Berlin-based filmmaker, artist, and writer Arjuna Neuman’s (Film/Video MFA 11) retrospective Corpus Infinitum, in collaboration with philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva, is on view at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) in Spain now until Sept. 25. New work from his film collaboration with da Silva, Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims, alsos premiere at the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna on Oct. 5.
Corpus Infinitum uses the four elements to consider an alternative to our capitalist, Western, and extractivist world. Exploring the possibility of a world without one species’ dominance, the series of films at MACBA includes installations of previous works, including Serpent Rain (2016), 4 Waters – Deep Implicancy (2019), and Soot Breath // Corpus Infinitum (2020).
Drawing from visual arts, sciences, and philosophy, Neuman and da Silva’s films engage with landscapes, archival documentation, quantum mechanics, the blues, diverse philosophies, counter-hegemonic knowledge, classical physics, colonial theory, and cartomancy. The art allows for a view of the world as a corpus infinitum, where human, geological, bacterial, and meteorological environments are not independent forms and phenomena.
Screening later this year at Kunstalle Wien, Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims is part of a film series using the style of “elemental cinema,” encompassing a continuity between the quantum and the cosmic scale. Accompanied by performances, workshops, and discourse, this film builds on the questioning of Western capitalist thought. Centering on Chile during the Pinochet regime, the film allows the viewer to experience the world guided by their senses and explore the persistence and undermining of colonial thought.
Neuman has been working across Europe and internationally for many years. His transnational career is also reminiscent of his birth on an airplane, giving him dual citizenship and many passports. He is the co-founder of archiveofbelonging.org, a resource database for migrants and refugees.
Neuman’s work has been presented in both group and solo shows at various international venues and festivals, included the Lubumbashi Biennial, Democratic Republic of Congo; Bergen Assembly, Norway; Sharjah Biennial, UAE; Venice Biennial, Italy; National Archaeological Museum of Naples Naples, Italy; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Istanbul Modern, Turkey; Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisboa, Portugal; and Whitechapel Gallery, Bold Tendencies, and LUX, all in London, amongst many others. His work is held in the Belkin Collection and Platform UK collection. His writing has been published in Relief Press, Into the Pines Press, LA Canvas, Art Fetch, LA Art Resources, The Journal for New Writing, Artvoices, Flaunt, LEAP, Hearings, World Records, Umbau, and e-flux. He has mixtapes essays on Dublab, Radio Alhara, and NTS.
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