The Human-made Landscapes Trilogy (2014–2025) comprises Infrastructures (2014), Transitions (2017), and Claws (2025), three films examining how built environments reorganise landscape and shape perception.
Across the trilogy, slow, precisely composed camera movements trace the spatial organisation of human-made environments. In Infrastructures and Transitions, people are entirely absent; in Claws, human figures remain largely outside the frame. In their absence, spatial arrangements, surfaces, materials, signs, and sound come to the fore, alongside the systems and intentions embedded in what has been built.
In Infrastructures, seven extended shots move through infrastructural spaces whose organisation is ordinarily registered only in passing. Routes, barriers, objects, markings, and systems of circulation and control are shown apart from the activities they usually serve and become newly legible as spatial arrangements. The strict organisation of the film places its own structure in relation to the structures it observes.
Transitions turns from systems observed in place to a progression across space. Beginning in the Nevada desert and moving through urban peripheries towards Las Vegas, the film passes from sparsely occupied terrain into an increasingly dense accumulation of roads, architecture, billboards, surfaces, and images. The built environment appears not only as functional order but also as a materialisation of desire, projection, and control. With no people present, these structures remain as material evidence of human intention. What appears assertive and permanent is set against the longer duration of the landscape in which it has taken shape.
Claws begins within a different condition of transformation. Filmed across regions of rapid urban expansion in China, it moves from steppe and desert terrain, where roads enter the landscape, through urban peripheries, interiors, and construction sites, into dense urban structures, until the horizon opens once more. Here, the relation between construction and landscape is no longer organised as a passage from one to the other. Built structures and topography occupy the same field; geometry persists, while the intentions they embody become provisional.
Across the three works, the focus shifts from the organisation of infrastructural systems, to urbanisation as a spatial progression, and finally to environments in which construction and terrain remain in an unresolved relation. What persists is a cinematic method built on duration, controlled movement, scale, materiality, and sound—a way of attending to human-made environments not as background, but as structures that condition how space is perceived, traversed, and inhabited.
Claws (2025) · 18:27 · no dialogue · single-channel · DCP · 5.1 surround · edition: 5 + 1 AP
Claws concludes the Human-made Landscapes Trilogy (2014–2025).
A moving-image essay tracing trajectories through rapidly expanding cities, the film moves from steppe and desert terrain through urban peripheries, interiors, and construction sites into dense urban structures before opening back onto the horizon. Human figures remain largely outside the frame, while architecture, materials, and sound form a perceptual field where geometry persists, intentions become fragile, and the land remembers.
CREDITS
Concept and Camera: Aurèle Ferrier
Sound Design: Peter Bräker
Editing: Aurèle Ferrier, Sandra Bühler
Outside Eye Editing: Eman Hussein, Felix Hergert
Color Grading: Dominik Zietlow
VFX: Gregg Langlois
Consulting: Wade Shepard, Andreas Müller, Yunlong Song
Production: Aurèle Ferrier
SUPPORT
Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
Canton of St. Gallen, Arts Council / Swisslos
Embassy of Switzerland in Beijing
Consulates of Switzerland in Guangzhou and Shanghai
City of Zurich, Cultural Affairs, Covid Work Grant
Erna and Curt Burgauer Stiftung
Stiftung Anne-Marie Schindler
Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung
Gwaertler Stiftung
Else v. Sick Stiftung
Transitions (2017) · 12:48 · no dialogue · single-channel · DCP · 5.1 surround · edition: 5 + 1 AP
Transitions moves from the desert’s civilisational emptiness into urban over-density: Las Vegas as a surreal compression of capital, desire, and image. With no people present, the built environment comes into focus—architecture, billboards, and surfaces as traces of aspiration, projection, and control.
“The work Transitions (2017) by Aurèle Ferrier examines the traces left by human civilisation – the conquest of the inhospitable desert ends in the surreal and hedonistic consumerism of Las Vegas. The camera leads us, with a menacing languor, through a backdrop of deserted city outskirts. The buildings, cars and billboards speak of people’s dreams as they strive for a version of happiness. The prevailing eerie, apocalyptic mood pulls you into this filmic journey. These traces of humanity seem increasingly laughable and helpless; they vibrate with a peculiar melancholy. Where have the people disappeared to? One has the impression that a catastrophe has occurred, an epidemic – or perhaps it is simply an empty film set after a shoot.
With its calm and assured command of image and sound, the film generates a refined suspense. It takes the viewer on an odyssey that can also be read as a metaphor for the limits of human endeavour. The human culture and civilisation that once emerged from the desert will, in the end, become desert again.”
Esther Eppstein & Elodie Pong, Videoex 2017
CREDITS
Concept, camera, editing: Aurèle Ferrier
Sound design and foley artist: Peter Bräker
Editing consultants: Sandra Bühler, Andreas Müller
Third eyes: Anna Hilti, Thomas Galler
Post production: Gregg Langlois, Noë Marti
Poster design: Krispin Hée
Production: Aurèle Ferrier
SUPPORT
Arts Council of the Canton of St. Gallen
Volkart Stiftung
Ernst and Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung
Infrastructures (2014) · 23:00 · no dialogue · single-channel · DCP · 5.1 surround · edition: 5 + 1 AP
Infrastructures is a journey through infrastructural landscapes—spaces we pass through every day, yet rarely see. In broad daylight, the sites remain devoid of people. Arrangements, objects, and systems of control come into focus, taking centre stage in a world usually noticed in passing. The film unfolds in seven shots.
«A pensive and serene vision that challenges the audience to consider and reevaluate not just the structure of film, but also the world in which we live.»
Slamdance Film Festival 2016 — Grand Jury Award — Best Experimental Short
CREDITS
Concept, camera and editing: Aurèle Ferrier
Sound design and foley artist: Peter Bräker
Steadicam shots: Bergsteinn Björgulfsson
Image post-production: Noë Marti
On-site assistance: Anna Hilti, Esther Mathis, Stephanie Hess, Andreas Mueller, Katherine Patino Miranda, Ari Björn Ólafsson, Sigurður Þórarinsson, Ida Emilie Sabro Jensen, Sandra Lang, Bettina Diel, Christoph Oeschger, Sarah Kaur, Dalia Huerto Cano, Lixin Bao, James Meyhew, Verena Faisst
Mentoring: Alex Arteaga, Laura Arici, Jörg Huber, Ulrich Görlich
Third eyes: Anna Hilti, Andreas Mueller, Robert Steinberger, Esther Mathis
Production: Aurèle Ferrier
SUPPORT
Arts Council of the Canton of St. Gallen
Erna and Curt Burgauer Stiftung
Georg and Josi Guggenheim Stiftung
Georges and Jenny Bloch Stiftung
Zurich University of the Arts ·
Steo Stiftung