PORTFOLIO

even a dead star can be a lighthouse

Video installation / Short film, 11:30, 2025
2K ProResHQ stero / DCP 5.1

Concept, camera, sound, editing: Maria Ångerman
Sound Design: Sergio González Cuervo
Scanning: Artturi Mutanen / Helsinki Film & Gear
Cast: bladderwrack, seagrass, filamentous algea, shrimp, mudcrab,
barnacle and others

Made in collaboration with Pro Artibus, Åbo Akademi marine research station
Funded by Svenska Kulturfoden, Taike, Svenska Litteratursällskapet

What might unfold at the edge of the Baltic Sea in a near future shaped by eutrophication and declining oxygen levels? Informed by symbiosis and the plasticity of aquatic life, the film offers a meditation on the coping mechanisms of submerged organisms as they respond to shifting environmental conditions.

Combining underwater footage with cameraless 16 mm phytograms made with algae and seagrass, the work moves between microscopic observation and drifting marine landscapes. Whispering, layered voices form a speculative language – algae reflecting on altered conditions and the terms of survival. The installation proposes the sea as a space of fragility, adaptation, and symbiotic persistence: a site where loss and continuity are not opposites but conditions of the same ongoing negotiation.

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(un)intentional migrators

Performance lecture, 30 min, 2026

Spoken word, slides, video and live sound

When is one considered native? And who has the right to define it?

Structured in four acts and an epilogue, the performance weaves spoken narrative, projected slides and video, and live sound performed on a daxophone – an electrified wooden instrument played with a bow. It reflects on adaptation and belonging from the perspective of the mud crab appearing in the Finnish Archipelago Sea.   

premonitions

5 silisec-mounted inkjet prints, 30 × 40 cm, 2026
Algagrams made with bladderwrack and filamentous algae.

Unexpectedly, these images do not show plant imprints. Instead they carry the traces of liquids the algae bathed in – formations that accumulate on the emulsion like signals of something approaching. As ecological systems often register change before it becomes visible, in chemistry, in texture, in the behaviour of organisms responding to conditions that have not yet fully arrived.
Mounted with silisec, the prints are objects as much as images. Their surfaces hold the weight of the process, of contact, chemistry and time.

wretched ground

Hand crafted artistbook, 2024

Format: H 20 cm x W 20 cm [closed] / W 180 cm [accordion extended]
Pages total: 50 pages
Print run: 7 copies
Published by: msdm publications + parallel productions
ISBN: 978-1-7396192-5-1

Focusing on relationships taking place in a tidal area, the book is a response to the fragile ecological situation surrounding the city of Saint Louis, Senegal.

Two main series of middle format photographs and cyanotypes form the spine of the book, which can be read as a loop. It includes one series of photo collages on an accordion, as well as three posters. One of them contains a background text for the locations where the investigations took place.

Includes the essay ‘Lifelines of time drawn in the sand’ by Taru Elfving.

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last breath of snow

Video installation / Short film, 8:28, 2023,
HD ProResHQ stero / DCP 5.1
Shooting format: HD, Double8

Concept, camera, sound, editing: Maria Ångerman
Sound Design: Sergio González Cuervo
Funded by Taike, Konstsamfundet, Svenska Kulturfonden

What does a deer perceive when it encounters a human? Do they sense the shifting climate, and if so, do they associate these changes with us? Breath becomes the common thread, weaving together human, animal, and snow in a shared rhythm. The film is an exploration of gaze, presence, and interconnection, dissolving the boundaries between species through an immersive cinematic experience.

Blending video and analog film, the project emerges from two encounters: one with a deer, the other with a Bolex double8 camera. The camera’s unpredictable mechanics shaped a rhythmic, tactile manipulation of time, adding a haptic dimension to this interspecies moment.

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the dead walk side by side with the living

Short film, 22:12, 2016, DCP 5.1
Three channel installation, loops of 11:00 + 9:13 + 7:15, ProResHQ stereo. Shooting format HD, 4K

Concept, cinematography, sound: Maria Ångerman
Additional camera: Siska
Editing: Lars Späth, Pedro Collantes
Sound Design: Sergio González Cuervo
Cast: Anne Thieme, Thomas Gerber
Funded by AVEK, Netherlands Film Academy, Taike

In a dialogue borrowed from Duras’ Agatha (1981), the film describes separation and alienation and asks what really distinguishes human life from the lives of other species.

The film unfolds entirely in an intimate close-up, uncovering the last encounter between two lovers, focusing on their as well as animal bodies rather than their faces and shares the presence with grooming chimpanzees in a zoo. It ends with traveling images through empty zoo spaces while disparate voices utter fragments recounting for their changed perception from a previous urban experience.

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