Art Lovers Movie Club: Andro Eradze, “Risen in the Dust”, 2022

Inspired by Donna Haraway and John Berger’s contemporary theories of species relationships, Andro Eradze fills the images of his works with plants and animals ready to push their boundaries. His camera tracks scenes on the threshold of something undefined: a smoldering campfire, a stormy forest of windswept trees, a flooded soccer field. Accompanied by haunting, transcendent soundtracks, his films seem like a compilation of the transitional moments of a feature film, leaving the viewer with a sense of extended anticipation. Raised in the dust (2022) is based on the ending of the classical Georgian poet Vazha-Pshavela The Snake Eater (1901). The protagonist of the poem has a supernatural gift for understanding the language of nature. He must choose between his connection to nature and his social responsibility, and ultimately bow to the latter. Eradze’s film is set in a forest. One by one, stuffed animals appear, disturbed by the roar of New Year’s Eve fireworks. Eradze’s film criticizes the human carnival, which is disruptive, toxic and deadly to the animal world, and positions fireworks as an entry point into the dark and mythological side of the forest, a world of plants, animals and phantoms.

Screening dates:
Andro Eradze, Raised in the dust2022, 4K video, 8:12 min. Commissioned by the Venice Biennale; courtesy of the artist and SpazioA Gallery.
24 June–19 July 2024
© the artist

About the artist:

Andro Eradze (Born 1993, Georgia) lives and works in Tbilisi, Georgia. His works meditate on the qualitative nature of images, both still and moving. He studied at the Shota Rustaveli Film Academy as well as the MFA program at CCA-T (Center of Contemporary Art Tbilisi). Working primarily in Georgia, Eradze experiments with introducing narratives into the fringes of human habitation, both literally and figuratively. The sense of an uncanny, non-anthropocentric presence in his works invites the viewer into the liminal space between the subjective and the visceral, between cognition, perception, and the alien otherness of non-human experience. Animals, objects, plants, and digital artifacts imbue a sense of presence in a landscape that exists simultaneously parallel to and intertwined with human experience. Eradze’s practice explores the potentiality of animism as a method. Photography, installations, experimental cinema practices and video merge into a project that considers the fading present, where the Anthropocene is faltering and everything functions independently. Building on the legacy of alternative approaches to reality – surrealism and magical realism – his images blur the distinction between the imaginary and the real.

He has participated in numerous international solo and group exhibitions and film screenings, including: The 59th Venice Biennale The milk of dreamsLa Biennale di Venezia, Venice (IT); The New Museum Screen seriesNew Museum, New York (USA); WIELS Contemporary Art Center, Brussels (BE); The Parliament of the Mamonts Biennale Gherdeina 9, Val Gardena (IT); The storage is a processing station22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, Sao Paulo (BR); Long-distance friendships14th Kaunas Biennale, Lithuania (LT); International Meetings Paris/Berlin at the HKW, Berlin (DE); Between dog and wolfVincent van Gogh Foundation Arles, (FR); We are them: Glitch ecology and the density of the nowHonor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles (USA); Long live the nightSpazioA, Pistoia (IT); So much happenedOberhausen Film Festival (DE); Buildings are not enoughTbilisi Architectural Biennial, Tbilisi, (GE).