Martin Moolhuijsen

2026

In a cave situated between the ridges of the fingerprints of a human being, a primordial encounter with matter, light and sound unfolds. The Katabasis, the western mythological descent to the und erworld, is here stripped of its mythical connotations to reveal only its narrative function, the confr ontation with the past and with what has been lost.

Katabasis is an abstract film that merges analog, cameraless techniques and digital ones such as algorithmic editing. The imagery was created entirely fro m hand-painted 35mm slides and film exposed to electricity via a Tesla coil— an instrument invented by Nikola Tesla to generate artificial lightning arcs. These same images we re then fed into a self-developed algorithm that re-arranges them in realtime according to certain prescribed parameters but without an entirely predictable order, resultin g in an editing process that lingers on the border of chaos and control. Echoing the film’s structur e and closely adhering to it, the soundtrack was composed from recordings of electromagnetic fie lds produced by household objects and gongs played by hands, mallets or activated through aco ustic feedback alone—without any physical touch involved.

Filmmaker
Country
Year
Duration
PREMIERE

Martin Moolhuijsen
Germany, Italy
2026
16 min
Russian Premiere

Martin Moolhuijsen
Martin Moolhuijsen

grain cloud atmosphere (2023)

Martin Moolhuijsen is an intermedia artist working at the threshold of experimental film and sound art. Trained as a musicologist and a sound artist, he makes highly material abstract films, whose composition is built equally on musical as well as film principles. His work has been presented at the Berlin International Film Festival, European Media Arts Festival, Annecy International Animation Film Festival, ZKM – Zentrum für Kunst und Medien and Akademie der Künste in Berlin, among others. He is a member of the artist-run analogue film lab LaborBerlin.