In Between States of Matter is the first chapter of the short-film series UNEARTH. The film series presents research into processes connected to resource extraction and the way this practice is embedded in an ecological, political and mythological context. In Between States of Matter zooms in on material transformations and mining machines. It weaves together fragments from conversations that were recorded in the Russian Ural Mountain region.

An author, who grew up in a mining town, speaks about her lifelong obsession with stones. Two geologists report the emergence of new, previously unknown minerals in regions that are shaped by large-scale resource extraction. Those minerals occur in slag heaps, which heat up internally and in this way become quasi-artificial volcanoes. Mineral transformations, induced by human activity, cause mutational and generative processes in biological life: a cycle which inspires thoughts on mineral and human coevolution and contributes to a debate that redefines the separation between life and non-life.

Mining machines are portrayed as complex agents, with attention to their past, present and future states of aggregation and their existence in between the human and the mineral world.

YEAR
2020

DURATION
18 minutes

IN COLLABORATION WITH
Brian D. McKenna

MUSIC 
B.J. Nilsen

PRODUCTION / TRANSLATION
Anna Litovskikh

3D MODELS / ANIMATIONS
Sam ten Thij, Ivan Zamorev

TEXT EXCERPTS BASED ON 
'Stone and Dark Carbon' by Elena Solowjowa

EXCERPTS FROM CONVERSATIONS WITH
Marat Safin & Alexander Eremeev, Tatiana Khamanova, Ivan Zamorev

SUPPORTED BY
Embassy of the Netherlands in Moscow 5th Ural Industrial Biennial
NCCA Yekaterinburg
Mondriaan Fonds