Éliane Radigue

The death of my seven-year-old brother when I was nine remains a painful and haunting memory. My parents did not know how to cope with the loss of their child and the entire family experienced indescribable pain. Phantom Limb uses this personal story as a point of departure. Whether it is a loss through death or divorce, the stages of grieving are the same. Individuals often go through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, ultimately, some kind of acceptance, in order to heal. The film is loosely structured according to these stages. Interspersed throughout this poetic documentary are interviews with a cemetery owner, a phantom limb patient and an author of a book about evidence for life after death. Phantom Limb reminds viewers that while grief is painful and isolating, it is a reminder to each of us that life is impermanent. - Jay Rosenblatt

An experimental film on the geographic and historical voyage of the peculiar sound of the so-called 'Basque ox carts'. Said sound, which could be heard until the decade of the 60s in part of the Bay of Biscay, has now practically disappeared from the Iberian peninsula. The film travels from the silence of the sound in our territory today, until its reappearance, following years of research, in the central area of Brazil.

A cave with an animal trapped inside? An eyeball vaguely reflecting a sleeping horse? A peephole into the black night? A dark side of the globe? An electro-acoustic soundscape by Eliane Radigue guides us on an abstract journey through the night. Entirely based on footage from unsecured live surveillance cameras.

The last film in Vidokle's trilogy on Cosmism is a meditation on the museum as the site of resurrection-a central idea for many Cosmist thinkers, scientists and avant-garde artists. Filmed at the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Moscow Zoological Museum, The Lenin Library, and the Museum of Revolution, the film looks at museological and archival techniques of collection, restoration and conservation as a means of the material restoration of life, following an essay penned by Nikolai Federov on this subject in the 1880s. The film follows a cast comprised of present-day followers of Federov, several actors, artists and a Pharaoh Hound that playfully enact a resurrection of a mummy, a close examination of Malevich's Black Square, Rodchenko's spatial constructions, taxidermied animals, artifacts of the Russian Revolution, skeletons, and mannequins in tableau vivant-like scenes, in order to create a contemporary visualization of the poetry implicit in Federov's writings.

This new film approaches the world of French sound pioneer Éliane Radigue (*1932) from a perspective of close proximity. French filmmaker Eléonore Huisse and sound artist François J. Bonnet visit their friend Éliane’s home in Paris in times of social distancing and lockdown to explore questions pertaining to solitude, imagination, retreat, the inner voice and temporality – questions that resonate with Radigue’s work, philosophy and way of living as much as with the acute collective experience of suspension and isolation brought about by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Suddenly there is an enormous amount of time. At first everything is possible. Anything might happen. Gradually the possible becomes impossible.

In support of experiences that are essentially common, but to which language does not easily adhere, the video passes through places that are both themselves, and stand-ins for others. The title is taken from Aleister Crowley’s 1918 translation of the "Tao Te Ching."

This intimate look at Éliane Radigue, French pioneer of minimalist and electro-acoustic music, explores the sensory singularity of her "sound sculpture" and its meditative virtues.