The Currency - Sensing 1 Agbogbloshie
In collaboration with Elom 20ce & Musquiqui Chihying
16 min 12 sec, 2023,
4K video / 2K DCP, 16:9 aspect ratio, Stereo Sound / 5.1 surround sound, no dialog
Short Synopsis
A landscape of electronic equipment leftovers, embedded in biting clouds of smoke, burnt earth and dirty water.
In Agbogbloshie - one of the world's largest e-waste recycling sites in the middle of Accra - they were dismantled and burnt in order to return their metals to the industrial recycling cycles.
In between, an observer who, by means of acoustic field research, investigates this place as a contact zone of complex global economic, social, power-political and technological processes and questions this from a spiritual perspective.
Description
The Currency - Sensing 1 Agbogbloshie is part of the long-term artistic research project THE CURRENCY by Elom 20ce (Togo), Musquiqui Chihying (Taiwan) and Gregor Kasper (Germany).
Through a transcontinental, multidisciplinary, collective practice, THE CURRENCY explores the possibilities of currencies to question capitalist logics, exploitation as well as power structures in order to re-explore the relationships between humans and their interactions with the non-human world. Global interconnections of capital flows, technological developments, and spiritual and collective resistant practices between Africa, Asia, and Europe are explored.
The Currency - Sensing 1 Agbogbloshie is part of a larger investigation that traces the global cycles of raw materials and electronic devices and their half:value:times at one of the world's largest e-waste recycling sites in Agbogbloshie, Accra/Ghana - economically, socially, power-politically and technologically.
The Currency - Sensing 1 Agbogbloshie focuses on a documentary observation of the site as well as a performative field research that uses experimental sound generation methods to make electromagnetic waves of the electronic waste audible, thus enabling an expanded sensory access to it that goes beyond the merely visible.
Orienting himself to the four elements of fire, water, air, and earth, Elom 20ce examines the organic environment of Agbogbloshie in relation to the remnants of the recycling of electronic devices that takes place here, and also questions the spiritual connections to this practice.
In repeating and embodying the generated experimental electronic sounds with his own voice, Elom 20ce reconnects them to the human experience and places this perspective at the center of the investigation.
This performative field research is also a form of urban mining, but instead of being based on the profit-oriented recovery of raw materials from urban space for a circular economy, it is rather a critical method for observing and reflecting on human practice.
Installation View CAPTURING NOWNESS, Kraftwerk Mitte, Dresden, 2024
FESTIVALS
13th Golden Ger International Film Festiva, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, 2025
4th Wide Open Experimental Film Festival, Oklahoma, USA, 2025
29th REGARD, Saguenay, Canada, 2025
7th Moinho Cine Fest, Matosinhos, Portugal, 2025
3rd Max Sir International Film Festival, Odessa Region, Ukraine, 2025
38th Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Stuttgart, Germany, 2025
15th Festival Internacional de Curtas de Macau, Macau, 2024
11th Cairo Video Festival, Cairo, Egypt, 2024
26th Independent Film Festival Busan, South Korea, 2024
5th Bangui Fait Son Cinéma, Bangui, Central African Republic, 2024
11th International Short Film Festival Canton, Guangzhou, China, 2024
4th CineFest - Festival de Cinema ao Ar Livre em Viana, Luanda, Angola, 2024
13th Chaktomuk Short Film Festival, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2024
41st Tehran International Short Film Festival, Tehran, Iran, 2024
7th Linz International Short Film Festival, Linz, Austria, 2024
2nd Tramway Film Festival, Warsaw, Poland, 2024
20th Festival Transterritorial de Cine Underground, Tigre/Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2024
7th ELBE DOCK International Film Festival, Ústí nad Labem, Czechia & Dresden, Germany, 2024
3rd Golden Grapes Short Film Festival, Telavi, Georgia, 2024
15th Picknic Film Festival - Santander International Film Festival, Santander, Spain, 2024
30th Film Festival della Lessinia, Bosco Chiesanuova, Italy, 2024
25th Lucania Film Festival, Pisticci, Italy, 2024
8th Festival International du Film du Togo, Lomé, Togo, 2024
30th San Giò Video Festival, Verona, Italy, 2024
16th Psarokokalo International Short Film Festival, Psarokokalo, Greece, 2024
18th River Film Festival, Padua, Italy, 2024
21st Vienna Shorts, Vienna, Austria, 2024
11th Riga Pasaules Film Festival, Riga, Latvia, 2024
36th Filmfest Dresden, Germany, 2024
30th International Short Film Week, Regensburg, Germany, 2024
40th Kassel Dokfest, Kassel, Germany, 2023
65th ZINEBI - International Festival of Documentary and Short Film, Bilbao, Spain, 2023
15th DMZ Docs - International Documentary Film Festival, Goyang City, South Korea, 2023
76 Locarno Film Festival, Pardi di domani: Concorso internazionale, Locarno, Suisse, 2023
SCREENINGS
5th Culture Connection Festival, Espace Culturel Alowonou, Kpalimé, Togo, 2024
Gbegbetopia, Archive Books, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, Germany, 2024
Structural Stowaway, Basis, Frankfurt/Main, Germany, 2023
Die große Menschenschau, Neubad, Luzern, Switzerland, 2023
Worlds On Fire, E-Werk, Freiburg, Germany, 2023
FILM PROGRAMS
7th Emerging Artists – Contemporary Experimental Films and Video Art from Germany,
by AG Kurzfilm & German Films, 2025
EXHIBITIONS
基進城市 - Reimagining Radical Cities, New Taipei City Art Museum, New Taipei City, Taiwan, 2025
Machine Wreckers, Spazio Punch, Venice, Italy, 2025
Undermining the Immediacy, MMK, Frankfurt, Germany, 2025
Accumulation – On Collecting, Growth and Excess, Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland, 2025
18th Busan International Video Art Festival, Space Heem, Busan & Gyeongnam Art Museum, Changwon, South Korea, 2024
CAPTURING NOWNESS, Kraftwerk Mitte, Dresden, Germany & Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan, 2024
The Oceans and the Interpreters, CCA (Yaba Art Museum & MAD House), Lagos, Nigeria, 2023
SELECTED PRESS
"Locarno review: The Currency – Sensing #1 Agbogbloshie" - ubiquarian, Susanne Gottlieb, 3.8.2023
INTERNATIONAL SALES
Kaske Film
contact: info(at)kaskefilm(dot)de
DISTRIBUTION
Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin
contact: distribution(at)arsenal-berlin(dot)de
CREDITS
Directed by Elom 20ce & Musquiqui Chihying & Gregor Kasper
Written by Elom 20ce & Musquiqui Chihying & Gregor Kasper
Cast Elom 20ce
Producer Gregor Kasper
Co-Producer Patrick Atakpa Ayele-Yawou
Cinematography Gregor Kasper
Additional Camera Musquiqui Chihying, Patrick Atakpa Ayele-Yawou
Image Editing Gregor Kasper
Colorgrading Sergi Sánchez Rodriguez
Sound Design, Editing, Sum-Sum Shen, Ilya Selikhov
Sound Mixing Ilya Selikhov
Music Elom 20ce
Musicians David Agbolo, Koudjo Avouvi, Elom 20ce, Gabebo Olufade, Denis Tagbo
Recorded at Colibri Studio by Rodrigue Bellow
Costum Asrafobawu
Production xizhuang
Co-Production Atakpa Productions, Asrafo Records, RLIS - Research Lab of Image and Sound
Funded by Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn
With the kind support of German Films, AG Kurzfilm
