Geo Barcan

wetenschap & techniek, video, schrijven, Publicatie, omgeving, Objecten, Netwerk, natuur, Media, Literair, Internet, installatie, Globalisering, Geschiedenis, film, Experimenteel, Economie, Ecologie, Documentair, Digitale technologie, Digitaal, Diaspora, Audiovisueel, Artistiek onderzoek

I am a visual artist using moving-image, text and installation to question dominant narratives across recent histories. By analyzing ideological and cultural apparatuses I seek the origins of these narratives and how peripheral subjects, be they humans, plants or animals, experience them. I think of my artworks as propositions that indicate alternatives to dominant ideologies that shape our understanding of what nature or technology is. Fictional or investigative, my video work manifests in experimental forms, while sculptures and objects are reconfigurations of already existing phenomena. Political, ecological, cosmological, and technological themes come to the surface through the experiences of beings/characters that originate from marginal places, at the edge of the world, and to whom things that are out of their control happen. I identify with the experiences of the subjects in my work, hence each project has a strong personal significance. My work originates from a deep feeling of urgency fuelled by the desire to comprehend reality and the systems of beliefs accumulated across colonial histories which have been affecting the use and creation of technological machines as well as global experiences and perceptions of the environment. I approach writing and filmmaking as propositional, rejecting both dominant ideologies and utopia and embracing hybrids such as theory-fiction, docu-fiction, slipstream, video essays, expanded cinema, and magic realism. 

Surge of Transference, 2023, multimedia installation
Surge of Transference, 2023, multimedia installation - A video essay and sculpture that investigate the expansion of the internet in a small Romanian town, where communities have formed and shifted around the newly imported Western technology. Within this micro-universe, the video traces the rapid transformation of the internet, from the early days of peer-to-peer software to the upload of online late capitalism. The video shifts between documentary, personal essay and science fiction as the residents of the forgotten town named Buhuși, grapple with the discrepancy between the polished online world and the real post-industrial conditions of their daily lives. While attempting to map the history of the internet in Romania, the work also touches on the materiality of the digital world and its footprints. (image: installation view at W139, Amsterdam, 2023)
Surge of Transference, 2023, video trailer
Surge of Transference, 2023 - 15 mins | 4K & MPEG video, found footage | English with English subtitles
Surge of Transference, 2023, 15 mins | 4K & MPEG video, found footage | English
Surge of Transference, 2023, video - 15 mins | 4K & MPEG video, found footage | English with English subtitles
Surge of Transference, 2023, mixed media sculpture
Surge of Transference, 2023, mixed media sculpture - installation view at W139, Amsterdam, 2023 mixed media sculpture made out of wood, copper, concrete, sand, bone.
Surge of Transference, 2023, mixed media sculpture
Surge of Transference, 2023, mixed media sculpture - The antler sculpture that augments the video in the installation, illustrates an internet antenna that connects the organic networks with the non-organic ones. The wood and the bone contrast the mass-produced copper wire - the most used metal in carrying energy and information. The upward pole with the two antlers is connected by a metal spider web on which a mechanic spider lurks; an allegory of the networked nature of the web. The predatory stance of the insect hints at the presence of a prey unaware of the unsafety of such networks.
Love Letter to Salma
Love Letter to Salma, 2023, 30 mins, HD video - A video about migration, displacement and death made in collaboration with Yara Said aka Noise Diva. This work is augmented by a live music performance composed by Yara.
Kid of the Internet
Kid of the Internet, 2022, publication - Kid of the internet is a collection of visual and written essays about living and growing up in late 2000s Romania. Autobiographical and at points fictional, the hybrid work follows the life-changing impact of the internet in the artist’s hometown and community. An embodied, local history of the world wide web in Eastern Europe. As 21st-century networks started to dim onto the collapsed sky of failed utopias, an escapist deliverance through fibre connection became the norm for the post-communist youth. Infinitely recessive corridors in this gleamy nowhere space plugged one inside like the roving vortex of a dark star. But was this diamond blue web a caring womb or a sly trap? Just like The Flying Man of Romanian mythology, the internet becomes an alluring incubus-like being who visits nubile girls at night, disturbing their sleep with rattling feelings and hypnotic thoughts - a seditious teenage demon in Y2K povera fashion. Against the dreamless exhaustion of working-class sleepers, coddled in communist austere architecture, a girl in her pyjamas gets to know that division, segregation and inequality are vectors that draw the world and refuse to die. Kid of the Internet is the story of technological abductors, failed utopias, deceitful promises and twisted becomings of age. This formally dissident text where collage, found image, quotes, instant messages, love songs lyrics, and flash fiction meet traces how the internet mutates one’s sense of self bringing soft yet permanent transformations.
Kid of the Internet, 2022, publication
Kid of the Internet, 2022, publication - 60 p, 21 x 15 cm, English, published by Onomatopee
The Sky Has Never Been So Close
The Sky Has Never Been So Close, 2022, multimedia installation - A fictional video and sculpture installation about a garden at the edge between the real and the imaginary. The video traces the intricate relationships between humans and non-humans, challenging patriarchal notions of family and hierarchical structures within ecosystems. The central figures of The Sky Has Never Been So Close are a blue worm and its human mother, surrounded by other inhabitants of the garden. Throughout the non-linear sequences, the worm faces its childhood trauma and reconciles with its past, looking for new relationships and bonds. (image: installation view, Tent, Rotterdam, 2022)
The Sky Has Never Been So Close, 2022, 4K video
The Sky Has Never Been So Close, 2022, 4K video - [extract]
The Sky Has Never Been So Close
The Sky Has Never Been So Close, 2022, 4K video - 15 mins | 4K | English with English Subtitles
The Sky Has Never Been So Close
The Sky Has Never Been So Close, 2022, textile sculpture - The sculptural elements in The Sky Has Never Been So Close are mirrored in the moving-image work, looking as if they walked off the screen and became tangible. This series of clay, textile, and paper objects display an unpolished, scrappy look. The textile piece looks like an old, forgotten child’s toy, while the clay objects bear the degradation of time and elements; as if they have been exposed to them for a long time, in a garden.
Like Moss
Like Moss, 2021, video - This work follows the panpsychist idea that everything around us is conscious, from animate to inanimate beings. In this single video, the environment reacts to the inner state of the main character, an unnamed woman dealing with loss. Through the magical-realist visuals and the lack of dialogue, the piece aims at questioning the centrality of the human in the universe and our perception of what it means to be alien.
Like Moss
Like Moss, 2021, video - 5 mins | 4K video
Always Come Back to the Sea, 2018, film
Always Come Back to the Sea, 2018, film - In this film the frail lines between memory and imagination blur into mystical imagery and haunting stories told by actress Val Sanders. Using a modified 35mm camera to capture memories of home in a seaside town, the short traverses the non-linearity of dreams jumping from piano recitals to near death experiences. This project was commisioned by Random Acts and Channel 4, UK.
Always Come Back to the Sea, 2018, film
Always Come Back to the Sea, 2018, film - [extract]
Always Come Back to the Sea, 2018, film
Always Come Back to the Sea, 2018, film - 3 mins | 35mm film | color

Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival

Datum:

Screening of "Surge of Transference" as part of the official competition 2024.

https://bieff.ro/en/

Rotterdams Open Doek Film Festival 2024

Datum:
Locatie: LantarenVenster

Screening of the video "Surge of Transference" .

https://www.lantarenvenster.nl/programma/rotterdams-open-doek-film-festival-2024/#all

SHOVEL:HAMMER:AXE

Datum:
Locatie: WET Rotterdam
In samenwerking met: WET Rotterdam

A group screening by the Rotterdam-based artist collective SHED in collaboration with WET film, featuring works by Geo Barcan, Antoni Czarczyński, Mónica Ruiz van Hattem, Martin Osowski & Ollie Paterson.

https://wetfilm.org/2024/05/21/upcoming-wet-hosts-shed-shovel-hammer-axe/

Go Short Film Festival

Datum:
Locatie: LUX

Screening of "Surge of Transference" as part of the official Dutch competition.

https://www.goshort.nl/user-files/uploads/2024/04/Catalogus24_online.pdf

Amsterdam Dance Event

Datum:
Locatie: Melkweg

Live screening and music performance of "Love Letter to Salma" in collaboration with Yara Said.

Internet Cafe

Datum:
Locatie: W139
In samenwerking met: Salwa Foundation

Group exhibition resulting from the Salwa Residency, exploring the intersection of community, migration and the internet featuring Chen Yu Wang, Geo Barcan, Hala Alsadi, Sixin Zeng.

https://w139.nl/event/salwas-internet-cafe/

Shady Dealings With Language

Datum:

Receiver of the grant "Shady Dealings With Language" 2023, dedicated to artists who work at the intersection of visual arts and writing.

https://www.facebook.com/shadedeals/

Surge of Transference

Datum:
In samenwerking met: Salwa Foundation

Surge of Transference is a video essay that investigates the expansion of the internet in a small Romanian town, where communities have formed and shifted around the newly imported Western technology. Within this micro-universe, the video traces the rapid transformation of the internet, from the early days of peer to-peer software to the upload of online late capitalism.

Een gedicht is een netwerk

Datum:
Locatie: Perdu

For this evening curated by Maxime Garcia Diaz , Perdu explores the poetic nature of the internet: how the poem and the network both follow the logic of association and constellation, and what questions are raised by that logic. Invited speakers were Samuel Vriezen, Geo Barcan and Merel van Slobbe.

https://archive.perdu.nl/en/archief/maxime-garcia-diaz-host/r/een-gedicht-is-een-netwerk/

Was There a Paradise or Was the Garden a Dream

Datum:
Locatie: TENT

Graduation group show of Lens Based Media department at the Piet Zwart Institute, featuring Adèle Grégoire, Martin Osowski, Luca Tichelman, Alecio Ferrari, Kamali van Bochove, Elysa-James Kooijman, Geo Barcan, slvie, Sacha Dufils, Tessel Schmidt, Dachen Bao, Ariela Bergman.

https://www.tentrotterdam.nl/en/tentoonstelling/tent-welcomes-v2_pzi-was-there-a-paradise-or-was-the-garden-a-dream/

The Sky Has Never Been So Close

Datum:
Locatie: Rotterdam
In samenwerking met: Piet Zwart Institue

The Sky Has Never Been So Close (2022) is a fictional video and sculpture installation about a garden at
the edge between the real and the imaginary. The video traces the intricate relationships between
humans and non-humans, challenging patriarchal notions of family and hierarchical structures within
ecosystems. This work originates in my experience of realizing that I do not identify with a human family,
but rather with that of insects, flowers, herbs, worms and other nonhuman beings.

Kid of the Internet

Datum:
In samenwerking met: Onomatopee

Kid of the internet is a collection of visual and written essays about living and growing up in late 2000s Romania. Autobiographical and at points fictional, the hybrid work follows the life-changing impact of the internet in the artist’s hometown and community. An embodied, local history of the world wide web in Eastern Europe.

https://www.onomatopee.net/product/kid-of-the-internet/

Deep Sustainability: Dialogical Action Emerging Institutionalities

Datum:
Locatie: West

Received a grant to participate in the "Deep Sustainability" summer school.

http://www.westdenhaag.nl/exhibitions/21_08_School_of_21

Eye Research Labs

Datum:
Locatie: Eye Film Museum

Group presentation of works in progress organised by the Piet Zwart Institute in collaboration with the Eye Film Museum.

https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/whats-on/piet-zwart-institute/331844

The Wrong Degree Show

Datum:
Locatie: Online

Online presentation of the web-based interactive work "Second_liver" in collaboration with Aida Sharaf.

https://davidquilesguillo.com/the-wrong-degree-show
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