits multiplicity. Hành Trình Của Một Cục đất is a present day non-focal narrative of a wandering, a Journey of a Piece of Soil disclosing “something nonevident about the world”, hinting at “a plane of immanence filled with intensities”.
My sincere thanks to the peoples, the soils, the rocks, the trees, the insects, the souls that worked with me in this film (Hành Trình Của Một Cục đất, 2013, 32’20”).
"To translate is to situate oneself in the space of the equivocation and to dwell there … it is to communicate by differences, instead of silencing the Other by presuming a univocality".
More context to some of the images
2.
Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya (2024) by Malena Szlam
Australia, Canada, 16mm to digital, 20’00
Sound recording, composition and mix by Lawrence English.
Tracing a path along the remnants of the ancient Gondwana landmass in the central eastern ranges of Australia, the film Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya animates “alternative cartographies of time” in which we become part of moments of a living planet – engulfed by the orange fiery tides of volcanic flares of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai eruption – sometimes in its armpits, sometimes on its crest, sometimes stretched out, laying on the beach, as time folds in on itself.
We acknowledge the Turrbal, Yuggera, Jinibara, Gubbi Gubbi, Wakka Wakka, Jarowair, Barrumgum, Quandamooka, and Butchulla Peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands where Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya was filmed. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
3.
Journey Of A Piece Of Soil (2013-present) by Trương Công Tùng
Vietnam, HD, 32’44"
The reverberations of an alarming summon stir a journey through ancestral lands and fallen fairy tale cities, with indistinct traces of life and death – a ghost, a ghost, a ghost. A ghost wanders from East to West, from South to North. A ghost is howling. Carried between elsewhere or elsewhen, an unearthed piece of soil enters into a ritualized relationship with its carrier — a bond unfolding through intricate, equivocal relationality, as it inhabits multiplicity. Hành Trình Của Một Cục đất is a present day non-focal narrative of a wandering, a Journey of a Piece of Soil disclosing “something nonevident about the world”, hinting at “a plane of immanence filled with intensities”.
My sincere thanks to the peoples, the soils, the rocks, the trees, the insects, the souls that worked with me in this film (Hành Trình Của Một Cục đất, 2013, 32’20”).
1. Introduction before screening by Anastasija Pandilovska. Photo by Marjoca de Greef.
2. Still from Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya (2024), courtesy of Malena Szlam.
3. Still from Hành Trình Của Một Cục đất (Journey Of A Piece Of Soil, 2013), courtesy of Trương Công Tùng.
4. Reading excerpts of the chapters OF PIGS AND BODIES and BODIES AND SOULS from Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's book The Relative Native: Essays on Indigenous Conceptual Worlds, guided by Marjoca de Greef. Photo by Hyeisoo Kim.
5. Reading Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Photo by Anastasija Pandilovska.
6. Pause. Photo by Anastasija Pandilovska.
7. Screening of Hành Trình Của Một Cục đất' (Journey Of A Piece Of Soil, 2013) by Trương Công Tùng. Photo by Marjoca de Greef.