Karel Doing: Phytography + In Vivo

Programme

• The Mulch Spider's Dream (Karel Doing, GB 2018, 14')

  This film attempts to kindle the vision of a spider by using experimental phytochemistry; creating organic shapes, rhythms and colours directly on expired 16mm film. The film is literally made in the artist's back garden, using weeds and biodegradable chemistry to make images on expired film stock.

• Phytography (Karel Doing, GB 2020, 8')

  Phytography dives into the rich and varied world of plant chemistry. This collection of organic 'objets trouvés' demonstrates how nature generates multiple creative solutions, each one structured intricately. Through the application of a simple chemical process, the selected leaves, petals and stems have imprinted their own images on the film's emulsion. Shapes, colours and rhythms whirl across the screen drawing the viewer into a world beyond language and speech. The film taps into a realm of mutualism and generosity, readily available despite the environmental havoc caused by human greed and overconsumption.

• A Perfect Storm (Karel Doing, GB 2022, 3')

  A Perfect Storm is a landscape film or, more precisely, a landscape imprinted on the film's emulsion. The artist has used seeds, tiny composite flowers and other small elements of cultivated plants that grow in his garden and wild plant species gathered from a nearby nature reserve. The film consists of sequences that are intricately composed and parts that are completely 'self-organised'. As such plants appear not merely as inanimate objects but rather as characters who are expressive in their own right.

• Workshop results

  Presentation of the results of Karel Doing's phytography workshop in the form of two film loops with an improvised soundtrack.

• In Vivo (Karel Doing, GB 2021, 61')

  In this elegy humans appear like ants, walking around their habitat in a preprogrammed way, while animals and plants act like individuals. This upside-down world has a strange attraction which is at once alienating and deeply familiar.
  
  The surface of the film material itself is present like a skin that breathes and interacts with the living world in manifold ways: grainy, ephemeral, tinted, vibrating. Time and space are blurred into a reality that is both specific and universal. The film is simultaneously a documentary, a home movie and a symphony. We see scraps of the filmmaker's personal history including encounters with his friends and family. But beyond those commonplace scenes, the film offers an unusual encounter with the real, embedded in a delicate composition of images and sounds.
  
  A recurring doomsday clock is counting down, reminding us that in the here and now species are disappearing rapidly from the planet. How long does it take to realise that our destructive behaviour is irreversible and threatens to destroy everything we love?