While the experiential installation featured two films – Vermilion and Somnium, Ramirez created about 21 such films, or rather ’moving images‘ as he prefers to call them. Describing the films, he says, “These are the last two and they are epic. Somnium, which was produced and finished in 2017, is three-and-a-half hours long and Vermilion is an hour-and-40 minutes. The films are done in verses as opposed to scenes. So they are very much like poems. I am a painter; I come at it as film through painting. Somnium started when I discovered the short story by Johannes Kepler, the 1620 piece of writing, that was basically the first piece of writing that caught up with science fiction. It was in Latin; Somnium means dream. It’s surreal, it’s dreamy, it deals with travelling to the far side of the moon, initiation, it deals with witchcraft. Johannes Kepler, the astronomer’s mother was condemned of witchcraft and for 20 years he tried to exonerate her. It’s his journey. There is an older astronomer in it and I used a German rockstar here named Blixa Bargeld, who is the elder and Patti Smith is the silent narrator in the film. It’s designed to be projected circular on the disk and the entire three-and-a-half hours is completely silent. It’s designed so that a person could enter at any of the verses. In one verse, you get the feeling of the Gold Projections and you get a sense of the moving image. Somnium is stylised after Goya’s black paintings. I make drawings and develop the dreams, it’s always coming from painting. The door is from the moving image in through painting.”

Vermilion in contrast is a contemporary piece commissioned by the WZB Berlin Social Science Center at the Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin’s new concert hall designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry. Ramirez was asked to do a piece on ‘New Europe’. To approach the same, Ramirez said, “I really wanted to come at it through the door of the poetic and dreams. Like when you are watching The Gold Projections, it’s very much like dreaming. It’s almost a meditation.”

The work was shot in the south of Spain, creating a sense of complementarity between Somnium and Vermilion. Describing the moving image, Ramirez explains, “It deals with displacement. It’s about longing, a longing to go home. It’s about migration, first to the north because of economic possibility or climate justice or whatever, the seeking of a better life but the interior world calling home". The title of the work references the colour, which is an orange-red. Ramirez draws the link saying, “It’s ground from cinnabar, which was a mercury mineral which was dug up in Spain by slaves long ago. It was very expensive at the time, more expensive that lapis. It’s important, the colour of the land, the colour of the road. Gold projections are painting and dreams. It’s basically a language that hasn’t been done before and it is finding its path between these two forms.”

Gold projections are painting and dreams. It’s basically a language that hasn’t been done before and its finding its path between these two forms. – Joe Ramirez

Inspired by filmmakers like Andrei Tarkovsky, who opened the door cinematically to dreams, the ability of film to convey the same in language excited him. He compares it to standing in front of a Rothko painting saying, “It’s a chance to let go.” He further reminisces, “I remember a long time ago I saw Pollock’s Lavender Mist at MOMA and I had never seen the original and had seen it in books for years. But, when I stood in front of it, the thing was just moving and breathing in every direction and the colour harmony is a total masterpiece. That’s the feeling that I really want. Or someone like James Turrell, where in so many ways he changes everything but in his more simple pieces, it’s a colour change and it’s a drift and he is breathing light but it’s one big breath for him. But, for me, it’s more like breathing our lungs.” When working with his cinematographer then, he is always in search of ’breathing light‘ as he puts it.