watch — moving sound/image

Let Them Vanish With a Trace

duration: 20 min.
format: single-screen (16mm and video)
year: 2025

Let Them Vanish With a Trace is an invitation to speak with worlds with whom speaking may not be possible. We facilitated contact between 16 mm film emulsion and soil fungi; we expected nothing in return. But the fungi were generous. While the film has partly vanished, its traces continue to circulate in an ecological totality. How to speak nearby this complex relationship?

This film is a part of an inquiry into degrowing poetics, sound as energy, and toxicity in analogue moving image culture. The project relies on DIY handmade film protocols and a “dominant” scientific discourse.

We made the soundtrack using optical sound prints of fungi patterns (Aspergillus fumigatus), while a scanning electron microscope animates the slow degradation of emulsion and polyester. Within this imperfect exchange, a space of openness emerged—an invitation to imagine relations guided not by control, but by mutual curiosity, respect, and transformation.The fictional and the literal co-exists in shifting rhythms, vanishing spirals, and surfacing harmonies.

LT

rež. Miki Ambrózy - su garso meninikė Gailė Griciūtė | 2025 | 16 mm, video | 20 min.

IMAGE Nojus Drąsutis, Miki Ambrózy, Eva Paunksnytė
SOUND Gailė Griciūtė with Miki Ambrózy
TEXT Miki Ambrózy with Gailė Griciūtė
SEM IMAGES Renata Boris
RESEARCH Miki Ambrózy, Dovilė Vasiliauskienė
LABS SPONGĖ, Labo BxL, WFDIF, Color by DeJonghe
JK SUPPORT Els Van Riel, Labo BxL
EDITING Miki Ambrózy
This film was partly financed by a doctoral research grant from the Vilnius Academy of Arts, 2021-2025.

20’ | EN | single-screen | 16mm and video | digital sound

miki ambrózy

watch — moving sound/image

Let Them Vanish With a Trace