“Bjørn Melhus is a German-Norwegian media artist. In his work he has developed a singular position, expanding the possibilities for a critical reception of cinema and television. His practice of fragmentation, destruction, and reconstitution of well-known figures, topics, and strategies of the mass media opens up not only a network of new interpretations and critical commentaries, but also defines the relationship of mass media and viewer anew. Originally rooted in an experimental film context, Bjørn Melhus’s work has been shown and awarded at numerous international film festivals.”

Coming from experimental cinema, Bjørn Melhus is a major German video artist whose work has earned him numerous awards and has been seen in several international museums and biennial exhibitions. His practice of fragmenting and exaggerating figures and using dramatic strategies generated by mass media has opened him to criticism while also defining a new relationship between those media and the viewer. Moon over Da Nang(2016) refers to one of the greatest televised war spectacles, the Vietnam War. During the same period, American astronauts were looking at Earth from the Moon and discovering the Blue Planet, the future emblem of the environmentalist movement. The two narrative lines of this short film develop in parallel, linked by shots showing the making of a marble astronaut in Da Nang, a new city that is beloved by investors in the tourism industry.