Son[i]a #375
Arjuna Neuman
![Son[i]a #375](https://img.macba.cat/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/4-waters-arjuna-neuman.png)
Artist, filmmaker, and writer Arjuna Neuman has been working in tandem with philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva since 2016. The result of their collaboration is an ongoing series of films and installations that merge poetics and critical theory, in a dreamlike polyptych that is disorientating and grounding in equal parts. A poignant and profoundly emotional take on the ethical-political challenges of the global present, which the duo constructs through human and non-human perspectives, across different scales of existence. Their so-called “elemental cinema”—part documentary and part personal essay—considers often overlapping events and disasters of the past, present and future history of the planet: from slavery and police brutality to ecological collapse and the biodiversity crisis.
These films, which stem from the question “what would become of the human if expressed by the elements?”, engage with this effective blend of poetics and theory—and with their own formal and structural elements—to propose alternatives to the destructive consequences of Western constructs. Borrowing editing and narrative techniques from a wide range of cinematic tropes and music, they conjure up ghostly presences and evoke timelessness.
We sat down with Arjuna Neuman to talk about planetary body horror, wind, clouds, blues, tenderness, and the not so evident autobiographical threads in their films.
Sethembile Msezane
Working from the foundations of historical narrative and its constructs, African knowledge systems, and a contemporary take on colonial wounds, South African artist Sethembile Msezane has an interdisciplinary practice that goes beyond critique. In this podcast, Sethembile talks about her rejection of modern throwaway culture, convinced that the history and experiences of ancestors contain clues and know-how that allow us to imagine different futures. She believes that good omens must enter through spirituality and dialogue with ancestors. Art is simply a tool.
Dani Admiss
Dani Admiss is an independent curator, researcher and educator who spent part of her childhood in Dubai before emigrating to the UK and settling in Edinburgh. Her projects are situated at the intersection of art, design, technology and cultural practice and—in a constant search for a sense of belonging—explore infrastructures and relationality. "Sunlight Doesn’t Need a Pipeline" emerged in response to the simple and complex question: “How can I be useful?” The answer—by creating a decarbonisation plan for the gallery—gradually took the form of a conversation of many voices, involving various communities in an exercise in social justice and collective learning to rethink the processes of the art world in times of climate emergency.