Atomic Garden

2018
Visual essay; 16mm transfer to HD; 5.1 surround sound; projection; (8 mins)    

Atomic Garden is a stroboscopic reflection on transmutation, survival and the resilience of myriad life forms in the face of toxicity. Exploding and expanding past, future and present, the film trusts the anarchy of explosion as a movement of protest and renewal of life in its multiple forms.   

“We could say that a firework is not different from a tree, or from a big artificial flower that grows, develops, flowers and dies in a few seconds. Withered, finally, it soon disappears in unrecognizable fragments. Well, let’s take this firework and make it last for a month, and we will have a flower with all the characteristics of other flowers. Or so, inverting the order of factors, may us imagine that the seed of a plant can explode like a bomb.” — Bruno Munari    

* WARNING: please be aware that this film is stroboscopic and may induce mild symptoms of dizziness, drowsiness and is prone to stimulate photosensitive epilepsy. *    

Supported by: Swedish Film Institute.   

Ana Vaz is a film maker whose work activates and questions cinema as an art of the (in)visible and as an instrument capable of dehumanising the human; expanding its connections with forms of life both other than human or spectral. As consequences or expansions of her cinematography, her activities are also embodied in writing, critical pedagogy, installations or collective walks.   

Vaz has recently exhibited or screened at: Jeu de Paume; Pivô; Palais de Tokyo; Complesso dell’Ospedaletto; Biennale Gherdëina; Locarno Film Festival – Cineasti del Presente; Berlinale – Forum Expanded; Artist in Focus, Courtisane  

Göteborgs Konsthall