AMONG THE PALMS THE BOMB, OR: LOOKING FOR REFLECTIONS IN THE TOXIC FIELD OF PLENTY
Lukas Marxt, Vanja Smiljanic | Austria, Germany 2024, 85 min. | English, Spanish, Cahuilla with engl. subtitles
MONDAY, 12.05. | 9 pm
De France, Saal 1 | TICKETS
In presence of Lukas Marxt & Vanja Smiljanic
The descendants of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, now displaced to reservations, still remember how the Salton Sea in Southern California provided their livelihood. Today, intensive monoculture farming dominates the region, the lake is in danger of disappearing, and the soil is contaminated with uranium. In the final stages of World War II and during the Cold War, the United States had tested numerous nuclear bombs here.
Lukas Marxt and Vanja Smiljanić examine the historical entanglements of the Salton Sea are that has been shaped by indigenous culture, military exercises and climate change. They accompany the protagonists through the landscape and use powerful imagery to reveal the abstruse effects that human activity has on humans and the environment.
Directors: Lukas Marxt, Vanja Smiljanić
Camera: Lukas Marxt
Editing: Lukas Marxt, Vanja Smiljanić
Sound: Mrcus Zilz
Production: sunburst 3000 FILM / Marxt&Smiljanić
SCREENINGS & AWARDS
Florenz – Lo schermo dell’arte (IT) (Under 30 Audíence Award)
Kassel Dokumentarfilm & Videofestival
Leipzig – Dok Leipzig – International Festival für Dok.- u. Animationsfilm
Viennale – Vienna International Film Festival
BIOGRAPHY
Lukas Marxt (*1983, Austria) is an artist and a filmmaker living and working between Cologne and Graz. Marxt´s interest in the dialogue between human and geological existence, and the impact of man upon nature was first explored in his studies of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Graz, and was further developed through his audio visual studies at the Art University in Linz. He received his MFA from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, and attended the postgraduate programme at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig.
Vanja Smiljanić (Belgrade, 1986) is a visual and performance artist living and working between Lisbon and Cologne. She concluded the post-master in Artistic research at A.pass, Brussels (2015), MFA at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI), Arnhem (2012), and Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (2019) and got a degree in Fine Arts at the Faculdade de Belas Artes de Lisboa (2009). In her practice she often utilizes the model of performance-lecture as a way to bridge fictitious and experiential universes, comprising technical apparatus, diagrams and sci-fi povera sculptures. Connecting otherwise unparalleled reality systems, Vanja’s work attests the foundation of ideologies as alienated regimes, recurring to her own body as a vessel for narration, often shifting between the position of oracle and storyteller.
