WHERE from HERE

Episode 1 - May 15 2020 / Hudson, New York

A global pandemic is raging. The collective program of human existence deteriorates. The ties that bind us unravel. Planes cease to fly. Actress Jessica Weinstein stands in an abandoned garden 500 meters from the Hudson River, USA, a monitor at her feet, asking: Are we alone except for our screens? If speed illuminates reality how do we measure distance in a deglobalized world?

RELEASED 19 NOVEMBER 2020

Episode 2 - May 28, 2020 / Vuosaari, Helsinki

In the great outdoors, we can leave our screens behind. To escape from the pandemic, one needs to see the horizon. The distance between and the geology underneath us offers perspective. But what does it mean to communicate from so afar, to conjure presence, when all we have is an absence? What does it take to send a voice to the other side? Roaming on a landfill in Vuosaari, Helsinki, performer Dallas Ulla chances upon a dead tree and seeds a song.

RELEASED 19 NOVEMBER 2020

Episode 3 - June 5, 2020 / Hudson, New York

Actress Jessica Weinstein wanders through the remains of a 20th century industrial plant, and into a park at the river’s edge in Hudson, NY. She delivers a mixed bag of proposals for global energy production, and ends by reading E.A. Poe’s description of the roiling seas at Maosktraune on the Norwegian coast — it speaks to elemental fury. If climate change is coming now, how do we find our way to deep adaptation?

RELEASED 7 DECEMBER 2020

Episode 4 - June 8, 2020 / Jätkäsaari, Helsinki

The earth is our medium. It is our energy. Geology is us. Our communications are sustained by the minerals and fossils of the planet. And yet we have turned the ground beneath us into an unstable territory, shaped by our imaginations and our machines. What remains of our fractured selves belongs to this contaminated terrain. In this new earth, we need new bodies. On an artificial hill in Jätkäsaari, performer Dallas Ulla continues to explore the ground versus the machine and compose a song.

RELEASED 7 DECEMBER 2020

Episode 5 - June 12, 2020 / New York & Hudson

In New York City— protests, riots, curfews. In Soho, boarded up facades and graffiti signal an intense time of change. Murals decry the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Juneteenth becomes a celebration of the end of slavery in the US. In Hudson actress Jessica Weinstein appears in an abandoned cemetery describing the graves of children who died of smallpox, an epidemic c. 1830. The world still grieves.

RELEASED 17 DECEMBER 2020

Episode 6 - June 17, 2020 / Kruunuvuori, Helsinki

The body struggles between presence and absence. Where do we belong? Are we entombed within a virtuality that gives us no peace, nor horizon? Or a ground that has been turned into a medium for uploading and downloading souls? Where do we go from here? By an oil silo situated on toxic land in Kruunuvuori, Helsinki, performer Dallas Ulla speculates through the final composition of a song. What are the possibilities of communication and existence despite the gradual disappearance of the ecology?

RELEASED 17 DECEMBER 2020

INTERVIEW w/ Lenore Malen

The Finnish Institute, London - Artist Lenore Malen: Virtual Contact Represents a Loss

NEW YORK

Performed by JESSICA WEINSTEIN

Produced, Written & Directed by LENORE MALEN

Camera LENORE MALEN

Editing PAUL LIEBER

Narration LENORE MALEN & JESSICA WEINSTEIN

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Acknowledgements

ART LAB HELSINKI

ACADEMY OF MOVING PEOPLE & IMAGES

Where from Here was commissioned by the Finnish Cultural & Academic Institutes

Together Alone 2020

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HELSINKI

Performed by DALLAS ULLA

Written & Directed by SAMIR BHOWMIK

Cinematography & Editing CHRISTOPHER THOMAS

Sound Design VILJAMI LEHTONEN

Focus Puller & Camera Assistant ROXANA SADVOKASSOVA

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WHERE from HERE ?

We want to hear from you. You are invited to send us your short films about virtuality during the COVID-19 pandemic. We plan to assemble a new series of WHERE FROM HERE in 2021.

LENORE MALEN

SAMIR BHOWMIK