Ancestral Clouds, Ancestral Claims
Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims
Denise Ferreira da Silva, Arjuna NeumanExploring some of the largest lithium mines in the world; hovering above the remnants of colonial labour camps reactivated under the Pinochet regime, and slipping inside the international observatory of the ALMA large-array facility, Ferreira da Silva and Neuman’s camera uncovers material trajectories whose planetary scope and historical depths remain invisible to many.
2 Sussex Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 1J5
Sidewalk-level entrance, elevator and ramp available, door width 32 inches, no automatic doors. No accessible parking on-site. Four wheelchair accessible seats in the cinema. 15 step-free seats in row 9. Accessible gender-neutral washroom located on the 2nd and 3rd floor.
For a map of Innis Town Hall, click here
Images Festival is committed to providing an accessible festival and continues to work to reduce barriers to participation at our events. This year, we are implementing a COVID-19 policy to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission for all, and to prioritize the participation of people who are disability-identified, immunocompromised, or part of an otherwise vulnerable group.
The following guidelines will be in place: Self-Assessment: We ask that staff and participants screen themselves for COVID-19 before visiting the exhibition.
Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims is a film by artist, filmmaker, and writer Arjuna Neuman and philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva. Since 2016, the duo has collaborated on a series of films that each follow a classical element (water, earth, wind, fire) to reimagining the world speculatively and reparatively. Their “elemental cinema” merges poetics and critical theory, to propose a poignant and emotional take on the ethical-political challenges of the global present, through human and non-human perspectives. A new addition to their series, Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims follows the wind and what it carries—dust, clouds, ideas, stories and voices—as both a guide and an analytical framework.
Filmed in the Atacama Desert in Chile, it explores the entanglements and overlaps of historical events, past present and future, at this site. Taking us on a visual journey through a large-array facility in an international astronomical observatory called ALMA, as well as the lithium mines of the Atacama, Denise and Arjuna consider how material trajectories are deeply entwined with the pursuit of foundational ideas from the Enlightenment and their mutation into aspects of modern neoliberal authoritarianism—all through their dissemination on the voice of the wind.
Serpent Rain (2016) and 4 Waters-Deep Implicancy (2018) were presented as part of the 2019 Images Festival. Soot Breath//Corpus Infinitum (2020) was presented at the 2021 Images Festival. These three films are available online at www.imagesfestival.com from April 11-15th, free for viewing!
Together, Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva’s collaboration includes the film Serpent Rain (2016), 4 Waters-Deep Implicancy (2018), Soot Breath//Corpus Infinitum (2020). Their films have been exhibited at major art venues, such as the Pompidou Center (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery, The 56th Venice Biennale, The Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt (Berlin), Centre for Contemporary Art (Glasgow), Julia Stoschek Collection (Dusseldorf), Arnhem Museum (Netherland), and more. Their films have been screened at Berlinale Forum Expanded, Images Festival Toronto, Doclisboa, Pravo Lujdski and more. They were the 2021 feature artists at the Flaherty Seminar and their work is held in the Belkin Museum Collection. In 2023, they showed the ensemble of their films at the MACBA (Barcelona) and
they premiered their new film Ancestral Clouds, Ancestral Ghosts at the Kunsthalle Wien.
This screening will have creative audio description available. Hearing assist rentals will be available on a first come, first serve basis.
Arjuna Neuman
Arjuna Neuman is an artist, filmmaker, and writer. His films and installations have been shown internationally, including in the Berlin Biennial, Manifesta, Sharjah Biennial and in museums such as
Centre Pompidou, Madre Museum, MAAT and Jamee Art Centre. As a writer, he has published essays in Relief Press, Into the Pines Press, The Journal for New Writing, VIA Magazine, Concord, Art Voices,
Flaunt, LEAP, Hearings Journal, Umbau and e-flux.
Denise Ferreira da Silva
Denise Ferreira da Silva is an artist, philosopher and the Samuel Rudin Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures at New York University. Her artistic and academic work rejects and speculates on themes and questions crucial to contemporary philosophy, aesthetics, political theory, Black thought, feminist thought, and historical materialism. She is the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), The Impagavel Divide (Workshop of Political Imagination and Living Commons, 2019), Unpayable Debt (Sternberg / MIT Press, 2022), and co-editor (with Paula Chakravartty) of Race, Empire, and the Crisis of the Subprime (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).
