Adam Sébire
artist - filmmaker based in the European Arctic
Adam Sébire
artist - filmmaker based in the European Arctic
With the Flying Doctors, en route to an outback call-out.
An experienced freelance artist, filmmaker, cameraman, drone pilot, editor & stills photographer, Adam Sébire is based in Arctic Norway but shoots worldwide, from Pacific islands to Greenland, in between working on his multi-screen video art.
With emphasis on arts & environmental themes he specialises in creative documentary approaches to video production.
Vertical Film Festival
Katoomba, Australia — 17 October 2014, 21 May 2016
He co-founded the Vertical Film Festival, the world's first competition for 9:16 films, in Australia. CV & About →
Contemporary Art
Adam's photos and video artwork explore the limits to human perception of climate change. In the process, he reinvents the Early Renaissance polyptych as a form of multiscreen video installation art... →
Film and Video Work
As videographer he has created over two dozen SBS & ABC TV programs; short web-videos & interviews for Sydney Opera House & YouTube Symphony Orchestra; DVDs for James Morrison, Sydney Biennale... →
Stills Photography
Shoots include most of the photos for the Royal Flying Doctor Service's new visitors' centre in Broken Hill, as well as documentation for performance artists, musicians, corporate events... →
Contemporary Art & Climate Change
Contemporary Art & Climate Change
Latest NEWS & projects
Work is in progress on two new pieces, spatially separated but linked by causality; glacial ice melt accounts for around ⅓ of global sea level rise:
The melting Rhône Glacier, Switzerland, covered by cloth and tarps, is an example of geoengineering: the thermal blankets provide albedo enhancement, reflecting heat.
The tiny island of Beniamina, Solomon Islands, is home to 130 seaweed farming islanders being eroded and submerged by rising seas of 7-10mm/yr in the South Pacific.
And work is underway on an immersive multi-channel video artwork about the Greenlandic community of Uummannaq’s struggle with disappearing sea ice. It will première at Edinburgh Science Festival, Scotland, 1-16 April 2023 in an exhibition titled Glacial Narratives.
Scenes from a rapidly changing planet;
video artworks exploring the Anthropocene epoch, anthropogenic global warming in the Arctic, rising sea levels and climate geoengineering... More →
The still image for AnthropoScene II: Tideline (above) was one of 9 of Adam’s images licensed by ClimateVisuals, an Oxford based charity devoted to climate communication. It (and the image on the ice floe, right) are now available to use freely via a Creative Commons license.
AnthropoScene VI: Mозаика (Mosaic) is exhibited as a four screen installation, as a finalist in the International Competition for Intermedia Artwork, 13-29 Nov 2022 in Krakow, Poland.
AnthropoScene IV: Adrift (∆Asea-ice) has more screenings coming up in early 2023; in Concord, Massachusetts, and along with a new immersive work at the Edinburgh Science Festival 1-16 Apr 2023.
What if we could witness our own contribution to climate change? Adrift(∆Asea-ice) →
Just completed (late 2022)
AnthropoScene VIII:
Escape Velocity
Part of the touring exhibition for Northern Norway Art Prize finalists from Jan-Dec 2023.
Older news: AnthropoScene III: Hellisheidi (left) won 1st prize (£1000) in The Art of Energy exhibition, Centre for Energy Ethics, University of St Andrews, Scotland. And Adam’s AnthropoScenes Solo Show was at Galleri Svalbard Mar-Aug 2020, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the world’s northernmost art museum and inaugurating Longyearbyen’s Solfestuka or Sun Festival.
St. Andrews University’s Centre for Energy Ethics released a podcast with Adam discussing his AnthropoScenes series, art, ice, geoengineering and global warming on 26 March 2021. You can find it as a podcast at https://allaboutenergy.podbean.com or listen/download below. Interview runs 12’36”-56'45".
Points of Return is a beautifully-designed online exhibition (launched 2022) of artists working working with climate change, featuring several works by Adam. See Galleries II “Heat” and III “Retreat” at https://www.pointsofreturn.org
in the Heat of the Moment
Thermographic (infra-red thermal imaging) photos & video art created with scientific instruments borrowed from climate change researchers. (2015 - ongoing)
Feeling the Heat
Exhibition view, Wuhan Biennal 2022, Qintai Art Museum, Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, 28 Dec 2022 to 31 May 2023. (Photo: Qintai Art Museum)
How do climate scientists, working on the front line of a problem that's invisible to most of us, respond to it as human beings, as citizens of the planet? Feeling the Heat is presented… More →
Screenings: Premièring at Glasgow Science Centre’s Curious About Our Planet series, during the UN’s COP26 meetings there. Then from 28 December 2022 till 31 May 2023 the triple-screen work will be exhibited alongside Adam’s thermographic stills at the Wuhan Biennial, Qintai Art Museum, China. And from May 2023, at Umbrella Arts in Concord, MA (USA) as part of the Points of Return group show.
Art Arcadia Remote
Residency : Sea Ice in Uummannaq, winter 2022
Sikujuippoq is a northwest Greenlandic word for the disappearance of the sea ice. Arctic scientists predict the North Pole may be free of sea ice some summers before 2050. But as the Arctic warms four times as fast as the rest of the planet, how are its winters changing?
During the polar winter, 2021-22 Adam Sébire will be offering photo-video vignettes collected in Uummannaq, a remote Inuit settlement at 70.4ºN, as he waits for the sea ice to form.
AnthropoScene VIII : Escape Velocity was one of the works made at this residency.
Adam's artistic research & practice centres on a multi-screen form he calls the video polyptych with which to explore the vast spatiotemporal dimensions of the climate crisis — plus the cognitive dissonances underlying our responses to it. Building on his documentary background he is undertaking a PhD at the UNSW Faculty of Art & Design, exploring aesthetic visual representations of anthropogenic global warming.
His PhD work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions including the Deutsches Museum, Max Planck Institute, & the South Australian Museum.
In 2019-20 he lectured on vertical visual forms — past, present & future — for Facebook Creative Shop in New York, Singapore, Auckland & Sydney.
CV & Research Interests →
View Art Works →
Solo exhibitions include AnthropoScenes at Galleri Svalbard (2020); In the Heat of the Moment (Accelerator Gallery Sydney, 2015), Roads to Nowhere (2012, Head On Photo Festival/Vivid Sydney/Rocks Pop-Up). Group exhibitions include Adrift (∆Asea-ice) (2020 Waterhouse Prize finalist), Tideline at the Northern Norway Art Exhibition (2021 finalist), Hellishei∂i in The Art of Energy (2021, 1st prize), Raise | Retreat | Rise (2013, Re:Cinema New York / ISEA Sydney) and Below the Line (World Expo, Milan,2015).
Adam has directed over 25 television documentaries; the United Nations in New York premièred his film Echoes Across the Divide, later sold to broadcasters globally. Single-channel artworks include Le Violoncelle (2003), METROpolis, Camel Roundabout (2012) and Breakdown (2018). In 2016 Adam was Artist in Residence at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, in 2018 at Upernavik Museum Greenland, in 2018-19 SÍM Reykjavík (Iceland), and 2019-20 at Galleri Svalbard (Longyearbyen).
Film & Video Production
Film & Video Production
I use a highly portable and flexible filmmaking kit suited to fast-moving shoots on multiple locations in difficult conditions.
Equipment
Panasonic GH5 shooting UHD/4K V-LOG 24-60fps on an Atomos Ninja V to enable beautiful colour grading
DSLR/Lumix lenses for stills photography
DJI Air 2s UAV for 5K drone aerial video footage (European A1/A3 & A2 licenced)
GoPro for time-lapse / underwater
Rødelink radiomike kit & mikes
Zhiyun Crane Plus gimbal & Cine-Slider
Miller Professional Tripod
Additional camera operators, graphics design & equipment hire on request (link)
RATES
Freelance hire rate rates include all equipment, preparation & liaison.
Special rates are offered for educational, cultural & non-profit organisations.
There are many variables so please email some details of your requirements for a quote (scroll to bottom).
Shoot styles
Documentary, factual & interviews
Online/Web/Social Media video
Performances (Adam is musically trained)
Special event & promotional shoots
Aerial (drone) video & Stock footage
Video art & multimedia
Archival video recordings
Artist documentation & artworks
Simultaneous digital still photos at events requiring video & stills photography
VIDEO EDITING
Final Cut Pro X and DaVinci Resolve (high definition video post-production)
Delivery for broadcast, web/social media and mobile devices
→ VIEW COMPLETE
FILMOGRAPHY
→ STOCK FOOTAGE LIBRARY
Recent work
5 x 4' videos for RFDS (Flying Doctors)
Airbnb 'Experiences': vertical videos/stills
Documentaries for ABC & SBS TV incl. Cyprus: Echoes Across the Divide
I/Vs with Australians for o/seas docs.
Documentation of French artist Pierre Huyghe’s installation A Forest of Lines (Biennale of Sydney)
Short films for Sydney Opera House, TEDx Sydney, Ironfest, 350.org
10 x 2' video portraits of Flying Doctors
2 orchestral jazz DVDs (Universal Music)
Showreels: world music bands including Lolo Lovina, Black Train Band, Marsala.
Climate change shoots in the Arctic
above: video produced for organic Old Norsk Sheep farmers in Gratangen, Norway (2020).
right: circular video showing set-up of a cultural event in Arctic Norway. More experiments in screen shapes and aspect ratios here.
Inspired by Nature: Sustainable Design in Jørn Utzon's Sydney Opera House — 4 min video commissioned by SOH in 2014 ➙ more information
(All camerawork, video editing & production by Adam Sébire unless noted.)
Hayden's Story — Royal Flying Doctor Service Australia (RFDS) — from a series of 5 x 4min videos (2015). ➙ more information
Freelance Photography
Freelance Photography
Carried by the Wind (2008) by Adam Sébire & Merlijn Twaalfhoven, 10mins.
Adam photographs for a wide range of events, performances and organisations using the Panasonic GH5 camera (offering both stills and 4K video coverage if required).
Regular clients include the Royal Flying Doctor Service & Sydney Opera House. Special rates are available for the not-for-profit sector.
In 2012, Adam's 6-week solo exhibition Roads to Nowhere formed part of the Head On Photo Festival, Vivid Sydney and The Rocks Pop-Up in central Sydney, while his Below the Line series was shown at World Expo, Milan, 2015. His thermal imaging work is showcased here.
Contact
Contact
Contact Adam for enquiries & quotes via this form, or at adamsebire@gmail.com
Special rates for documentary, cultural, educational & non-profit organisations.
Update : Q1|2023
Adam was marooned in Arctic Norway 2020-2021 by Australian Covid-19 border restrictions & now works in there. He is available for video editing, camerawork, drone photography & filmmaking in Norway, Svalbard & the European Arctic.