News
Tuesday, May 13th, 2025, 6pm
University of Applied Arts Vienna
I oA SQUARE
Oskar-Kokoschka-Platz 2
1010 Vienna
As part of the course Circular Strategies, the Building Construction Department is pleased to invite you to a special screening of Transmutation, a series of nine short documentaries byacclaimed filmmakers Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine.
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with invited guests from Rotor and the editorial team of A+ Magazine.
‘Transmutation’ is a film project composed of 9 new short films shot at sites of mining, production and material processing. The films engage with the Brussels-based collective Rotor’s reflections on the challenges facing the construction industry, particularly in relation to the environmental crisis. A project made in collaboration with Rotor, commissioned by Bozar – Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels and A+ Architecture.
A+ Architecture in Belgium and the Centre for Fine Arts Brussels organise yearly monographic exhibitions on the work of important Belgian architectural practices. In this context the exhibition Entangled Matter, in collaboration with Brussels-based collective Rotor took place in 2024.
The filmmaking duo Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine took up the challenge of capturing the essence of a series of sites selected by Rotor. These films, each about 10 minutes long and entitled Transmutation, explore how matter is transformed. They focus not only on the life of objects but also on the gestures and practices that accompany them. More broadly, they offer a subtle vision of the materiality of the economic process.
Alongside the exhibition and the production of short films, the magazine A+310 Material Flowswas published, with Rotor as guest editor. In this issue several international authors address themes such as the reuse and maintenance of materials, the preservation of a building’s structure and low-tech assembly techniques, financing models of innovative practices and the changing authorship of the architect.
Bêka & Lemoine
Artists filmmakers working at the crossroads of visual arts, non fiction cinema and architecture. For the past twenty years they have been experimenting with new narrative and cinematic forms to explore how people experience, perceive, and relate to space from an emotional, social, and cultural standpoint.Bêka & Lemoine have made over thirty films, among which ‘Koolhaas Houselife’ (2008), ‘Barbicania’ (2014), ‘The Infinite Happiness’ (2015), ‘Moriyama San’ (2017), ‘Tokyo Ride’ (2020) and the city-matographic odyssey in 14 films ‘Homo Urbanus’ (2017-ongoing). Their films are widely shown at renowned international film festivals and prominent art and architecture museums and events, such as the The Venice Biennale, the Barbican Art Gallery in London, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporaine in Paris, Bozar in Brussels, Fondazione Prada in Milan, among many others.
Rotor
Rotor is a non-profit organisation founded in 2006. Over the years, the association has carried out a wide range of tasks: research projects on diverse topics related to the built environment; exhibition curation and scenography, contracting authorities and policy makers to foster preservation, salvage and reuse practices, publications, lectures, education and training programmes. A common thread running through all these projects is a deep curiosity to understand the ecology of material flows and the built environment.
Trailer
