This screening program curated by Donna Verheijden is part of the Media Arts Festival Arnhem (MAFA), which will take place from March 22 to 24, 2024. A festival with film programs, lectures, performances, experiments, workshops and conversations with artists in Focus Filmtheater, around the theme ‘LESS’. Part of the festival is a two-week exhibition in Museum Arnhem, also in March 2024.

MAFA is a collaboration between Focus Filmtheater, Museum Arnhem and ArtEZ Academy for Art & Design. 

Introduction by curatorial team

During this introduction, the curatorial team will take you through the festival’s theme: Less. Throughout the festival, the subject of Less will be examined and questioned from different angles and perspectives. Less of something is often more of something else – or more for someone else. Through a number of different perspectives, we investigate the complexity, the simplicity and richness of less.

Screeningsprogramma TRACES + introduction by Donna Verheijden

In TRACES, people’s interaction with the earth and its geographical areas is examined from different perspectives. What traces do humans leave behind? How do these intertwine with history? And what influence do these traces have on cultural identity and language? The selection of short films questions these topics from different narratives; a poetic letter, a mythical story and a fragmented anecdotal story about language.

Amauta Garcia & David Camargo – ARRULLO (NL, 2022, 10 min)
Giovanni Giaretta – Words Words Words Are Decorative Sounds (NL/IT, 2020, 8 min)
Patricia Werneck Ribas – Para M (To M) (NL/BRA, 2023, 12 min) + Q&A

Amauta Garcia & David Camargo – ARRULLO
Bringing in elements of architecture, sculpture, video, and virtual environments, García & Camargo tell stories that are at once personal, social, and political.The desire for home, García & Camargo’s practice reminds us, extends beyond its walls to affections, lore, and our longing to feel shelter. Yet, the artists warn, sometimes we do not know the voices of the soil that sustains us nor how it was forged. García & Camargo ask: How can we relate to the earth beyond its exploitation? How do the people, who have made land, relate to the volcanoes that create or destroy our worlds? Therefore, during the residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie García & Camargo begin a conversation between the volcanic soil of their homeland and the underwater Dutch volcano Zuidwal, wounded by years of gas extraction. (subtitles: English, language: Spanish)

Giovanni Giaretta – Words Words Words Are Decorative Sounds
The video investigates the complex relationship between language and cultural identity in our contemporary times. Instead of considering languages as simple communication tools, here they become viruses able to contaminate each other shaping new identities and geographies.

The starting point of the video is a fragmented narration of an anecdotic story: an intimate adolescent memory of learning English. This memory is playfully filtered through references to the mainstream visual culture of the late 80s and 90s. The video work describes the process of shaping new forms of the self through the use of language. Words, memories and images merge with artificial landscapes, created and filmed in a marine engineering studio, and flow in vague yet coherent sequences that feel as natural and unsettling as a dream. (subtitles: English, language: English)

Patricia Werneck Ribas – Para M (To M) + Q&A

We are very pleased to announce that the artist Patricia Werneck Ribas will be present for a Q&A after the screening of her work Para M (to M)

A woman’s voice passionately addresses the enigmatic figure “M” in a narrative that initially portrays a positive shift as one colonial ruler replaces another. However, the story ultimately exposes the persistent and oppressive nature of the colonial enterprise within an enduring framework. Through a creative juxtaposition of images featuring women and reappropriated colonial arte-facts in and around Recife, Brazil —an outpost of Dutch occupation— the essay film intricately weaves a poetic letter. It seeks to discern the potential for the subaltern voice to articulate itself. The film powerfully underscores that, while the articulation of truth may demand time, its revelation remains an inevitable prospect. (subtitles: English, language: Portuguese)