Its always special for me to present work at the Diagonale. Festival des österreichischen Films. It’s the place where I’ve presented my first film, where I had my first retrospective and nearly cried on stage when I won a prize. It makes me very happy that this year I can present my first feature length film „When Fire Turns to Ash“ and I’m very thankful to Claudia Slanar and Dominik Kamalzadeh for the selection.
The screenings are on Saturday, 21.03., 17:00, Schubertkino 2 and Monday, 23.03., 11:00, Annenhof Kino 5.
I will be there in person and look forward to another fun Diagonale!
with Steve Bates ·Martin Brandlmayr ·Stephanie Casonguay ·Gabriela Gordillo · Michaela Grill ·Christof Kurzmann ·Mark Molnar · Noid · Sophie Trudeau ·Elizabeth A. Vagagic · Sara Zlanabitnig
What’s up Vienna! What’s up Montréal! is a cross-cultural event series and multimedia festival that connects Vienna and Montréal as vibrant centres of experimental music, sound art, performance, film and video. The series, which was first held in 2010, is curated by Michaela Grill, Christof Kurzmann and Steve Bates and brings together artists from both cities to explore new artistic concepts and interdisciplinary working methods. The focus is on cross-border artistic encounters: the participating positions demonstrate the diversity and independence of their experimental approaches by performing together, collaborating and developing innovative formats. Projects and performances range from audiovisual experiments to performative interventions that make local scenes visible and promote international networking. The series offers participating artists the opportunity to initiate longer-term collaborations and explore creative potential beyond established conventions.
Programm
23. April 2026, 8pm, Echoraum Sophie Trudeau / Michaela Grill Stephanie Castonguay / Gabriela Gordillo Mark Molnar / noid / Martin Brandlmayr
24. April 2026, 8pm, Echoraum Mark Molnar / Sara Zlanabitnig Elizabeth Anka Vajagic / Steve Bates / Christof Kurzmann
I am so exited for the world premiere of my first feature length film at the Native Women in Film Festival, March 9-13 in Los Angeles/US at The Grove. When Fire Turns to Ash explores how the genocide of Indigenous Peoples in Tierra del Fuego remains inscribed in the landscape. Developed over three years in close collaboration with the Selk’nam and Yahgan communities, this essay film proposes a decolonial reading of the territory.
Thank you to my team: Nick Kuepfer, Mariana Frandsen, Alba Chaile, Miguel Pantoja Elizabeth Anka Vajagic, Barbara Pichler and Harris Newman.
I will forever be indebted to the Selk’nam and Yaghan communities who opened their hearts and shared their stories with me: Daniela Bogarin, Alba Chaile, José Gonzalez Calderon, Estela Maris Maldonado, Margarita Maldonado, Rubén Maldonado, Miguel Pantoja, Maria Salamanca,Maria Olinda Vargas, Tarsicio Vargas, Teresa Catalina Vargas, Tahali Ayelen Villanueva, Luis Gomez Zarranga!
In the last couple of years I have worked intensely with Indigenous communities in Tierra del Fuego for my new film „When Fire Turns to Ash“. For the film I have interviewed many Selk’nam and Yagán people and two of these interviews plus some stills from the film are now included in the exhibtion „PUSHAKI KE’IÚ (fire today). Stories from the Yagán and Selk’nam peoples“ at the Museo Etnográfico „Juan B. Ambrosetti“ in Buenos Aires.
I have been so deeply impacted by the time and stories they shared with me that I really miss words to describe it. If you are in Buenos Aires, please take the time and listen to them and if you are not, please check out the interviews on youtube.
Save the date for “Earth (Okâwîmâw Askiy – ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ)”, a 12-hour event from 12 noon to 12 midnight (CST) on December 12th.
“Earth (Okâwîmâw Askiy – ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ)” follows on the heels of 2020’s You, 2021’s And, 2022’s I, 2023’s Are, and 2024’s Water. It is the sixth in a series of twelve annual events taking place on December 12 from 12 noon to 12 midnight. Each year the event moves through each word of the 12-word phrase, ‘You And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death’, to activate the word of the year in myriad ways.
This year’s event is hosted and presented by the University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection from its ROUNDING space at the Kenderdine Gallery in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
The curators of the event are Christof Migone and jake moore.
The event will feature kihci-okāwīmāw askiy, Christina Battle, Sepideh Behrouzian, Joshua Bonnetta, Andrew Denton, Tanya Doody, Michaela Grill, Ufuk Ali Gueray, Jessica Karuhanga, Masha Kouznetsova, Karl Lemieux, Ella Dawn McGeough, Erica Mendritzki, Tékeniyáhsen Ohkwá:ri (Jackson 2bears), Cassie Packham, Parsons & Charlesworth, Dawit L. Petros, Danielle Petti, Laura St. Pierre, Arielle Walker, Aurora Wolfe, Melanie Zurba, amongst others.
Presenting partners: the Centre for Sustainable Curating, and Otekh.
Streaming partners: Naisa, Radio Bloc Oral, Radius, Resonance Extra, and Wave Farm.
As with past editions the event will be streamed live on YouTube.
Situated between scientific documentary and sensory experimental cinema, The Great Thaw is a melancholic and mesmerizing epic that reveals the contours of our ecosystems and humanity’s impact on them. In this audiovisual work of the Anthropocene era, the notion of traces is masterfully explored by filmmakers-performers Michaela Grill and Karl Lemieux. The viewer is quickly led to reflect on existential questions: What does humanity leave behind on this already fragile Earth? Are we aware of the gravity of what we leave? Are we truly conscious of our individual impact? The cinematography is larger than life, while the reality it depicts is profoundly alarming. Permafrost melts before our eyes, just as the future darkens. Grill and Lemieux’s strength lies in making us feel the effects of climate change visually, skillfully alternating between sublime imagery and stark, unsettling facts. A grand, universal work—essential to experience in today’s context. (Émilie Poirier)
Some of you might know that I have been involved in a research project about mental health and filmmaking for a while now. Our first findings have just been published and you can read them here:
A Topographical Summit is a gathering of artists, designers, filmmakers, scientists and scholars hosted by the University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collections and The School for the Arts.
A Topographical Summit brings together an ecology of practices in performance, visual arts, moving images, and natural sciences that are invested in the capacity for social change through artist-led activity. Using topography as an anchoring concept, contributors will engage in discourse that conceives of ecological crisis as a product of the Western colonial modernist project and, therefore, as a condition that must be addressed through worldviews and epistemologies that are antithetical to the project’s manifestations. The contributors’ practices mark distinct turns away from techno-liberalism and individuation, providing examples of how we might lessen our compulsion to act like modern individuals, in favour of an ethics of inter-existence. They engage multiple modalities and speculative fictions in critique of the techno-rational approach to ecological crisis and show how art might provide the affective frameworks for reconfiguring our response to the complex after-effects of the modernist project.
Sepideh Behrouzian (IR/CA), Andrew Denton (NZ/CA), Michaela Grill (AT), Office for a Human Theatre (Filippo Andreatta (IT) and Sarah Messerschmidt (DE)), Parsons & Charlesworth (UK/US), Dawit L. Petros (CA), Paul Suchan (CA), and Arielle Walker (NZ), amongst others.
