Lauri Astala’s short film Sketch for the Last Map (2022) is included in competitions at VIDEOFORMES 2023 and Festival L’Europe autour de l’Europe, in France. VIDEOFORMES will be held on March 16 – 19 2023 and Astala’s short film is part of the Video competition, Program 1, held on March 18 at 10:45 a.m. in Maison de la Culture, Clermont-Ferrand. Festival L’Europe autour de l’Europe takes place on March 14 – 28 in Paris. Sketch for the Last Map is in the festival’s competition “Prix SAUVAGE CORTO”.

In the core of Sketch for the Last Map, overlapping translucent indoor and outdoor spaces relate to the multi-layered and placeless world in our digital era. Many faces of cities – private spaces, less “public” realities, cleared, restricted or fenced off out of sight – stay excluded from maps and the stream of images. The work was shot in several cities in Belgium, South Korea, India, France, Turkey and Uruguay.

Lauri Astala lives in Helsinki, Finland and Avalon, France. He graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 1989 and Chicago Art Institute in 2001. Astala is one of of the most distinguished media artists in Finland. He makes sculptures, videos and installations, that concentrate on our concepts and experiences of space and the ways in which cultural structures shapes them. His works have been presented at numerous solo and group exhibitions since 1989, including Eyebeam in New York (2013), Helsinki Art Museum (2010) KUMU art museum in Tallinn (2008) and Institut finlandais in Paris (2008). In 2007, Astala was awarded with the Finnish State Prize for Visual Arts.

Festival L’Europe autour de l’Europe, March 14-28 2023, Paris, France.

More information: Festival L’Europe autour de l’Europe.

VIDEOFORMES, March 16-18 2023, Clermont-Ferrand, France.

More information: VIDEOFORMES 2023.