Solveig Suess
Solveig Suess focuses on embodied and ecological politics across infrastructural environments, through documentary-making, research and writing.
My work engages with how circuits of trade, information and climates are inextricably tied to the politics of capital, power and control. My inaugural film “AAA Cargo” (2018) is a documentary-essay on the Chinese state-led New Silk Road, where government efforts to speed up trade collide with more-than-human choreographies of materials. I currently collaborate with Asia Bazdyrieva and Jessika Khazrik on “Geocinema”, where through episodic research we delve into how environmental sensing have articulated Earth transformations, using expanded cinema as a method to investigate aesthetics in geopolitical systems. Our first documentary will be released in 2021
I hold a Masters from the Centre of Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, was a Digital Earth Fellow (2018-19) and am currently PhD Researcher with the Cycles of Circulation project at Critical Media Lab Basel. Recent exhibitions include a solo-show at Konsthall Trondheim (2020), and part of the group-show, ‘Critical Zones’, ZKM Karlsruhe (2020). Geocinema has been nominated for the Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research (2020).
AAA Cargo
HD Video / 34:00 min / 2018
‘AAA Cargo’ is a documentary film essay into the New Silk Road. The video traces the anticipation of infrastructure and trade on a planetary scale, following its distribution networks as they expand across vast regions between China and Europe. Government efforts to speed up the movement of goods collide with the activities of “paralogisticians,” a new generation of precarious workers who hack infrastructural spaces through personal relationships, and the more-than-human choreography of desert sand made restless by heavy winds, disrupting roads, railways, and sometimes engulfing whole cities.