{"id":10290,"date":"2026-05-07T16:04:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/?p=10290"},"modified":"2026-05-07T16:07:44","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:07:44","slug":"volcanoes-mountains-forests-malena-szlam-and-jiayi-chen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/2026\/05\/07\/volcanoes-mountains-forests-malena-szlam-and-jiayi-chen\/","title":{"rendered":"Volcanoes, Mountains, Forests: Malena Szlam and Jiayi Chen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Archipelago
Archipelago of Earthen Bones \u2014 To Bunya, Malena Szlam, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Light Cone.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Artist Malena Szlam and filmmaker Jiayi Chen present a special evening of films and performances that use analog technologies to create intensely sensorial experiences\u2014reorienting how we perceive landscape and time. Born in Santiago, Chile, and now based in Montreal, Szlam crafts striking visions of volcanic terrains\u2014from the active peaks and high deserts of the Andes to Australia\u2019s ancient formations\u2014where striated superimpositions, saturated fields of color, and propulsive soundscapes render the earth as a living, dynamic entity of overlapping temporalities. Originally from Chongqing in southwest China, and now living between Chicago and Houston, Chen composes luminous films and multi-projector performances that attune viewers to forest ecologies, seasonal cycles, and reciprocal relationships among flora, fauna, and land. For both Szlam and Chen, analog film mirrors the elemental materiality of their subjects, while in-camera editing enables a practice of direct and responsive encounter. Together, their works accumulate like geological strata, layering spaces and timescales while reinvigorating sensory ways of understanding the natural world.

Followed by a conversation with Malena Szlam and Jiayi Chen. Presented with support from Chicago Film Society and University of Chicago\u2019s Film Studies Center.<\/em>

2018\u20132026, Argentina, Chile, Australia, Indonesia, Canada, USA
In Mandarin, English, and Tlingit with English subtitles
Format: 16mm, 35mm, and performance
ca 87 mins

ABOUT THE ARTISTS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malena Szlam<\/strong> is a Chilean artist and filmmaker based in Tiohti\u00e0:ke\/Mooniyang\/Montreal. Her films, installations, and photographs explore embodied perception and the material and affective dimensions of analog film processes. Attentive to the geopolitics of natural phenomena, her recent projects engage geology, earth science, and volcanology. Her work has been exhibited internationally at festivals and institutions including the Toronto International Film Festival; New Directors\/New Films, New York; Valdivia International Film Festival; Jeonju International Film Festival; Cin\u00e9ma du R\u00e9el, Paris; Open City Documentary Festival, London; and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Recent group exhibitions include Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific<\/em>, Fulcrum Arts, Los Angeles and femmes volcans for\u00eats torrents<\/em>, Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art contemporain de Montr\u00e9al. Solo exhibitions include Infra\u2014<\/em>, SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, Montreal. Her award-winning film ALTIPLANO<\/em> received the Best Experimental Short Film prize at the Melbourne International Film Festival and has been called one of the most significant landscape films of the 2010s. Her films are held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jiayi Chen<\/strong> is an artist, filmmaker, and projectionist from Chongqing, China, currently based between Chicago and Houston. Working at the intersection of analog film, performance, and installation, her practice explores perception, translation, and environmental attunement. Through expanded-cinema and analog film processes, Chen approaches filmmaking as a durational and relational act. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally at festivals and venues including the  including the International Film Festival Rotterdam; New York Film Festival; Cineteca Madrid; Fracto Experimental Film Encounter, Berlin; MONO NO AWARE, New York; Chicago Cultural Center; Harkat Studios, Mumbai, India; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and Anthology Film Archives, New York.

PROGRAM<\/strong>

ALTIPLANO<\/strong>
Malena Szlam, 2018, 16mm to 35mm, 15:30 mins
Filmed in the Andean Mountains on the traditional lands of the Atacame\u00f1o, Aymara, and Calchaqu\u00ed-Diaguita peoples in northern Chile and northwest Argentina, ALTIPLANO<\/em> unfolds within a geological universe of ancestral salt flats, volcanic deserts, and colored lakes. Fusing earth with sky, day with night, heartbeat with mountain, and mineral with iridescent cloud, the film reveals a vibrating landscape in which a bright blue sun threatens to eclipse a blood-red moon. Coupled with a natural soundscape generated from infrasound recordings of volcanoes, geysers, and Chilean blue whales, ALTIPLANO<\/em> employs in-camera editing to produce ecstatic visual rhythms. Landscapes pulse and stutter, transformed through superimposition and 16mm pixelation into spaces that exist across multiple times simultaneously.

\u201cALTIPLANO<\/em> ranks among the most striking landscape films of recent years and, indeed, calls for a revision of how we talk about landscape in cinema.\u201d\u2014Dan Sullivan, Film Comment<\/em>

MERAPI<\/strong>
Malena Szlam, 2021, 16mm to 35mm, silent, 8 mins
A circumlocutory study of Mount Merapi in Indonesia, MERAPI<\/em> is structured around the volcano\u2019s rippling effects on its surroundings: smoke drifting through trees, rain breaking against its slopes, and the fertility of its soils. Equally attentive to the play of light through swirls of 16mm grain and atmosphere, MERAPI <\/em>reflects on what it means to live within the volcano\u2019s horizon near the densely populated city of Yogyakarta.

Archipelago of Earthen Bones \u2014 To Bunya<\/strong>
Malena Szlam, 2024, 16mm to digital, 20 mins
Archipelago of Earthen Bones \u2014 To Bunya<\/em> forms part of a broader film constellation stretching across the Pacific, from Chile to Australia. Malena Szlam trains her camera on far-flung volcanic landscapes, by turns barren and verdant. Her dazzling in-camera multiple exposures evoke layered histories, from Mount Beerwah to the titular Bunya Mountains, tracing a path through the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia\u2019s central eastern ranges which were illuminated by the afterglow of the Hunga Tonga\u2013Hunga Ha?apai eruption. The film\u2019s environmental evocations are further deepened by field recordings and sonified atmospheres from artist Lawrence English. 

Mounds Above the Earth<\/strong>
Jiayi Chen, 2025, 16mm and 35mm double projection, 7 mins
Mounds Above the Earth<\/em> contemplates ecological cycles, perception, and environmental transformation, anchored in the rare simultaneous emergence of two periodical cicada broods for the first time in more than two centuries. The film follows the flicker of red\u2014through the cicadas\u2019 developing eyes, a blood moon, and an ancient fable.

See Through the Hollowed Blue Hellebore<\/strong>
Jiayi Chen, 2026, digital, 18 mins
Summer light scatters endlessly across river rocks, moss, and lichen, flickering over land breathing under its own memory. Shot in the remote wilderness of Ling\u00edt Aan\u00ed\/southeastern Alaska, See Through the Hollowed Blue Hellebore<\/em> draws from local oral narratives tied to glaciers and land, weaving echoes of Tlingit language into a reimagined sensory journey. Beneath each surface: a glacier receding, a body remembering.

As a Tree Walks to Its Forest<\/strong>
Jiayi Chen, 2025, Double-8mm and 16mm looping triple projection, 18 mins<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by Nan Shepherd\u2019s The Living Mountain<\/em>, Chen\u2019s As a Tree Walks to Its Forest<\/em> immerses viewers in the topography of a wooded landscape. A mosaic of superimposed fragments, the work evokes physical textures\u2014the roughness of bark, the tingling of dry grass, the teasing of gossamer, the blunt force of tumbling water, the flow of wind\u2014and reconfigures perception of forest ecology.

ACCESSIBILITY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conversations at the Edge events have live captions (CART). The Gene Siskel Film Center is fully ADA accessible and its theaters are equipped with hearing loops. For other accessibility requests, please visit saic.edu\/access or write cate@saic.edu<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Artist Malena Szlam and filmmaker Jiayi Chen present a special evening of films and performances that use analog technologies to create intensely sensorial experiences\u2014reorienting how we perceive landscape and time. Born in Santiago, Chile, and now based in Montreal, Szlam crafts striking visions of volcanic terrains\u2014from the active peaks and high deserts of the Andes […]<\/p>\n

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