#158: THE LOSS OF REALITY IN THE ILLIGOCENE

Friday, 20 March 2026, 24:00 | midnight—   add to calendar
BABYLON, big cinema hall, Rosa-Luxemburg-Str. 30, Berlin
admission free and open to the public

20:30 | 8:30 pm
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, studio, front building, Auguststr. 69, 10117 Berlin

INFRASTRUCTURES OF DIZZINESS
Panel Discussion and Roundtable
with Davide Deriu, María, Auxiliadora Gálvez Pérez, Warren Neidich, Dimitri Venkov, Catherine Yass,

introduced and moderated by Ruth Anderwald, Sergio Edelsztein, and Leonhard Grond (in English)
 
Registration: kw-berlin.de, (Admission free)

24:00 | Midnight
BABYLON, big cinema hall, Rosa-Luxemburg-Str. 30, 10178 Berlin
Admission free and open to the public

THE LOSS OF REALITY IN THE ILLIGOCENE
This screening program is part of the larger networked exhibition and event series Iliggocene-The Age of Dizziness, which thematically and artistically explores the contemporary situation of polycrisis, as a dizzying state that demands new vocabularies and understandings. Dizziness is a phenomenon experienced by living beings, troubling the relation to their surroundings, be it on a physical, social, cognitive, emotional, digital, environmental, imaginative or metaphorical scale. As such, dizziness is not merely a theoretical or curatorial concept; its physicality and manifestations are germane. Dizziness is rooted in the lived experience of loss of, or change in, relations, acknowledging that these shifts can be isolating and petrifying, as much as they may be transformative.

With three very different film and video art positions, the screening program addresses an actual or perceived loss of reality and orientation, and explores visual, musical, and logocentric vocabularies, thereby laying bare how reality – shared and individual – is being constructed.

John Smith – The Black Tower, 1987, 23:00 min
Smith’s intention was to show how, just as the real black tower near his home could be seen from many different angles in apparently different settings – a housing estate, a prison, a churchyard – so language can construct any number of backdrops to a phenomenon, thereby altering atmosphere and interpretation. Smith applies the subjectivity of language to the objecthood of the black tower, converting it from a banal piece of industrial architecture to a cipher of paranormal potential. By simply filming the tower in all its different settings and applying a monologue over the top that mystifies this process, we are led to believe that the tower is beleaguering the protagonist, following him, or, at least, that he is deluded into believing that he is being followed. Although we know that this illusion is down to the power of editing alone, we happily half-abandon this knowledge for the thrill of the subterfuge.
–  Sally O’Reilly, catalogue essay for ‘Return of the Black Tower (after John Smith)’ by Jennet Thomas, PEER Gallery 2007.

John Smith is a British filmmaker and visual artist influenced by conceptual art and structural film during his early years. Fascinated by the immersive nature of storytelling and spoken words, he has created a varied body of work that challenges the clear-cut boundaries between documentary, fiction, representation, and abstraction. Many of his films, grounded in everyday life and personal experience, are carefully crafted to playfully explore and reveal the languages of cinema. His films have been awarded major prizes at international film festivals in Oberhausen, Leipzig, Hamburg, Vila do Conde, Tampere, Zagreb, Stuttgart, Graz, Geneva, Uppsala, Pamplona, Bordeaux, Lucca, Urbino, Palermo, Split, Cork, Seoul, Ann Arbor and Chicago. He received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in 2011, and in 2013, he was the winner of Film London’s Jarman Award. In 2025, his film ‘Being John Smith’ was shortlisted for the European Film Academy Awards.

Cao Fei – Meta-Mentary, 2022,  28:16 min
Pushing the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds, Cao Fei, considered to be one of the most important pioneers of post-digital art, examines the real-life presence of the digital space. Probing art, media, technology, and futurity, and in this case, in search of the actual location of the metaverse, her video explores facets of our everyday existence as they amalgamate virtual and social, physical and digital, thereby raising questions about what it means to be present and graspable in this ever-shifting twenty-first century.

Cao Fei is a multimedia and video artist based in Beijing, part of a new wave of artists emerging from Mainland China. Her work explores the rapid societal changes in China, often blending social critique with popular aesthetics. She focuses on how digitisation and urbanisation transform everyday life and contribute to a sense of lost space amid modernity. Her art frequently comments on the fast, chaotic evolution of culture and collective consciousness. Cao Fei has exhibited globally, including at the 50th Venice Biennale, Mobile M+ in Hong Kong, the Sydney Biennale, Moscow Biennale, and Shanghai Biennale. She received the Best Young Artist award from CCAA in 2006 and was nominated for the Future Generation Art Prize 2010 and the Hugo Boss Prize 2010 at the Guggenheim in New York. She resides and works in Beijing.

Dimitri Venkov – The Hymns of Muscovy, 2017, 14:00 min
The final work of the screening is, as its creator Dimitri Venkov writes, a voyage to a different planet, Muscovy, an upside-down version of Moscow, where we drift through a space of reversed gravity. “Gliding along the surface of the planet, we look down to the sky and see historic architectural styles fly by – the exuberant Socialist Classicism aka Stalinist Empire, the laconic and brutish Soviet Modernism, and the hodgepodge of contemporary knock-offs and revivals of the styles of the past. An essential companion to this journey through time and space is the Hymnic Variations on the Soviet anthem by the composer Alexander Manotskov. The anthem was written in 1943 and has undergone three editions of lyrics, yet musically remains unchanged to now serve as the official anthem of the Russian Federation. Manotskov used an early recording of the anthem as source material to create three electronic variations, each corresponding to an architectural style. As if, in a twist of Goethe’s phrase, architecture plays its frozen music. Look closely, can you hear it?” (D.V.)

Dimitri Venkov is a filmmaker. He gained initial recognition with his debut film, “Mad Mimes,” in 2012. His subsequent work, “Krisis,” was selected for the Oberhausen Film Festival and featured in Documenta 14. In 2018, Dimitri’s film, “The Hymns of Muscovy,” received accolades at international film festivals, was broadcast on TV and streaming platforms, and found its place in prominent institutional and private art collections. Dimitri has participated in different Biennials, in Moscow, Bergen, Göteborg, Wroclaw, the documenta in Athens, and more. His works have been showcased at esteemed institutions, such as the Whitechapel Gallery and Hayward Gallery in London, and he has held personal exhibitions at the MHKA, Nassauischer Kunstverein, CCA Winzavod, and Manezh Moscow. Dimitri’s work has been reviewed in Flash Art, Artforum, Senses of Cinema, Kinoart, Séance, and other film and art magazines.

The collaboration takes place in the context of the exhibition Iliggocene – The Age of Dizziness (22 March – 26 July 2026), curated by Sergio Edelsztein, Ruth Anderwald, Leonhard Grond, at KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art, Am Sudhaus 3, 12053 Berlin.

pic: John Smith, The Black Tower, 1987 (film still) © John Smith, courtesy of the artist