From September 14th to October 1st, Z Art Space will be presenting 24h vitrine screenings of award-winning video installations "The Fourfold" (2020) and ''Long Live Mountains'' (2020) by Berlin-based animation artist Alisi Telengut. Her research and practice explores the concept of nature-culture and the wisdom of indigenous knowledge from Mongolia in a contemporary context of Anthropocene and anthropogenic climate change. 

 

Using mixed media techniques including painting, drawing and collage, Telengut creates animation frame by frame under the camera to generate movement and explore hand-made and painterly visuals for her films. Hailing from a specifically cultural perspective, her practice engages in an unique interplay of materiality, tangibility   and stop motion animation, while evoking a mesmerizing landscape universe. 

 

The Fourfold (2020) explores indigenous knowledge and wisdom from Mongolia and Siberia. Narrated by the artist’s grandmother, who used to live as a nomad on the Mongolian steppes, the piece offers a reclaim of the idea of animism as a post-anthropocentric and post-human perspective with a decolonial approach, as explained by the artist: “Against the backdrop of modern existential crisis and human induced rapid negative environmental change and ecological degradations, there is a necessity to reconsider and reclaim animism as a relational ontology for environmental ethics, planetary health, and non-human materialities.” Using painting and mixed materials, such as plants and dried flowers, the animation was completed under the camera, frame by frame by hand.

 

Long Live Mountains (2020) highlights the natural and the manmade materials to embrace the idea of the multi-layered and hybrid nature-culture continuum, while refusing the modernist dualistic position towards the nature-culture division. Created from the digital imageries of four physical canvas paintings, which were captured in a time lapsed process of collage with various materials, from two-dimensional oil pastel paintings to three-dimensional plants and flowers, the piece encapsulates a new realm of coexistence between man and nature. 

 

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ABOUT

 

Alisi Telengut is a Canadian-Mongolian animation artist based between Berlin and Montreal. She received her BFA and MFA in Studio Arts/Animation at Concordia University and is currently completing her PhD at Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf in Germany. Her work received multiple international awards and nominations, including the Best Short Film at Stockholm Film Festival (Sweden), Best Animated Film at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival (USA) and the Jury Award at the Aspen Shortsfest (USA). Telengut's work has been screened and exhibited internationally, such as at Sundance (USA), TIFF (Canada), the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (USA), the Canadian Cultural Centre at the Embassy of Canada in France, CICA Museum - Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (South Korea), Museum Berlin Lichtenberg (Germany), among others. Her work has not only been presented as animation and moving image artworks with the unique visual style, but have also contributed to ethnographic and ethnocultural research. Her recent work has been added to the permanent collection of Art Science Exhibits Berlin (Germany) that represents the leading-edge of art making with dedication to positive action for Earth's recovery.