Into the Magnetic Fields – Films

Sandra Schäfer
Germany | 2024 | 14 min
World premiere
Language : English
Subtitle : French

Machines work the countryside, birds fly over the fields and robots imitate human movements. Ornithologists and cutting-edge robotics make for an unlikely yet fruitful encounter, as the artist Sandra Schäfer questions post-humanist modes of production. What will the relationship between nature and culture look like in the future?

After an opening shot filmed from an observation tower perched above fields and forests, Into the Magnetic Fields takes us on a journey that includes automated, driverless tractors crossing the countryside, swarms of birds flying over the fields, a SpaceX rocket taking off into space, a robot imitating human movement walking through the snow, and images taken from satellites. These seemingly disparate images, which oscillate between observations of nature and demonstrations of cutting-edge robotics, gradually reveal a future that is already here and from which humans are absent – absent not only in, but also behind, and in the very making of these images. If humans disappear from the field of production, will they also disappear from its orchestration? Through her skilful editing, the artist Sandra Schäfer explores post-humanist modes of perception and production. How do the relationships between nature and culture fit together in a robotised world?
Mourad-Anis Moussa

Into the Magnetic Fields, 2024
Westerwald: Eine Heimsuchung, 2021
Constructed Futures: Haret Hreik, 2017
Mleeta, 2016
Başakşehir: An Urban Model, 2014
Notes on Pasolini’s Form of a City. Sana’a, Sabaudia, 2013
On the Set of 1978ff, 2011
To Act in History, 2008
Passing the Rainbow, 2007
Traversée de la mangrove, 2006
The Making of a Demonstration, 2004
A Country‘s New Dawn, 2001
The Invisible Service, 2000
Kontaktfreudig, offen und gewandt im Umgang, 1999
Mensch, Tanja!, 1998
England-Deutschland, 1997
Of course am I Real, 1996