Manifesta purposely strives to keep its distance from what are often seen as the dominant centres of artistic production, instead seeking fresh and fertile terrain for the mapping of a new cultural topography.
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Melanie Bonajo, NL
Photo © Manifesta 12 / Wolfgang Traeger.
Night Soil is an experimental documentary in three parts that shows how most of the Western population feels strongly disconnected from nature. Through a semi-documentary approach, Melanie Bonjao explores in depth how people live with a sense of fragmentation and estrangement. The figures in her film are searching for new rituals, for a different relationship with nature and a reconfiguration of the concepts connected to gender issues in an attempt to resist the tremendous sense of emptiness that pervades them; not infrequently, their search leads them to follow alternative lifestyles, at times engaging in antisocial or illegal dynamics. Segments of a semi-documentary nature alternate with hallucinatory fragments that emerge from Bonajo’s imagination. These last images result from her intense collaboration with the main characters, most of whom are women.