At the End of a World – experimental moving-images
Group exhibition
Project rooms, Färgfabriken
Curator: David Revés
At the End of a World is the first exhibition presentation of a broader curatorial investigation by David Revés focused on questioning death and finitude, decay, ruin, and collapse across various biological, subjective, social, political, economic, and planetary contexts.
At Färgfabriken, we will now explore these themes through the lenses of experimental cinema and moving-image works from artists of different backgrounds and geographies, where each of the films and videos unfolds through its testimonial and testamentary nature, bearing witness to the “tragedies” inherent to human —and more-than-human— life, as well as to an inextricable world in a state of permanent crisis.
Amidst different horizons of loss and their hauntings, of contingency, catastrophe, or extinction, but also processes of individual or collective mourning, this project thus presents various territories at the end of a world. In doing so, it not only seeks to critically challenge certain Western imaginaries of progress, rationalism, and metaphysical mobilization from within but also aims to envision future speculative possibilities. For, it is hoped, this is merely that: the end of “a” given world where material finitude is a constant, but among countless others yet to come.
Participating artists
Gunvor Nelson, Time Being, 1991, 6 min. Courtesy of Filmform
Gunvor Nelson (born 1931, deceased 2025) was a Swedish artist, one of the greatest filmmakers of our time. She influenced generations of filmmakers as a teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute (1970–1992). Time Being is a depiction of Nelson’s dying mother and how the bond between them is severed. The film is a tribute to her mother and is remarkable in its ability to merge the brutality and beauty of life.
Liselotte Wajstedt, Bromsgatan, 2020, 7:57 min. Courtesy of Filmform
Liselotte Wajstedt (born 1973) is a Sámi artist from Kiruna who works with experimental moving image works across various media. The 2020 film Bromsgatan explores what happens in the space between place and humans, focusing on the Ullspiran area in Kiruna, which was demolished in 2015 due to mining extraction that had undermined the ground. The artist asks: what happens to the memory of a place and the life that was once lived there?
Paulo Abreu, Asleep (2012), 12 min. Courtesy of Light cone
Paulo Abreu (born 1964) is a Portuguese filmmaker and visual artist. Asleep is an experimental and poetic documentary, shot on Super 8 film, about the Capelinhos volcano on the island of Faial in the Azores. It also shows images of the successive eruptions of 1957 and 1958: the last time the volcano was active and created several geographical transformations on the island, as well as social and economic crises.
Marte Aas, What I Miss About People, and What I Don’t Miss About People, 2017, 10:51 min. Courtesy of Filmform.
Marte Aas (born 1966) is a Norwegian photographer and filmmaker based in Oslo. Her work explores the boundaries between contemporary visual culture, history, technology, and landscape. The piece What I Miss About People, and What I Don’t Miss About People is set in a future world where humans no longer inhabit the Earth. We follow a dog through a dystopian wasteland as it narrates what it misses and does not miss about people.
Maria Magnusson, Where the snow-fed Rio del Llano met the edge of the desert, 2023, 4:56 min. Courtesy of Filmform.
Maria Magnusson (born 1965) is an artist and filmmaker based in Gothenburg. Her work examines the relationship between sound and moving images. The piece Where the Snow-Fed Rio del Llano Met the Edge of the Desert was filmed at Pearblossom Highway, Antelope Valley (the “armpit of California”), where the cooperative colony Llano del Rio, also called The Socialist Ruins, once flourished (1914–1918). The sound collage features stories of dreams linked to landscapes, broadcast on Delia Derbyshire’s radio programme Inventions for Radio Dreams in 1964.
Raphaël Maze, Disaster (2014), 8 min. Courtesy of Light cone
Raphaël Maze (born 1974) is a French experimental filmmaker. The film Disaster is a dreamlike representation of chaos. Images taken from travels are transformed into symbols, lines, and graphic constructions, whose pulsating sequence amplifies the poetic charge. The visual rhythm of his films is enhanced by soundtracks created in collaboration with various sound artists since 2003.
Janaina Wagner, Werewolf, 2016, 18:16 min.
Janaina Wagner (born 1989) is a Brazilian filmmaker and visual artist. Her work explores questions of human power systems through film, drawing, and installations, aiming to present a critical understanding of how humans impose systems of order and control on their surroundings. The film Werewolf examines the notion that “man is a wolf to man” through a post-apocalyptic ruin—a dismantled mountain landscape created by human tools in the pursuit of so-called developmental progress, in the form of fossil energy.
Adriana João (born 1998) was born in Algarve, the southernmost region of Portugal. Her work emerges from subtle coincidences in the perpetual immaterial link between everything that exists, found in the tangled perfect and imperfect cycles and patterns derived from common tangents. At this show, she presents a set of three photographs that act as ghostly presences: three memento mori reminding us of our collective finitude and impermanence, across different time scales.
About the curator
David Revés is a curator, writer and researcher. Ph.D. candidate at NOVA University (PT). Future visiting researcher at Linköping University (SE), 2026-28. Founder of METANOIA, a nomadic project focused on experiences and narratives of extinction, collapse and finitude.
David has developed research residencies, solo and group projects for different venues such as Färgfabriken (Stockholm); Cité des Arts (Paris); Artistes en Résidence (Clermont-Ferrand); CIAJG — Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães (Guimarães); gnration (Braga); Culturgest (Porto); Alfaia (Loulé); USC and DIDAC Foundation (Santiago de Compostela); and Fidelidade Arte, Appleton, Leal Rios Foundation, Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva Foundation or Carpintarias de São Lázaro (all in Lisbon), among others.
He was head of programming and curator at Galeria Painel (PT), fellow curator at DIDAC Foundation (ES), and part of the curatorial team of CINENOVA – Interuniversity Film Festival (PT). Co-host of the cycle of talks and podcast LOVE AND DEATH. David maintains a practice of critical and essayistic writing, regularly published in artist books, exhibition catalogues, platforms and magazines specializing in contemporary art. Since December 2024, he has been appointed co-director and curator of Salto, in Lisbon, PT.
Photo credits: Adriana João, Fire plumes landing on wet shoulders, 2021-23