As a part of “Vacations in the Subconscious”, the screening program “The Surrealist Vacation Resort Athens 2024” is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto by André Breton (1924-2024). The Project inaugurated simultaneously in Los Angeles/USA and Cologne/Germany in 2023 gives an idea how the concepts of motion images artists of the 21th century are influenced by the Surrealist ideas.

Back drop (2021) | Susanne Wiegner (DE) | 04:03 min
The video shows that we live in the stage setting of an apparently ideal world. Despite the current crises and threats, we cling to this illusion of security and idyll, although we are slowly beginning to sense how fragile this life finally is. The very slow tracking shot demystifies our way of life.

Devoured (2020) | Heidi Kumao (US) | 01:08 min
Absurdist animated quarantine comedy.  Isolated at home, facing a barrage of news updates, a character nervously responds.

Morphoex-Bettina (2019) | Baudry (FR) | 04:00 min
By reading the novel “Immortality” by Milan Kundera, the video is trying to create a ghost of Bettina Von Arnim haunting Wolfgang von Goethe as a metaphorical movement, plunging the viewer into another dimension. The masks symbolizing the image of Bettina show – behind the shadow there is window, behind the darkness is light.

A000000000001000AA011 (2021) | Lilia Li-Mi-Yan and Katherina Sadovsky (RU) | 09:00 min
The artists explore the theme of the possibility of human interaction and connection with other forms of existence. The posthuman possesses not just new systems of defending itself against environmental degradation and destruction, but also new ways of perception and feeling. Still, it appears to have the same concerns: the rights of the posthuman, immortality, love, responsibility, the anachronism of gender and the transcendence of birth and reproduction.

Alterations (2023) | Laura y Sira Cabrera (ES) | 07:29 min
The video tries to express how life in the city makes us insensitive, absurd, as profoundly stupid and mechanical beings, alienated from Nature. We live alterations such as fires, torrential rains, droughts, unbreathable air… We are hyper-exploiting humans, all living beings and natural resources, to the point of endangering thousands of living species and producing a rupture that leads us to our own extinction. The images are tuned to the music, which gives them the strangeness and emotional tone.

The Peaceable Kingdom (2023) | Brit Bunkley (NZ) | 05:28 min
“The Peaceable Kingdom” is a dreamscape of various domestic and wild animals inhabiting human architectural spaces. Absent of humans, the video would depict animals interacting naturally within human settings. Convincingly real but at the same time clearly digital, they encompass a type of animal deepfake ontology.

The Mind’s Egg (2023) | Maria Korporal (NL) | 02:30 min
The mind’s egg is our subconscious: it contains dreams and ideas, intuition and experiences that may give birth to inventions, new insights or new art forms. The drawn figures seem to come out of the egg, but at the same time they nest the egg in a protected environment. When the drawing is completed, the egg and the figures undergo a transformation. The result is a dynamic digital microcosmos.

Patriarchal Sabbath (2023) | Monika K. Adler (UK) | 03:11 min
Patriarchal Sabbath is a phase-shifted dream, sequenced from revolutionary surrealism’s mitochondrial DNA. Fragments from the psyches of the women surrealists who sought to unleash themselves from the “male-shaped symbolic order,” and through fascism, war, and exile, found their own voices and community. The figure of an anthropomorphic poodle dog, referencing its appearance in the works of Dorothea Tanning and Leonor Fini, acts as both an observer and latent spectre of liberation.

Paradise Lost (2022) | Francesca Fini (IT) | 06:00 min
An alien creature wanders in a dreamlike and mysterious landscape that seems on the verge of collapsing at the first breath of wind. This film was born from the artist’s desire to tell a recurring dream. In this dream, the unpleasant sensation of falling into the void – which we have all experienced at least once – fades into the feeling of precariousness and uncertainty characterizing our times. From the pandemic to the war in Ukraine, current events seem to mark a kind of countdown to nowhere. This alienating and dreamlike scenario is inhabited by strange and fantastic creatures who seem entrusted with the task of preserving the very essence of our animal nature.

The Subway Acupuncturist (2023) | Osvaldo Cibils (UY) | 11:28 min
Random potpourri of disobedient events around with the subway acupuncturist.

Athens-the present that didn’t exist (2023) | Thomas Vallianatos (GR) | 03:51 min
The project “Athens, the present that did not exist” aims at artistic representation through digital generated imagery via Artificial Intelligence (AI art).

A Virtual Death (2021) | Oliver Griem (KR) | 02:11 min
‘a virtual death’ is a metaphysical journey that explores the duality of self in a technology-driven era. It highlights how our digital lives have become an extension of our physical selves, creating a mirror of identities, reflecting our own anxieties over the implications of living in a world where we can manipulate the truth and escape the consequences of our actions.