Biography

Ruben van Leer (Naarden, 1984) is an Amsterdam-based interdisciplinary art filmmaker. Working predominantly with time based media and film, Van Leer artfully explores the potential for audiovisual harmony through narrative – often allowing the sonic aspect to shine through as the main protagonist.  

Van Leer’s most recent project Symmetry is a clear manifestation of his keen aptitude for multi-sensory storytelling. Symmetry is a dance-opera film shot inside CERN, the largest experimental particle physics laboratory in the world. Written and developed by Van Leer in 2011, the project was presented to the CERN Cultural board and approved in 2012 as the first official collaboration supported by the CERN Artist Proposal scheme. Working in collaboration with choreographer Lukas Timulak, soprano Claron McFadden, composers Joep Franssens and Henry Vega, the team from Arts@CERN, and many other specialists, the film launched with parallel documentary Symmetry Unravelled in July 2015. It is currently touring internationally.  

Developing his craft through collaborative work with choreographer Lukas Timulak on award-winning short film Instrument, with composer Michel van der AA for the 3D movie opera Sunken Garden and the interactive film project The Book of Sand and with filmmaker Peter Greenaway for the installation Writing on Water, Van Leer has received international recognition for the consistency of his vision. Seeing the opportunity to reach unexpected audiences through the digital experience, Van Leer has also contributed to a variety of new media projects – directing music shorts with bands Yeasayer, Tigran Hamasyan, Full Crate & Mar, Bastian, My Baby and Afrobeta. 

Van Leer’s films have been screened and awarded internationally with selections at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, Barcelona Choreoscope, Logroño Festival Fiver, the Los Angeles RAW Science Film Festival and the India All Lights International Film Festival; shown on national television platforms NTR Podium (Merkavah) and Uur van der Wolf (Symmetry) and exhibited at Futur en Seine Paris, Agité Y Sirva Mexico, Holland Festival Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and HBO USA. 

With interest to contribute to the dialogue surrounding the evolution of interdisciplinary film/new media as a storytelling medium, Van Leer has also spoken internationally at the Milan Design Festival, the San Francisco Dance Film Festival and at KNAW Amsterdam.

 

Director’s statement

I see emotional expressions as a result of moving geometric structures that exist at the foundation of our being. Like Spinoza, I am interested in the parallel relationships that exist between science and perception –seeking a space where the pursuit of hard science reflects a consideration for a long term perceptual trajectory. We are tragic beings for whom this harmony is too often lost. For me, technology can also refer to the human body and our history, facilitating rather than constraining our beings through modern artificial intelligence. With access to many tools through which to interpret the world, I want to know what the Gesamtkunstwerk of the 21st century looks like. My feeling is that it is musical by nature, that it addresses the ambiguity of our ‘modern’ information age and that it encourages reflection through a variety of disciplines and perspectives. My most recent film Symmetry is about the alignment of this fine balance between emotion and abstraction; the entire cosmos and the smallest particle; science and art; you and me. It is this quantum story that I find most interesting, to give a glimpse into the divine symmetry that holds us all together and encourage the viewer to mirror their own perceptive experience.