Notes From the Underground at Unter Tag – Kulturgut der Zukunft

Kaverne Espros, Sargans, Switzerland – June 28 - August 18, 2019

Opening: Friday, June 19, 2019

Notes From the Underground will be presented at “Unter Tag – Kulturgut der Zukunft,” a curated show of thirteen artists installed in a giant cave in a mountain. Featuring works by Asi Föcker, Gabriela Gerber/Lukas Bardill, Florian Germann, Andy Guhl, Nicolò Krättli and Jonathan Banz, Barblina Meierhans, Peter Mettler, Timo Müller, Ursula Palla, Ilona Ruegg, and Matthias Rüegg.

For more information, visit the Kanton St. Gallen website here.

View the PDF flyer here.

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Peter Mettlerinstallation, 2019, Notes From the Underground
New installation at Bildrausch – Filmfest Basel

“A long time ago, when I was still a teenager, I snuck into the Oracle of Delphi at night with two friends, to sleep in the open air on the ancient stones. The next morning, my friends found out that they had dreamt the same images: an excessive bacchanalian procession of our ancestors. I, on the other hand, could not remember anything... Maybe this is why I, for decades, have been searching for the signs and the essence of our future in the intoxication of images and sounds – the ones I create myself and the ones that surround us and affect us.”

For Bildrausch – Filmfest Basel, Peter Mettler has crafted a new installation, entitled The Oracle, that channels his search for true and profound images. This work will be projected onto the ceiling of Stadtkino Basel for the next year, inviting viewers to enjoy a sensorial and pictorial ecstasy.

Bildrausch – Filmfest Basel – Basel, Switzerland

Opening: Thursday June 20th at 20:45 Stadtkino-Bar

For more information, visit Bildrausch – Filmfest Basel’s website.

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Peter Mettlerinstallation, The Oracle, 2019, festival
Picture of Light screening in Geneva

Picture of Light will be presented at Cinéma Spoutnik in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 17, 2019, as part of the OSMOSCOSMOS exhibition. The screening will be followed by a reading by author Peter Weber, accompanied by slides by Andreas Züst. For more information, please visit the OSMOSCOSMOS website.

Cinéma Spoutnik – 11 Rue de la Coulouvrenière, 1204 Geneva

Andreas Züst and Peter Mettler in Churchill, Manitoba, during the filming of Picture of Light.


Peter MettlerPicture of Light, screenings, 2019
New video installation: Notes From The Underground

Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, Canada

Check out a new video installation by Peter Mettler at Grow Op 2019!

Notes From the Underground is a single-channel continuously looping video installation that provides a window into the very creation of our world – the literal ground we walk on – in real time. Images of molten lava provide a cascading array of alchemical forms that transmute rock elements into visual echoes of soft tissues, liquid clouds, arrested flames, and anthropomorphic hallucinations. Notes From the Underground is like a fireplace channel for Gaia, in which the cauldron of the earth forms the ground from which our selves and all our expressions emerge.

Grow Op 2019 at the Gladstone Hotel celebrates its seventh year with an exhibition of art, design and ideas across a range of disciplines. The 2019 edition considers ENERGY – Clean energy, dirty energy, social energy, positive energy, negative energy, climate energy, embodied energy, resilient energy. Do we hoard, waste, commodify, burn it, or do we store, reuse, renew it? How humans and other species live within and without natural systems of growth, change, abundance, scarcity, decay and life.

Curated by Christine Leu and Alan Webb of LeuWebb Projects, with Lee Petrie, Exhibitions Director, Gladstone Hotel.

EXHIBITION HOURS:

Wed Apr 17: 7pm – 9pm
Thurs Apr 18: 11am- 10pm – Opening party 7-10pm
Fri Apr 19: 11am – 9pm
Sat Apr 20: 10am – 5pm
Sun Apr 21: 10am – 5pm

General admission $10 | Family pass $25 | Students $5

Contributing artists: Maria Thereza Alves, Sally Ayre, David Ballantine, Bruno Billio, Sarah Carlson, Shaun de Rooy, Joseph Farrugia, Noni Kaur, Mary Kavanagh, Dana Korre, Justin Langille and Jennifer Martin, Peter Mettler, Sarah Moreau, Sarah Norman and Julia Smachylo, Cindy Norton, Leah Oates, Julie Pasila, Chrissy Poitras and Kyle Topping and Jennie Suddick, Leah Oates, Meghan Price, Jessica Rysyk, The Grove Public School, The Stomata Collective, Tosca Teran, Ryan van der Hout, Natalie Majaba Waldburger, Alicia Wright, Daniel Rotsztain, Native Land.

For more information visit https://www.gladstonehotel.com/Grow-Op // #growop2019

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Peter MettlerNotes From the Underground, 2019, gallery exhibition
Becoming Animal at Harvard with David Abram

Cambridge, MA

Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts presents a screening of Becoming Animal, followed by an open conversation, “Between the Human Animal and the Animate Earth,” with David Abram and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Director of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab).

For more information, visit https://college.harvard.edu/between-human-animal-and-animate-earth

From Harvard’s website: “David Abram – cultural ecologist and geophilosopher – is the author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, and of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. Described as ‘daring’ and ‘truly original’ by Science, and as “revolutionary” by the Los Angeles Times Dr. Abram’s work has helped catalyze the emergence of several new disciplines, including the burgeoning field of ecopsychology. A close student of the traditional ecological knowledge of diverse indigenous peoples, David was the first contemporary philosopher to advocate for a reappraisal of “animism” as a complexly nuanced and uniquely viable worldview. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, and recently held the international Arne Naess Chair in Global Justice and the Environment in Norway. Dr. Abram is creative director of the Alliance for Wild Ethics (AWE), an organization dedicated to cultural metamorphosis through a rejuvenation of place-based oral culture–the culture of face-to-face and face-to-place storytelling. He lives with his family in the foothills of the southern Rockies.”

Peter MettlerBecoming Animal, 2019, screenings
Swiss-French premiere of Becoming Animal

Outside The Box presents the Swiss-French premiere of Becoming Animal, with Peter Mettler in person!

Screenings:

16 March - 19h00 – Lausanne – CityClub Pully – followed by a DJ set by Vincent Hänni and projection of Gambling, Gods and LSD
17 March - 20h00 – Neuchâtel – Minimum
18 March - 20h00 – Cinéma d’Oron
20 March - 20h30 – Genève – Cinélux
21 March - 20h00 – Delémont – La Grange
22 March - 20h30 – Sainte-Croix – Royal

For more information, visit Outside The Box’s website, or the official Becoming Animal website.

Peter MettlerBecoming Animal, 2019, screenings, PM attendance
Soundings: Documentary Film and the Listening Experience

Lars Koens and Demelza Kooij have published a chapter on the use of sound and voice-over in Peter Mettler’s documentaries, including Picture of Light, Gambling, Gods and LSD, Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands, and The End Of Time. Their essay, “Creative Use of Voice in Non-Fiction Narrative Film” in Soundings: Documentary Film and the Listening Experience, is available as a free download from the University of Huddersfield Press. Read it here!

“Language forms an integral part of Mettler’s filmmaking process, exemplified by the diverse use of voice. […] He prefers to reveal the limits and artificiality of language, as opposed to reading out facts. For example, the voice-over in The End of Time starts with what could be regarded as a Nietzschean claim: ‘Things don’t have names, we made them all up’. Film provides an excellent ground for such philosophical explorations, only to find new boundaries of course — those of the film medium itself. In the cinema, we cannot authentically experience the Northern Lights nor feel the effects of LSD. The translation from lived to cinema experience is fundamental to Mettler’s reflexive style.” (169–170)

Peter Mettler2019, writing, Picture of Light, GGLSD, Petropolis, The End Of Time
Becoming Animal at Göteborg Film Festival 2019

Göteborg, Sweden

Becoming Animal screens at the 41st Göteborg Film Festival, the largest film festival in Nordic Europe, with three screenings this January. Peter will be in attendance on the 30th and 31st! Visit the festival’s website for tickets and more information.

"Becoming Animal challenges our world of thought in an attempt to bridge the mental barrier between man and environment. Is it possible to experience a perspective where man is not in the center, but where we meet animals and nature around us at the same level? What role do language and modern technology play in such an attempt? [...] Perhaps a radical transformation of our perception is what is needed if the current destructive development is to be heeded?" - Tobias Åkesson

Peter MettlerBecoming Animal, 2019, screenings, festival, PM attendance
Peter inducted into Ryerson’s IMA Visionaries Wall of Fame

Peter Mettler will be inducted as one of five initial recipients into Ryerson University’s School of Image Arts Wall of Fame, presented at the annual Image Arts Award Night.

The other recipients of this award are Stephen Bulger (Stephen Bulger Gallery), Edward Burtynsky (Manufactured Landscapes, Anthropocene), Pia Di Ciaula (The Crown), and Jeremy Podeswa (The Five Senses, Game Of Thrones).

From IMA’s website: “Peter Mettler (Image Arts ’82) holds a unique position for his innovation within the realm of documentary film, and merging cinema with other disciplines. His films include Gambling Gods & LSD, Petropolis, The End of Time, and Picture Of Light which was recently selected by TIFF as one of Canada’s Essential 150 Canadian Films.”

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Peter Mettler2018, awards