Shot in Spain in 2013; part of a three-film suite also including Toros (screened in International Program 2).

Robert Fenz (Ann Arbor MI 1969). Studies at Bard College and CalArts. 12+ films since 1992; screenings at two Whitney Biennials (New York), solo screenings at Locarno Film Festival (Italy), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Cinématheque Française (Paris), etc; Guggenheim Fellowship (2004). Lives in Los Angeles, California. Fourth appearance at Media City including retrospective screening (2009); Grand Prize (2004).

Black and white quadrilaterals spinning in virtual space, alternating with similar shapes re-filmed from a screen in real space. The second half of the film is the same as the first, but flipped, reversed and re-filmed again through successive generations: adding while taking away. The screen is not a lesser frame than any other through which one might interact with the world, although where one ends up is open to question.

Simon Payne (Southampton, England 1975). Studies at Kent Institute of Art and Design and Royal College of Art. 17 films and media installations since 2001; screenings at Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), European Media Arts Festival (Osnabrück), Tate Britain and Tate Modern (London), etc. Editor of Sequence magazine published by no.w.here. Lives in London, England. Fifth appearance at Media City.

A series of five short films using the same procedure: a strip torn from the newspaper is coiled and then placed on a surface covered with a film of black ink. At the the ink’s touch, the paper unfurls and frees itself from the gesture which created it, revealing what remains of the inexorable passage of current events.

Ismaïl Bahri (Tunis, Tunisia 1978). Studies at the Art School of Tunis and Sorbonne Paris 1. Works in video and drawing since 2002; exhibitions and screenings at British Film Institute (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Venice Biennale (2011), etc. Lives in Lyon, France and Tunis, Tunisia. First appearance at Media City.

Designed by Josef Maria Olbrich in 1898, the main exhibition hall of the Vienna Secession is generally regarded as one of the first White Cube Spaces of art history. Using 19 specially designed cameras, Main Hall adds a purely cinematographic gesture to the space’s history by having it look at its own architecture.

“Main Hall meets Viennese modernist with modular inscription and the poetry of the impersonal… the result is paradoxically alive with artifact, incident, and the human touch. No ornament, no crime.” — Michael Sicinski

Philipp Fleischmann (Hollabrunn, Austria, 1985). Studies at Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien and Die Schule für unabhängiger Film Friedl Kubelka (Vienna). Six films since 2006; screenings at Berlinale, Anthology Film Archives (New York), Vienna Secession, etc. Lives in Vienna, Austria. Second appearance at Media City.

The winds asked me to go on a journey.

Shinkan Tamaki (Utsunomiya, Japan, 1982). Studies Science Education at Saitama University. Eleven films since 2006; screenings at International Film Festival Rotterdam, KLEX (Kuala Lumpur), Experiments in Cinema (Albuquerque), etc. Co-founder of [+], an experimental film screening series in Japan. Lives in Tokyo, Japan. First appearance at Media City.

Bird calls, a forest muffled with snow, the soughing of willows, the flutter of wings. A reverie wrapped in fur.

Rebecca Meyers (New York City, USA, 1976). Studies at Cornell University and the University of Iowa. Eight films since 2000; screenings at “Wavelengths” at the Toronto International Film Festival, “Views from the Avant-garde” at the New York Film Festival, London International Film Festival, etc. Lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts Fourth appearance at Media City.

Time-lapse footage of an artificial island off the Lincolnshire coastline. Constructed in the 1970s as an experimental freshwater reservoir, Outer Trial Bank is accessible only at low tide across an expanse of mud flats and is no longer marked on Ordnance Survey maps. The camera was set up at low tide, leaving it in position to capture a view normally only seen by seabirds, who nest in their thousands on the island.

Neil Henderson (Worcester, England 1973). Studies at Slade School of Fine Art. 10 films since 2000; screenings at Tate Britain (London), Camden Arts Centre (London), National Institute of Art History (Paris), etc. Lives in Whitstable, England. Second appearance at Media City.