'How Now, House?' Installation Coming To International Film Festival Rotterdam

Animator and artist Tess Martin's film How Now, House? has been enjoying a successful festival run. A new way to experience it, as a site-specific installation, is coming to the 55th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The installation will be publicly viewable in the lobby of the LantarenVenste cinema all day Friday, January 30, from 9:00 AM to midnight, no ticket required. It will be part of the festival's RTM program. This will be the world premiere of the installation.

How Now, House? also exists in the form of a 13-minute short film. This installation version is created specifically for the cinema lobby, a space of 8x 5 meters, raised off the ground. The viewer will be able to listen to an audio soundtrack via headphones and watch looping videos throughout a custom-built living room.  How Now, House explores time, memory and the impermanence of home through a deeply personal lens. It was inspired by Martin's experience of leaving a home in Rotterdam she had lived in for a decade- the longest she had lived anywhere. The film reflects on the global housing crisis and our collective sense of precarity.

Making use of rotoscoping, time-lapse photography, photo replacement, repetitive actions and the symbolic replacement of playing cards, How Now, House? evokes several time periods at once and questions whether a space can ever truly belong to one person or moment.  The playing cards stand in for time- sequential but devoid of intrinsic meaning, shuffling through the pack as if going backwards and forwards in time.

“I wanted to explore how our time in a shared space connects us to the past and to those who came before us,” said Tess Martin. “It is my pleasure to be able to bring this project to the international audience of the IFFR, in the city where the film was created.”

As part of her research, Martin extensively looked into her home's history and its past inhabitants, applying techniques she had honed as an amateur genealogist. Records in the Rotterdam City Archive led her to past owners and inhabitants that she was able to incorporate into the film. Her installation at IFFR will feature looping video on multiple displays, inside a living room set with furniture from different eras and playing cards laid out mid-game.  Visitors who participate using the headphones will be able to hear the multi-language soundtrack which blends real historical documentation and philosophical reflections on time, inviting viewers to consider the imprints we leave on spaces and the fleeting nature of permanence.

The short film of How Now, House? is now in its festival run, with screenings so far at Sheffield DocFest, Netherlands Film Festival, Un Festival C’est Trop Court in Nice, and others, and the upcoming London Short Film Festival and Videoformes in Clermont-Ferrand. The film won the Grand Prize at Videomedeja in Serbia in October, and a special mention at Amarcort Film Festival in Italy in November.

Creation of this work was supported by the Dutch Film Fund and the Center for Visual

Art Rotterdam.

The public will be able to see How Now, House? at LantarenVenster from 09:00 until

midnight on Friday, January 30. No tickets required. The address is Otto Reuchlinweg

996 (Wilhelminapier), 3072 MD Rotterdam.

For more on Tess Martin's work visit her website.