An ALTARCH Film
EROTIC GEOLOGIES
2024
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Directors
Director, Producer, Writer, Researcher, Production Designer, Music Composer and Performer
Natalie Tozer
Director of Photography,
Post-Production Supervisor, Editor, Compositor, Music Producer (Arrangement)
Sam Tozer (Kāti Māmoe)
–
Cast
Liberté
Amber Liberté
Rangi
Leighton Rangi
(Ngāi Tuhoe)
–
Crew
3D Generalist
Benjamin Round
Costume
Brooke Georgia
Hair and Make-Up
Lochie Stonehouse
Gaffer
Ollie Logan
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Installation Notes:
A 15min 10sec looped moving image, 10bit, 23.98fps.
The resolution of this work is 7680 x 2160 pixels – with an aspect ratio of 3.6:1. This is wider than cinemascope and designed for two large thin bezel UHD flatscreens side by side.
–
Technical Notes:
This work was made with green screen live-action shot on a 6K Red Camera at 48fps, to generate footage which was then composited in a 3D world with local land features based on NASA geodata e.g Tongariro. It also includes Lidar scanned geometry of performers, public art and architecture.
–
Special Thanks & Acknowledgements:
Thank you to LOT23 Studio and Xytech Lighting for your support in kind.
To Liz Ngan, Brett Graham, Fred Graham, Marté Szirmay, Ana Iti, Paul Hartigan, Richard Shortland Cooper and Terry Koloamatangi Klavenes for permission to reference or include images of work in the ruins scene.
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Ruins Scene:
(artworks in order of appearance)
Paul Hartigan
Colony, Neon, Engineering Atrium, University of Auckland, 2004
Guy Ngan
Bronze Sculpture, Newton Post Office, 1973
Frances Hodgkins
Still Life in front of Courtyard, Oil on canvas, 1930
Marté Szirmay
Smirnoff Centenary Sculpture,
Aluminium, Newmarket, 1969
Fred Graham
Te Waka Toi o Tāmaki, Jurassic Stone, Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Art Gallery, 2011
Ana Iti
Heavy to Hold, Basalt Rocks, Blue Oyster Art Project Space, 2016
Richard Shortland Cooper & Terry Koloamatangi Klavenes
Ako Ako, Andesite Boulder, Māngere East Library, 2002
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Ngā mihi me te aroha nui
Nat Tozer
EROTIC GEOLOGIES
2024
–
Directors
Director, Producer, Writer, Researcher, Production Designer, Music Composer and Performer
Natalie Tozer
Director of Photography,
Post-Production Supervisor, Editor, Compositor, Music Producer (Arrangement)
Sam Tozer (Kāti Māmoe)
–
Cast
Liberté
Amber Liberté
Rangi
Leighton Rangi
(Ngāi Tuhoe)
–
Crew
3D Generalist
Benjamin Round
Costume
Brooke Georgia
Hair and Make-Up
Lochie Stonehouse
Gaffer
Ollie Logan
–
Installation Notes:
A 15min 10sec looped moving image, 10bit, 23.98fps.
The resolution of this work is 7680 x 2160 pixels – with an aspect ratio of 3.6:1. This is wider than cinemascope and designed for two large thin bezel UHD flatscreens side by side.
–
Technical Notes:
This work was made with green screen live-action shot on a 6K Red Camera at 48fps, to generate footage which was then composited in a 3D world with local land features based on NASA geodata e.g Tongariro. It also includes Lidar scanned geometry of performers, public art and architecture.
–
Special Thanks & Acknowledgements:
Thank you to LOT23 Studio and Xytech Lighting for your support in kind.
To Liz Ngan, Brett Graham, Fred Graham, Marté Szirmay, Ana Iti, Paul Hartigan, Richard Shortland Cooper and Terry Koloamatangi Klavenes for permission to reference or include images of work in the ruins scene.
–
Ruins Scene:
(artworks in order of appearance)
Paul Hartigan
Colony, Neon, Engineering Atrium, University of Auckland, 2004
Guy Ngan
Bronze Sculpture, Newton Post Office, 1973
Frances Hodgkins
Still Life in front of Courtyard, Oil on canvas, 1930
Marté Szirmay
Smirnoff Centenary Sculpture,
Aluminium, Newmarket, 1969
Fred Graham
Te Waka Toi o Tāmaki, Jurassic Stone, Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Art Gallery, 2011
Ana Iti
Heavy to Hold, Basalt Rocks, Blue Oyster Art Project Space, 2016
Richard Shortland Cooper & Terry Koloamatangi Klavenes
Ako Ako, Andesite Boulder, Māngere East Library, 2002
–
Ngā mihi me te aroha nui
Nat Tozer
Merchant bankers Rangi and Liberté are thrust into hostile and unfamiliar territory after an earthquake renders their office to rubble. Lost in a world they don’t understand, wandering the harsh terrain, seeking refuge in the sunken troves of geology. This is an underground that has no time and no exit. Trapped until they receive the necessary Chthonic knowledge, they’re finally released into the open air, emerging to find an age has passed. Taking what they learned from their captivity underground they ascend to the highest mountain top to complete their survival task, to throw the bones of the mother (stones of the earth).
Erotic Geologies is a sci-fi parable that seeks knowledge from the underground. Myriad cultures across time have made sense of the ground and underground through folklore, fairy tale and science fiction. Erotic Geologies layers these modes of knowledge-sharing to tell a narrative about renewal, cyclical time, and a continually mobile geology - through the lens of the Anthropocene, perhaps the most recent narrative of the ground.
At its core, Erotic Geologies is a contemporary story with characters inspired by both Māori mythologies surrounding the figures of Ranginui and Papatūānuku’s children, and the Greek figures Deucalion and Pyrrha. Referencing creator mythemes across time this work seeks to acknowledge the connective primordial geologies that these stories share.
The urgency and intimacy of the ground and how it can be accessed is important. Today, access to the ground is highly restricted and privatised by economic structures, but in this world the ground is raw, open and accessible. The environment erodes and reforms between Anthropocene and Holocene geology, which directly informs character development and reveals an instruction hidden in the stone.
The transformative experience of going underground presents itself in distinct ways across many popular western science fiction narratives. When the protagonist emerges from their journey under the earth, the result is always the same – they know something new and an alternative future is possible. Prometheus, Katla, Dark, Dune, 12 Monkeys, Troll, The Half Men of O, The Outsider, Counterpart, Stargate, The Core, The Abyss, Stranger Things, The Cave, Annihilation, Blade Runner 2049, The Matrix, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Alice in Wonderland - all contain digging, tunnelling, or exhumations that alter the future. Early epics inform these descent narratives such as The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, The Aeneid, The Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and earlier, the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. Honouring this rich tradition, Erotic Geologies seeks to engage with narratives whose characters transition underground.
Time is critical in the stratigraphy of this work. The work recontextualises the human experience of time, placing biological life within the deep time of geology. A structural playback loop is built into the narrative, so time becomes cyclical opposed to linear. And finally, the work is comprised of a single uninterupted shot, as a continuous loop, with no defined beginning or end. This one-take device removes the sense of passing time that we inherently know exists between cuts, another subtle but critical layer in the stratigraphy of Erotic Geologies.
–
Previous working titles during the making of and international test screenings:
- Deucalion & Pyrrha 2022 (Sluice, PADA)
- An Alternative Archaeology 2021 (MFA)
The title Erotic Geologies marks the works completion and premiere screening in Aotearoa, 2024.
–
︎︎︎ CHTHONIC DESCENT
[ view text ]
︎︎︎ Watch EROTIC GEOLOGIES
[ full length ]
–
Erotic Geologies is a sci-fi parable that seeks knowledge from the underground. Myriad cultures across time have made sense of the ground and underground through folklore, fairy tale and science fiction. Erotic Geologies layers these modes of knowledge-sharing to tell a narrative about renewal, cyclical time, and a continually mobile geology - through the lens of the Anthropocene, perhaps the most recent narrative of the ground.
At its core, Erotic Geologies is a contemporary story with characters inspired by both Māori mythologies surrounding the figures of Ranginui and Papatūānuku’s children, and the Greek figures Deucalion and Pyrrha. Referencing creator mythemes across time this work seeks to acknowledge the connective primordial geologies that these stories share.
The urgency and intimacy of the ground and how it can be accessed is important. Today, access to the ground is highly restricted and privatised by economic structures, but in this world the ground is raw, open and accessible. The environment erodes and reforms between Anthropocene and Holocene geology, which directly informs character development and reveals an instruction hidden in the stone.
The transformative experience of going underground presents itself in distinct ways across many popular western science fiction narratives. When the protagonist emerges from their journey under the earth, the result is always the same – they know something new and an alternative future is possible. Prometheus, Katla, Dark, Dune, 12 Monkeys, Troll, The Half Men of O, The Outsider, Counterpart, Stargate, The Core, The Abyss, Stranger Things, The Cave, Annihilation, Blade Runner 2049, The Matrix, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Alice in Wonderland - all contain digging, tunnelling, or exhumations that alter the future. Early epics inform these descent narratives such as The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, The Aeneid, The Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and earlier, the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. Honouring this rich tradition, Erotic Geologies seeks to engage with narratives whose characters transition underground.
Time is critical in the stratigraphy of this work. The work recontextualises the human experience of time, placing biological life within the deep time of geology. A structural playback loop is built into the narrative, so time becomes cyclical opposed to linear. And finally, the work is comprised of a single uninterupted shot, as a continuous loop, with no defined beginning or end. This one-take device removes the sense of passing time that we inherently know exists between cuts, another subtle but critical layer in the stratigraphy of Erotic Geologies.
–
Previous working titles during the making of and international test screenings:
- Deucalion & Pyrrha 2022 (Sluice, PADA)
- An Alternative Archaeology 2021 (MFA)
The title Erotic Geologies marks the works completion and premiere screening in Aotearoa, 2024.
–
︎︎︎ CHTHONIC DESCENT
[ view text ]
︎︎︎ Watch EROTIC GEOLOGIES
[ full length ]
–