“The Magic Mountain”, Eitan Efrat/Daniel Mann, Belgium, 2020, 68’

The Magic Mountain focuses on three locations in Europe where tunnels, quarries and caves were dug into the ground. These points of contact, where the surface of the earth is disturbed and narrow shafts allow vertical access into the subsoil, are sites of speculative knowledge from which beliefs, imaginations and unofficial historical anecdotes are derived and circulated. Exploring these underground locations, the Magic Mountain touches on the insatiable desire to extract natural resources from the ground, but also and more importantly, modes of knowing, sensing and seeing the world.