„never neverland“
3-chnannel video installation, 2014

East Jesus, HD Video, 18 min, 2014
Momoland, HD Video, 20 min, 2014
Pachamama, HD Video, 20 min, 2014

This is the only way, we say. But there are as many ways as we can draw radii from a centre.
(Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854)

never neverland consists of three independent videos about micro-communities in California, Austria and Slovenia that have developed models of social sharing as a radical alternative to Western neoliberal lifestyles.

Through the juxtaposition of interviews and footage of everyday life in the communities, East Jesus, Momoland and Pachamama tell of the individual experiences of those who resolutely resist big city life as well as the profit motive and strive for a culture of sharing and empathy that opens up greater space for personal freedom of expression and development. New relationships between people, time and nature as well as an ecological and sustainable lifestyle combine in a social experiment that bridges a strategy of pragmatic self-sufficiency and a comprehensive political ideal of self-development and collectivism. In her work, Heidrun Holzfeind poses questions about the kind of freedom that lies in a decision for an alternative lifestyle and against a way of life steered by the global system of neoliberal capitalism, and asks whether it is really possible to escape such a system.

Following the expression of the American sociologist Erik Olin Wright, never neverland focuses on real utopias, common aspirations to formulate guidelines and basic principles for social change in the field of everyday life.

Artist and filmmaker Heidrun Holzfeind was born in Austria and lives in Berlin.

Her work questions immanent architectural and social utopias and explores relationships between history and identity in individual stories and political narratives of the present. Her work has been shown at Vita Kuben, Umeå (2020), Secession Vienna (2019), Kunstraum Lakeside, Klagenfurt (2017), OK Centrum Linz (2012); Artists Space Project Room, New York (2005) and MUCA, Mexico City (2005), among others.

Heidrun Holzfeind's cinematic works regularly tour the world and have been shown at MOMA, NYC, Kunstverein Munich, Goethe Institut Izmir, Filmmuseum Budapest and Video Art Center Tokyo, as well as at festivals in Canada, Japan, Austria, Poland, the Netherlands and Germany. In 2011 she received the Austrian Camera Award for Contemporary Photography and in 2014 the Promotion Prize for Contemporary Art of the Province of Tyrol. There are also several publications by her.

www.heidrunholzfeind.com