edge of doom - Michaela Grill

edge of doom was produced by Sophie Trudeau (music) and me as response to an invitation by the Buenos Aires Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento to make a work in relation to the Covid pandemic:

Grill and Trudeau focused on the raw emotion that arose during this time of confinement: worry, doom, hopelessness, despair. Taking silent film as their raw material, they built a powerful emotional vignette of a moment in time.

You can watch edge of doom from now until the end of October here

exhibited at

Buenos Aires Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento

Mirarnos a los ojos

September, October 2020 Curator: Gabriela Golder, Andrés Denegri, Cristina Voto

mirarnos a los ojos (volver a) is a collective audiovisual project, a universe of videos created during the time of pandemic by artists from different corners of the world. The project displays a broad diversity of poetic approaches; pieces that are simple, sensitive and reflective put together in dialogue with each other through a platform especially designed for this project.
mirarnos a los ojos (volver a) is the main event within BIM 2020, produced by CONTINENTE from the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero and with the collaboration of Untref Media.
mirarnos a los ojos (volver a) is a historical landscape, an artistic document that tells how the inertia of the future was dramatically interrupted. It is a testimony of a year in which humanity went on pause and had the space to think and feel different, to change the order of its priorities, to deploy a critical gaze upon its present and imagine alternatives for the future. Perhaps, in a few years this analytical and affective deployment might make visible the beginning of a deep change or, conversely, the failure of having lost a great opportunity.

Artists: Ana Gallardo (Argentina / Mexico) Bruno Varela (Mexico)Bryan Konefsky (EEUU )Celeste Rojas Mugica (Chile) Chip Lord (EEUU) Christian Delgado – Nicolás Testoni (Argentina) Claudia Joskowicz (Bolivia) Claudia Schmitz (Alemania) Colectivo Los ingrávidos (Mexico) Diego Lama (Perú) Diego Trerotola (Argentina) Fernando Domínguez (Colombia) Fernando Velázquez (Uruguay / Brasil) Florencia Levy (Argentina) Gabriel Soucheyre (Francia) Gianfranco Foschino (Chile) Guillaume Cailleau (Alemania) Gustavo Fontán (Argentina) Gustavo Galuppo (Argentina) Hernán Khourian (Argentina) Janelas Disobedientes (Brasil) Javier Olivera (Argentina) Jeremy Fernando (Singapur) Joaquín Gutiérrez Hadid (Argentina) Juana Miranda (Paraguay) Kamila Kuc (UK) Kenny Png (Singapur) Kika Nicolela (Brasil) Kika Nicolela – Thomas Israel (Brasil)Lucas Bambozzi (Brasil) Luciano Zubillaga (Argentina / China) Lucie Leszez (Francia) Luis Negron van Grieken (Venezuela / Alemania) Maarit Suomi-Väänänen (Finlandia) Marco Pando (Perú) María Ruido (España) Mariana Lombard (Argentina) Mariela Yeregui (Argentina) Mario Gutiérrez Cru (Argentina) Mark Chua y Li Shuen (Singapur) Martín Vilela (Argentina) Matthieu Bertea (Francia) Melina Serber (Argentina) Michaela Grill – Sophie Trudeau (Austria / Canadá) Mika Taanila (Finlandia) Mokotomoro (Grecia / Alemania) Monique Moumblow (Canada) Natalia Rizzo (Argentina) Nelson Henricks (Canadá) Nicolas Grandi – Priya Sen (Argentina / India) Paz Encina (Paraguay) Phyllis Baldino (EEUU) Regina Hübner (Austria) Richard Shpuntoff (EEUU / Argentina) Salomé Lamas (Portugal) Silvia Rivas (Argentina) Silvina Szperling (Argentina) Soyoung Kim (Corea) Stefano Canapa (Francia) Studio Azzurro (Italia) Tamara García Iglesias (España) Toia Bonino (Argentina) Ursula Biemann (Suiza) Yanyun Chen (Singapur)

Review by Eduardo Villar for Clarín

Translation:

Possible routes.
Some pearls of the biennial

There is much to see and discover in this fifth edition of BIM. There are more than 200 works offered to the viewer by the menu of this digital edition and more than 70 artists from different continents. The list ranges from well-known Argentine artists such as Ana Gallardo, Silvia Rivas and Florencia Levy, to some completely unknown here, like Yanyun Chen, from Singapore. So the aesthetic and poetic diversity is vast. Exploring these two hundred audiovisual pieces, it is possible to find very simple but forceful and effective works, such as We Are Still Alive, by the Brazilian group Janelas disobedientes, which –without images, only with audios– records the protests from the windows and balconies of San Pablo for the expressions of President Jair Bolsonario about the coronavirus pandemic.

But there are also works of great complexity, such as those by Delgado and Testoni, Mokotomoro and Gustavo Galuppo reviewed in these same pages.

It would be a shame, in the possible routes of this extensive diversity, not to notice two pieces. One, „Lejía“, by the Argentine Mariela Yeregui. Another, “Edge of Doom” –which could be translated as “on the edge of disaster” -, by the Austrian-Canadian duo of Michaela Grill and Sophie Trudeau. The video “Bleach” shows in the foreground the hands of a woman who sprays disinfectant on a sweet potato, an onion, a lemon, and then rubs them obsessively, repetitively with a cloth, in a kind of ritual that –one intuits– is fulfilled daily in millions of homes around the world since the pandemic began. „It is almost a‘ hygienist mantra ’based on antiviral conflagration actions on food, rhythmizing a temporality that reconnects me with my interior space but also with an outside that carries viruses,“ the artist declares.

„Edge of Doom“ is a gem composed of scenes that Trudeau and Grill took from the silent film, taking advantage of their expressionism to address the emotions that emerged during the months of confinement: fear, discouragement, despair, pain. The piece is as short as it is beautiful and powerful.