Gravity of a Thought from the Boltzmann’s Brain (2022)
Boltzmann’s brain thought experiment forms the basis of a film mirage, merging theoretical physics with abandoned hayracks, the visions of space-travel pioneer Herman Potočnik with the thousand-year-old text of the Monumenta Frisingensia, partisan monuments and post-war massacres memorials with spaces of alternative culture and a stadium. When gravity shifts its direction, Ljubljana’s city landscape awakens among flying spheres in an abstract nightmare.
Premiere: 10. December 2022, Alternative Film Video Festival, Belgrade
Site-specific installation
OUTDOOR VIDEO GALLERY / VIDEO GALERIJA NA PROSTEM
What shines from the trees in the dark. What water brings.
Outdoor Video Gallery is an event set in nature, among trees. Tree trunks and driftwood turn into platforms for experimental films based on microscopic images of wood, blurring the line between the concrete and the abstract. At the center, on a screen made from plastic debris, plays Spirits, a meditative tribute to nature. The project has been developed by Uroš Marolt over years of creative exploration of unusual shapes in nature, often accompanied by sounds created with materials found in the forest. The full line-up runs 75 minutes, inviting visitors to meet, hang out and lose themselves in a hypnotic atmosphere.
ABOUT FILMS / O FILMIH
LIGHT INSIDE THE TREES // SVETLOBA V DREVESIH
”As a student of forestry engineering I encountered microscopic images of wood anatomy and created a series of films based on them. The line between the concrete and the abstract disappears, opening a space for imagination. The beauty and secrets of nature form the basis for my authentic visual research. Sounds are often made using materials found in the forest.” Uroš Marolt
1. Wood (Les). 2015, Slovenia, SD images & miniDV, 4:3, colour, 4′. // Trees are falling and rising.
2. Origin of a human (Izvor človeka). 2016, Slovenia, SD images & miniDV, 4:3, colour, 3′. // A mystical journey into a forest of unknown colours towards our origin.
3. Prints (Odtisi). 2016, Slovenia, miniDV, 4:3, colour, 3′. // Winter forest. All prints are preserved in the snow before it even falls.
4. Tree Sap (Drevesni sok). 2016, Slovenia, SD images & miniDV, 4:3, colour, 14′. // Saps inside the trees abstractly roam from winter to late autumn. The music follows the structure of annual rings, as if the round section of a tree trunk was rolling on a gramophone.
5. Fibre (Vlakno). 2017, Slovenia, SD images & miniDV, 4:3, colour, 5′. // The four elements – air, water, soil and fire – in relation to wood.
6. Metamorphosis. 2017, Slovenia, SD images & miniDV, 4:3, colour, 5′. // In the ancient myth Daphne runns from Apollo, who loves her. She can only escape turning into a tree. The film follows the microscopic metamorphosis of human blood cells into cells of a tree.
7. 36,6 °C. 2017, Slovenia, SD images & miniDV, 4:3, colour, 2′. // Wood burns at the temperature of the human body.
8. Embodying (Utelešanje). 2018, Slovenia, HD, miniDV & archive footage, 4:3, colour, 5′. // Trees touch each other with their roots as passionately as lovers’ bodies.
9. Spirits (Duhovi). 2020, Slovenia, HD, 16:9, colour, 22′. // Our ancestors believed in spirits. Detailed observations of nature phenomena reveal they still exist.
10. Primeval Memory (Praspomin). 2020, Slovenia, HD, 16:9, colour, 15′. Uroš Marolt & Gaja N. Rojec. // The forest grows darker deeper inside. Mysterious beings carry out secret rituals there. Remember. It was in the primeval forest.
11. Infinite Meeting (Neskončno srečanje). 2021, Slovenia, HD, 16:9, colour, 2′. 2 channel video installation. // Two bugs reach each other endlessly.
12. Waste Land (Pusta dežela). 2021, Earth, HD, 16:9, colour, 7′. // Once the world was green. Winds brought sand, and the erosion of memory began. A film-letter sent from the future, made of travelling footage.
13. While travelling around by sphere, aren’t we dreaming? 2022, Slovenia, SD, 4:3, colour, 6′. // Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that we cannot measure both the position and the momentum of a particle with absolute precision.
Past film projections:
Slovenska Kinoteka/Slovenian Cinematheque, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Kino Otok/Cinema Isola Festival, Izola, Slovenia
Alternative Film Video Festival, Belgrade, Serbia
Intimni Kino GT22, Ekstremno slovensko/Intimate Cinema GT22, Extremely Slovenian, Maribor, Slovenia
Videofestival narave, Bežigrajske galerije, MGML/Videofestival Natures, Bežigrad Galleries, MGML, Ljubljana, Slovenia
FeKK – Festival kratkega filma Ljubljana/Ljubljana short film festival, Slovenia
FSF – Festival slovenskega filma, Portorož, Slovenia
Festival neodvisnega filma/Festival Of Independent Film, Slovenia
Some like it short film festival, Prague, Czech Republic
& others
Podcast on filmmaking
Listen to the podcast (2019) about Uroš Marolt’s filmmaking. Language: Slovenian.
