Congratulations to Casondra Sobieralski! Casondra, Associate Teaching Professor of Art + Design at Northeastern University in Oakland, won two awards for her experimental documentary “Rasos with Wildflowers”. The film won “Best Documentary Short” from the San Diego Independent Cinema Awards and “Best Experimental Film” from the LA Independent Film Channel Festival.

In Casondra’s artist statement, she writes:

“Rasos with Wildflowers” uses a combination of digital video and audio material from traditional mid-summer festivals and digitized analog (35 mm) hand-processed film to document Lithuania’s intangible cultural heritage, reclaimed in modern times. In so doing, the piece weaves together past, present, and potentially the future. The phytogram film technique used herein involves using a mixture of vitamin C, washing soda, and polyphenols from Lithuanian wildflowers as a film developer, then soaking the film in a saltwater bath as a photo fixer for approximately 36-hours. This more ecologically sound film developing method pays homage to the visceral reverence for Nature that is so much a part of Lithuanian culture. It also lends a posthumanist lens to the heritage by giving voice to the flowers, via their chemical signatures, as active agents in the cultural festivals of the nation.

Lithuanians are passionate about celebrating and sharing their heritage to communicate their national identity after a history of occupation under authoritarian rulers. German Teutonic Crusaders came in the Middle Ages. The Soviet Union curtailed dissent and other forms of free expression for a period spanning about 50 years starting in 1940. During World War II, Lithuania was subject to an interim occupying force: the brutality of the Nazis. In Lithuania, song, dance, and traditional festivals became a means of subverting authoritarian rule and celebrating freedom.”

Casondra Sobieralski builds bridges between media studies and archaeology. She holds a PhD in Film & Digital Media from University of California, Santa Cruz, an MFA in Conceptual & Information Arts from San Francisco State University, and a BA in Art History from University of Pittsburgh. Casondra has participated in digital heritage projects spanning over twenty years, including digital reconstructions of the tomb, temple of Rameses II for the French National Centre for Scientific Research and Virtual Çatalhöyük with UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus Ruth Tringham. She directed and produced a three-projector video installation about early suffragists for the Women’s Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls, New York. Casondra served as an Information Architect for UC Berkeley, a visiting professor of Media Arts at New Mexico Highlands University, and a Digital Media Arts Lecturer at San Francisco State University. She joined Northeastern’s Oakland campus in 2023.

To learn more about Casondra’s work, click here.