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Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa, Project 2019-2020
[Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa 2019 (For Interdependence – Cinema and art joining forces to raise awareness on Environment and Climate Change), Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa 2019, Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa 2020 — Core of the Project and Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa 2020]


Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa, Project (2019–2020) comprises the film Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa (For Interdependence – Cinema and art joining forces to raise awareness on environment and climate change) (2019), the publication Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa (2019), the film Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa (2020) — core of the project, and the installation Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa (2020)

Production: ART for The World
Coproduction: Lamaland
Associate production: Primeira Idade
Produced with materials collected during the production of Interdependence (2019), an omnibus composed of eleven short films to raise awareness on Environment and Climate Change, conceived, developed, and produced by Adelina von Fürstenberg with ART for The World.

ART for The World
Patronage: United Nations, World Meteorological Organization, the City of Milan
Partnership: Gail (India) Limited, ITC – Ethical Fashion Initiative
Contribution: République et canton de Genève, Fondazione Cariplo, Sesc
Support: SDC – Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

Lamaland
Development support: Yaddo, Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar, Fundação Oriente, Brown Foundation – Dora Maar House
Additional support: Grupo Nova Imagem, Bikini, Câmara Municipal de Lisboa – Lisboa Film Commission, Screen, Forum Dança, Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência, cE3c – Center for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Alexandra Moura, CCB – Centro Cultural de Belém, Silva Dias – Comércio de Lenhas e Carvão, Lda., EDM – Empresa de Desenvolvimento Mineiro, S.A., RNTRANS – Grupo Urbanos, António e Luciano Neto Décor – Artes Décor e Cenografia, INTERSECCIÓN – Contemporary Audiovisual Art Festival, Estraperlo Editora, Fundación Luís Seoane, Deputación da Coruña
Support: Fundación Botín, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

Primeira Idade
Support: ICA – Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual

Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa is a meditation on humanity’s massive redesign of the planet and a dystopian pamphlet on the Anthropocene.
    It portrays a moment of euphoria as the drifting occupants on the raft, hoping and praying to be rescued, appear to glimpse a possibility of salvation. We can almost hear the hoarse cries through which they attempt to draw attention to their desperate plight, mustering a final ounce of strength before the void. This is their last chance of survival.
    Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa refers to the colonial paradigm, worldview, and technologies that mark out regions of high biodiversity to reduce life to its conversion into a resource through capitalism, with an enormous environmental and social impact.
    It is an allegory for states of emergency in environmental policy, climate, and migration, with an ethical–political purpose.

The project was initiated under the frame of a commission by ART for The World, a non-governmental organization associated with the UNDPI/ Department of Public Information of the United Nations, to be featured in Interdependence (2019) (Eleven International Filmmakers joining forces to raise awareness on environment and climate Change). The other productions were developed due to other partners and exhibited accordingly.

IInterdependence
ART  for The World




EXTRACTION: THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA (FOR INTERDEPENDENCE — CINEMA AND ART FORCES TO RAISE AWARENESS ON THE ENVIORMENT AND THE CLIMATE CHANGE) (2019)

4K HD video, 2:39, color, Dolby 5.1 sound, 6 min., Portugal/Switzerland/Italy
Commission: ART for The World for Interdependence (2019), an omnibus composed of eleven short films to raise awareness on Environment and Climate Change.
Production: ART for The World, ONG associated with the UNDPI
Associate production: Lamaland
Patronage: United Nations, World Meteorological Organization
Partnership: Gail (India) Limited, ITC – Ethical Fashion Initiative
Contribution: République et canton de Genève, Fondazione Cariplo, Sesc
Support: SDC – Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

Lamaland additional credits to the commission:
Development support: Yaddo, Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar, Fundação Oriente
Additional support: Fundación Botín, Câmara Municipal de Lisboa – Lisboa Film Commission, Screen, Forum Dança, Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência, cE3c – Center for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Alexandra Moura, CCB – Centro Cultural de Belém, Silva Dias – Comércio de Lenhas e Carvão, Lda., EDM – Empresa de Desenvolvimento Mineiro, S.A., RNTRANS – Grupo Urbanos, António e Luciano Neto Décor – Artes Décor e Cenografia.
Support: ICA – Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Grupo Nova Imagem, Bikini


EXTRACTION: THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA (2019)


Publication, offset printing, format 14 x 26 cm, 128pp., Portugal / Spain
Language: English, Galician, Spanish

Text: Salomé Lamas, Lars Henrik Grass, Isabel Ramos
Design: ilhas studio
Commission: INTERSECCIÓN – Contemporary Audiovisual Art Festival
Production: Lamaland, Estraperlo Editora
Printing: Gráfica Maiadouro
Support: Fundación Luís Seoane, Deputación da Coruña
Publishing: Estraperlo Editora
Distribution: Bukinda
ISBN: 978-84-949791-0-1

A publication dedicated to the scope of the project featuring, inedited photographs, 10 texts to the same allegoric image written in dialogue with other authors, project notes, and a preface by Lars Henrik Grass.

It was developed under the frame of a commission by INTERSECCIÓN – Contemporary Audiovisual Art Festival.

INTERSECCIÓN – Contemporary Audiovisual Art Festival


EXTRACTION: THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA (2020)


Production: ART for The World
Coproduction: Lamaland
Associate production: Primeira Idade

ART for The World
Patronage: United Nations, World Meteorological Organization
Partnership: Gail (India) Limited, ITC – Ethical Fashion Initiative
Contribution: République et canton de Genève, Fondazione Cariplo, Sesc
Support: SDC – Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

Lamaland
Development support: Yaddo, Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar, Fundação Oriente, Brown Foundation – Dora Maar House
Additional support: Grupo Nova Imagem, Bikini, Câmara Municipal de Lisboa –  Lisboa Film Commission, Screen, Forum Dança, Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência, cE3c – Center for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Alexandra Moura, CCB – Centro Cultural de Belém, Silva Dias – Comércio de Lenhas e Carvão, Lda., EDM – Empresa de Desenvolvimento Mineiro, S.A., RNTRANS – Grupo Urbanos, António e Luciano Neto Décor – Artes Décor e Cenografia, INTERSECCIÓN – Contemporary Audiovisual Art Festival, Estraperlo Editora, Fundación Luís Seoane, Deputación da Coruña
Support: Fundación Botín, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

Primeira Idade
Support: ICA – Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual


EXTRACTION: THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA, 2020


Installation, Four-channel 4K HD video, 2:39, color, Dolby 5.1 sound, 15 min. in a loop, scenographic sculpture 400 x 238 cm, Portugal/Switzerland/Italy

EXTRACTION: THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA, 2020


4K HD video, 2:39, color, Dolby 5.1 sound, 10 min., Portugal/Switzerland/Italy

Art for The World
Primeira Idade
Lamaland











When art is universal, it can be very powerful. It brings people together across all borders. With Interdependence (2019) the people realize that they must be together, and do something, that in their own scale of action has an impact. Art was all my life, an exercise of learning.


Adelina von Fürstenber, Sesc — São Paulo on the occasion of the world premiere of the film Interdependence (2019)

Is 'Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa' (2019-2020) a concession to the art world that lets the film become sculptural in order to contain it, to take away its genuine compulsion to perception, which makes it suspicious of the freedom of the gaze? […] We begin to understand that we are dealing here with an experimental arrangement (of Gericault's material and/or the situation) which is historically re-contextualized, faszinationsgeschichtlich (fascination-historically) sharpened to the question of why we want to view the horror, the head of Medusa, at all: aesthetically, in that Lamas places the gaze of terror (the "catastrophe fascination") in the picture; media historically, in that Lamas returns the film to its place in society, by asking the world to look at the person who goes to the cinema; and finally sociogenetically, in that Lamas makes clear that the Medusa’s role is not merely as a representation of horror (we are not only looking at terrible events) but also that of horror looking back at us, so to speak, as Medusa's gaze. Medusa is a projection figure, a female figure above all, a mask that should be lifted. This may be seen as the meaning of the statement of the female voice in the film: "Which is the place on the raft for the other that I am?". […] Slavoj Žižek recently referred to our peculiar, powerless, perverse fascination with horror: "Observing the suffering of others is the obscure reason why we can feel joy (bliss in heaven) at all. If we remove it, our bliss appears in all its sterile stupidity. The same applies to wars, famines and violence, all the horror scenarios from the Third World that we see on our screens every day. We need this horror in order to bear the happiness in our consumer heaven at all." For Klaus Heinrich, the figure of Medusa is basically a misogyne reversal: "What makes us freeze is attributed to it as what it does to us". The woman is ascribed the terror that her gaze merely reflects: the terror of a humanity that fails to be enlightened, the fear of destruction, as well as the fascination of the survivors. That, roughly speaking, makes us think "Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa."


Lars Henrik Gass, The Mask of Disaster, Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa (2019-2020)
© All images are copyright LAMALAND│Salomé Lamas.
Texts copyright Salomé Lamas and the respective authors.