Milja Viita’s Q (2016) and Minna Suoniemi’s Horizontal Dance (2016) are selected in the international competition of Videoformes festival, held from March 15–18 in Clermont-Ferrand, France.

Q will be screened in programme #2 on Thursday, March 16 at 14:00. Programme #3, including Horizontal Dance, will follow at 15:00. Both screenings take place in Maison de la culture of Clermont-Ferrand. The festival will be the world festival premiere for Horizontal Dance.

Horizontal Dance is a study of leopard-covered legs into limbs of living flesh, trying to hang in there, to exist through human body. Animal in disguise, or human dressed to allow the animal to emerge. A hypnotic opening, beat boxing mouth, partying puma.

Minna Suoniemi (b. 1972) is a Helsinki-based artist working with moving image and video installation. She’s interested in how disruption and failure can make normative structures and models visible and has worked on loaded subjects such as gender roles, motherhood and power relations. She has exhibited internationally in Europe, United States, South America and Asia including Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, Preus Museum of Photography in Norway, 2nd International Festival for Photography and Video in Seoul and Moscow Biennial for young art, and her work is in Collections of major Finnish Art Museums.

Still from: Milja Viita: Q (2016)

Premiered at Kassel DokFest, Milja Viita’s Q is a conceptual film about forces that change the world. The artist’s firstborn son transformed, in the blink of an eye, into a young man. Q takes us to the end of the worlds, the depths of the ocean and to the ruins of Atlantis. Q is shot on 16 mm film with hand-coloured surface.

Milja Viita‘s (b.1974) installations and films consist of experimental and documentary elements. Her works have been exhibited in e.g. Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Kunsthalle Helsinki, Mänttä Art Festival and in film and media art festivals internationally. Milja Viita lives and works in Porvoo, Finland. She graduated with MFA degree in Time and Space Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2005.

Videoformes festival for Digital Arts, March 15–18, Clermont-Ferrand, France

More information: Videoformes