In an attempt to document the climate change-induced transformations of Fiji’s cultural geographies, filmmaker and photographer Lisa Rave was invited to participate in an inventory process  through auto-ethnographic cultural mapping across various villages and communities in and around Viti Levu, Fiji. Central to this work was the camera—as both a tool for documentation and a medium for expression and experimentation.

Emerging out of a workshop held together with the Research Institute of Sustainability (RIFFS), the filmmaker and school students in Berlin, this collaborative film centeres around the pressing ecological and sociopolitical impacts of climate change. The fractured nature of the film reflects their hopes, fears, and aspirations as they navigate themselves in the complexities of the current. The film shoot took place in their class rooms, utiliziing a bluescreen to situate, project and escape. Each scene was scripted by the teenagers themselves.

Taboo Ceremony

HD Video, color, sound
20 minutes
30 photographs, official documents. wooden table and glas cover 200 x 80 cm
2017

A Tabu in Fiji traditionally defines a thing or place as sacred and prohibits any human interference once it is installed. The film takes witness in the ceremonial practice of establishing the first Tabu in the open ocean following a unique ritual. Men from Vanua Vatu island are joined during the traditional practice by the art organization TBA21 Academy. The film follows the diverse group during this unprecedented event. 
The installation within the exhibition The Oceanic at CCA Singapore also consisted of a table of additional documents and images, some turned to their back.

Taking its title from a man made radioactive element, AMERICIUM addresses the literal contamination of sacred lands and the spiritual neglect of an American landscape. The film revolves around the contested long term nuclear storage facility of Yucca Mountain using portraits of individuals and local communities to explore the conflicting ideologies and fantasies of the American West. It is a search for what is invisible and embedded within the landscape, a meditation on what is simultaneously real and imagined. Most filming material had been produced just prior to the November 2016 Presidential election. 
The installation at Glasmoog Cologne in 2017 included window foiling that resembled a casino design, effectively blocking the view into the interior of the space.

Located in the heart of the Italian city Albenga, Bar del Ponte which translates to Bar on the Bridge, served as a vital social gathering place for refugees faced with numerous obstacles on their path to integration. Run by a compassionate Moroccan, it provided a safe haven for individuals fleeing war, persecution, and hardship. Within its walls, people from different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences found solace and companionship. What began as a semi-fictional film inspired by their stories gradually transformed into a short documentary about the process of making that very film. However, shortly after the initial shoot, the municipality shut the bar down. As a result, the early footage now remains a trailer.

Between the 1960s and 1980s the German ethnographer completed more than 400 ethnographic films of indigenous communities around the world, studying and documenting their cultures, societies, and behaviors for renowned institutions such as the Encyclopaedia Cinematographica (EC) as well as various museums worldwide. By using the same techniques he himself used to create his ethnographic films, the resulting film examines the many ambiguities of ethnographic fieldwork, institutional archiving and the conservation of memory. The film oscillates between objectification and subjective accounts that weave into the films fabric. Through playing with the gaps of montage, the juxtaposition of image, text and sound the film’s shifting narrative moves between filmic document, recounted memory and the act of staging.

Using various levels of imagery, the essay film Europium draws connections between Papua New Guinea's colonial past and the planned excavation of raw materials from the Bismarck Sea. The film weaves a narrative around the rare earth element Europium; named after the European continent, the material will be culled from the ocean floor to ensure brilliant color images on smartphone displays and other flat screens, and of course for its fluorescent property, which is used to guarantee the authenticity of euro bank notes. The film describes this seemingly mundane fact as a return and repetition of history, pointing in the process not only to the complexity of human culture, its economies and systems of exchange, but also exposing the invisible ghosts of the past as they appear in the modern objects of our lives.   -Philipp Kleinmichel

The Villages is a documentary film, presenting two geographically distinct communities as they begin to merge into one fictive filmed space. The film moves from intimacy to observation, focusing on a retirement community of the same name and the former German colonial town of Swakopmund, Namibia, most recently appearing as the setting for the remake of the British television series, The Prisoner. Using the series as a leitmotif, The Villages portrays the reconstruction and the idealization of colonial histories, through the architecture, borders and social relations of both communities.  A narrative begins to form between the analogies of spaces and the conventions of documentary, between the synchronization of image and sound; between acting and editing.  The Villages represents a fantastic dystopian space, through the ever-evolving social segregation of the communities and the transformation of tourism into everyday life. - Jakob Schillinger 

We are Stardust We are Golden and We´ve got to get Ourselves back to the Garden, whose title is taken from a verse of Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock," returns to the place where the legendary festival of the same name took place in 1969. Exactly forty years later, the archaic 16mm film camera and analogue sound document the now privatized grounds patrolled by the police, capturing the surveillance as well as the commodification of "counterculture" at the newly opened museum.

Screenings / Exhibitions (selected)

       2025
Where the Landscape Ends film festival at With the Rubbles of Old Palaces
Relate / Recover Tiapapata Art Center, Samoa

        2024
The Ecologies of Peace Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía
Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss ADM Gallery, Singapore
Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss Ocean Space Venice
Real Abstraction Temples Los Angeles
The Shadow of the Wall is like Iron basis Frankfurt
Man & Mining Museum der Arbeit Hamburg

       2023
Mining Photography. Gewerbemuseum Winterthur  
Mining Photography. Kunsthaus Wien 
Copenhagen Architecture Festival 
Counter Flows Bathala Cinema Center Porto  

       2022
Climate of Concern RADIUS Center for Contemporary Art and Ecology
17th Istanbul Biennial Film Programme  
Fragt die Steine,  Werkleitz Festival, Halle
TERRITO/REALITIES, Art Photography Center, Singapore
Takeover Gropius Bau Berlin
Mining Photography Kunst und Gewerbe Museum Hamburg

       2021
Chennai Photo Biennale  
Estudiotik at. Tabakalera, San Sebastian 
Critical Ecology on film Mishkin Gallery New York 
Hybrid - New Nature Hellerau, Europäisches Zentrum der Künste, Dresden

       2020
The Sea is Glowing, Rijeka 2020 

       2019
The Drowned World, Toronto Biennale 
Symptom Bauhaus, West Den Haag
Ghosts in the Gardens of Progress, Videonale.Scope#7  
Circular Flow, Kunstmuseum Basel 
Third from the Sun. Views and Prospects of the Anthropocene screening,
Museum of Modern Art Vienna (mumok) 

       2018
The Cracks not the Mirror, Videonale.scope#6 Cologne 
Holen und Bringen, Werkleitz Festival Halle 
Tangible Remains. Hidden Matters, Decad Berlin 
Oceans. Imagining a tidalectic worldview, Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik 
Ray Festival, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt
Somewhere in Between, BOZAR Brussels 
Reassembling the Natural, Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin 
Face/Value, transmediale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin 

       2017
The Oceanic, Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore 
I Taste the Future,Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF) 
Americium, Glasmoog Cologne 
Sekula beyond Sekula, TBA21-Augarten  
Are we Human? 3. Istanbul Design Biennale 

       2016
A hole in the Sea, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart 
Race to the Bottom group show, Schloß Ringenberg 
Dear Betty: Run Fast, Bite Hard! Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo 

       2015
Winter Event – antifreeze, Flora ars+natura Bogota  

       2014
Kinoproba screening, International Film Festival Jekatarinburg 
21. Video Art Award Bremen, Künstlerhaus Bremen 

       2012
An_Eignungen group show, Kunstverein Langenhagen 
Keeping up Appearances, Nassauischer Kunstverein 
Young Curators, New Ideas IV, Meulensteen Gallery New York 
FIDMarseille screening, Film Festival Marseille 

       2011
21^st CENTURY screening, Chisenhale Gallery London 
based in berlin

In an attempt to document the climate change-induced transformations of Fiji’s cultural geographies, filmmaker and photographer Lisa Rave was invited to participate in an inventory process  through auto-ethnographic cultural mapping across various villages and communities in and around Viti Levu, Fiji. Central to this work was the camera—as both a tool for documentation and a medium for expression and experimentation.

Emerging out of a workshop held together with the Research Institute of Sustainability (RIFFS), the filmmaker and school students in Berlin, this collaborative film centeres around the pressing ecological and sociopolitical impacts of climate change. The fractured nature of the film reflects their hopes, fears, and aspirations as they navigate themselves in the complexities of the current. The film shoot took place in their class rooms, utiliziing a bluescreen to situate, project and escape. Each scene was scripted by the teenagers themselves.

Taboo Ceremony

HD Video, color, sound
20 minutes
30 photographs, official documents. wooden table and glas cover 200 x 80 cm
2017

A Tabu in Fiji traditionally defines a thing or place as sacred and prohibits any human interference once it is installed. The film takes witness in the ceremonial practice of establishing the first Tabu in the open ocean following a unique ritual. Men from Vanua Vatu island are joined during the traditional practice by the art organization TBA21 Academy. The film follows the diverse group during this unprecedented event. 
The installation within the exhibition The Oceanic at CCA Singapore also consisted of a table of additional documents and images, some turned to their back.

Taking its title from a man made radioactive element, AMERICIUM addresses the literal contamination of sacred lands and the spiritual neglect of an American landscape. The film revolves around the contested long term nuclear storage facility of Yucca Mountain using portraits of individuals and local communities to explore the conflicting ideologies and fantasies of the American West. It is a search for what is invisible and embedded within the landscape, a meditation on what is simultaneously real and imagined. Most filming material had been produced just prior to the November 2016 Presidential election. 
The installation at Glasmoog Cologne in 2017 included window foiling that resembled a casino design, effectively blocking the view into the interior of the space.

Located in the heart of the Italian city Albenga, Bar del Ponte which translates to Bar on the Bridge, served as a vital social gathering place for refugees faced with numerous obstacles on their path to integration. Run by a compassionate Moroccan, it provided a safe haven for individuals fleeing war, persecution, and hardship. Within its walls, people from different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences found solace and companionship. What began as a semi-fictional film inspired by their stories gradually transformed into a short documentary about the process of making that very film. However, shortly after the initial shoot, the municipality shut the bar down. As a result, the early footage now remains a trailer.

Between the 1960s and 1980s the German ethnographer completed more than 400 ethnographic films of indigenous communities around the world, studying and documenting their cultures, societies, and behaviors for renowned institutions such as the Encyclopaedia Cinematographica (EC) as well as various museums worldwide. By using the same techniques he himself used to create his ethnographic films, the resulting film examines the many ambiguities of ethnographic fieldwork, institutional archiving and the conservation of memory. The film oscillates between objectification and subjective accounts that weave into the films fabric. Through playing with the gaps of montage, the juxtaposition of image, text and sound the film’s shifting narrative moves between filmic document, recounted memory and the act of staging.

Using various levels of imagery, the essay film Europium draws connections between Papua New Guinea's colonial past and the planned excavation of raw materials from the Bismarck Sea. The film weaves a narrative around the rare earth element Europium; named after the European continent, the material will be culled from the ocean floor to ensure brilliant color images on smartphone displays and other flat screens, and of course for its fluorescent property, which is used to guarantee the authenticity of euro bank notes. The film describes this seemingly mundane fact as a return and repetition of history, pointing in the process not only to the complexity of human culture, its economies and systems of exchange, but also exposing the invisible ghosts of the past as they appear in the modern objects of our lives.   -Philipp Kleinmichel

The Villages is a documentary film, presenting two geographically distinct communities as they begin to merge into one fictive filmed space. The film moves from intimacy to observation, focusing on a retirement community of the same name and the former German colonial town of Swakopmund, Namibia, most recently appearing as the setting for the remake of the British television series, The Prisoner. Using the series as a leitmotif, The Villages portrays the reconstruction and the idealization of colonial histories, through the architecture, borders and social relations of both communities.  A narrative begins to form between the analogies of spaces and the conventions of documentary, between the synchronization of image and sound; between acting and editing.  The Villages represents a fantastic dystopian space, through the ever-evolving social segregation of the communities and the transformation of tourism into everyday life. - Jakob Schillinger 

We are Stardust We are Golden and We´ve got to get Ourselves back to the Garden, whose title is taken from a verse of Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock," returns to the place where the legendary festival of the same name took place in 1969. Exactly forty years later, the archaic 16mm film camera and analogue sound document the now privatized grounds patrolled by the police, capturing the surveillance as well as the commodification of "counterculture" at the newly opened museum.

Screenings / Exhibitions (selected)

       2025
Where the Landscape Ends film festival at With the Rubbles of Old Palaces
Relate / Recover Tiapapata Art Center, Samoa

        2024
The Ecologies of Peace Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía
Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss ADM Gallery, Singapore
Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss Ocean Space Venice
Real Abstraction Temples Los Angeles
The Shadow of the Wall is like Iron basis Frankfurt
Man & Mining Museum der Arbeit Hamburg

       2023
Mining Photography. Gewerbemuseum Winterthur  
Mining Photography. Kunsthaus Wien 
Copenhagen Architecture Festival 
Counter Flows Bathala Cinema Center Porto  

       2022
Climate of Concern RADIUS Center for Contemporary Art and Ecology
17th Istanbul Biennial Film Programme  
Fragt die Steine,  Werkleitz Festival, Halle
TERRITO/REALITIES, Art Photography Center, Singapore
Takeover Gropius Bau Berlin
Mining Photography Kunst und Gewerbe Museum Hamburg

       2021
Chennai Photo Biennale  
Estudiotik at. Tabakalera, San Sebastian 
Critical Ecology on film Mishkin Gallery New York 
Hybrid - New Nature Hellerau, Europäisches Zentrum der Künste, Dresden

       2020
The Sea is Glowing, Rijeka 2020 

       2019
The Drowned World, Toronto Biennale 
Symptom Bauhaus, West Den Haag
Ghosts in the Gardens of Progress, Videonale.Scope#7  
Circular Flow, Kunstmuseum Basel 
Third from the Sun. Views and Prospects of the Anthropocene screening,
Museum of Modern Art Vienna (mumok) 

       2018
The Cracks not the Mirror, Videonale.scope#6 Cologne 
Holen und Bringen, Werkleitz Festival Halle 
Tangible Remains. Hidden Matters, Decad Berlin 
Oceans. Imagining a tidalectic worldview, Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik 
Ray Festival, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt
Somewhere in Between, BOZAR Brussels 
Reassembling the Natural, Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin 
Face/Value, transmediale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin 

       2017
The Oceanic, Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore 
I Taste the Future,Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF) 
Americium, Glasmoog Cologne 
Sekula beyond Sekula, TBA21-Augarten  
Are we Human? 3. Istanbul Design Biennale 

       2016
A hole in the Sea, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart 
Race to the Bottom group show, Schloß Ringenberg 
Dear Betty: Run Fast, Bite Hard! Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo 

       2015
Winter Event – antifreeze, Flora ars+natura Bogota  

       2014
Kinoproba screening, International Film Festival Jekatarinburg 
21. Video Art Award Bremen, Künstlerhaus Bremen 

       2012
An_Eignungen group show, Kunstverein Langenhagen 
Keeping up Appearances, Nassauischer Kunstverein 
Young Curators, New Ideas IV, Meulensteen Gallery New York 
FIDMarseille screening, Film Festival Marseille 

       2011
21^st CENTURY screening, Chisenhale Gallery London 
based in berlin