Watch Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s ‘Fog Dog’

Filmed at the Institute of Fine Arts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s Fog Dog follows the daily and nightly activities of a group of stray dogs that live in the school. The building was designed by pioneering Bangladeshi architect Muzharul Islam (1923-2012) and is characterized by the organic relationship between its interior and the surrounding green urban spaces. The dogs’ quotidian is traversed by many presences and signs – students and guardians, birdcalls and car horns, broadcasts, and spiritual entities – which coexist more and less harmonically with one another. 

Filipa Ramos: Fog Dog, your most recent film, takes place in the beautiful building of the Institute of Fine Arts in Dhaka. How did you discover it and why did you choose the location?

Daniel Steegmann Mangrané: When curator Diana Campbell Betancourt invited me to make new work for ‘Seismic Movements,’ the 2020 Dhaka Art Summit, she specifically asked me to make a piece in relation to the legacy of Muzharul Islam, a figure equally prominent as architect, political activist, and development planner. With a subtle hand and disarming modesty, his engagement and influence are felt across the country. For example, he invited Louis Khan to build the National Parliament House —a clear symbol of the ambitions of a land then still longing for independence.

The parliament is contemporary to the foundation of Brasilia, but the connections between the two buildings don’t end here. I was shocked to find myself in a near-identical place despite having traveled to the other side of the world. The Institute of Fine Arts could easily be mistaken for a work by Lucio Costa, and the trees around it are mango trees and frangipanis, equally common to Brazil. It was like being in the same location but with a completely different population, almost in a parallel present.

During my first visit, we also traveled to Pahapur in Bangladesh, where we saw a group of archeologists digging the ruins of the old city. Eighteen centuries of history, layer upon layer, were being surgically uncovered in front of our eyes. It was very important for me to see the dynamics of this region's history, where even the rivers can move away and change their beds, sometimes hundreds of kilometers away.

FR: I remember when you first described the work you were about to make to me, you mentioned you were interested in making a horror film from the point of view of dogs. What led you to try to explore the animals’ perspective in such a codified cinematic genre?

DSM: I had been thinking for a while about making a ghost movie. At first, I wanted to make it in the rainforest in Brazil, which is inhabited by so many entities, living and not. As it was supposed to be a film about the remaining indigenous people of an endangered area, it became clear that it would be a horror film, because this is what we are witnessing here in Brazil: a horror film, but a real one.

I was in that mindset when I arrived in Dhaka and started to navigate this deeply layered country, which is a delta with no geological bedrock below, so it’s rapidly sinking, eroded by rising seas and melting Himalayas, its own horror story so strongly linked to that of Brazil. I realized that we are not only haunted by ghosts of the past – for example, the colonial rape that both countries suffered – but also by ghosts of the future. And I don’t mean ghosts from ‘the future that will not be anymore,’ as in Mark Fisher’s book Ghosts of My Life, I mean the very future that is going to be: a future that, while not being here yet, is already present.

If the indigenous film was meant to be told from the point of view of the entities that populate the forest (that are the forest), I started wondering about the main narrators in Bangladesh. It’s very common to have dogs inhabiting buildings there. As in most Muslim countries, in Bangladesh dogs are not regarded as pets, and although humans and dogs live in the same spaces, they live parallel existences, mostly ignoring one another.

I thought I would make the film from the point of view of the dogs, and all human action would happen in the background. In the end, it didn't quite turn out that way, because people and their stories are very interesting, and while writing the script, the human characters' importance grew.

FR: One of the fascinating features of Fog Dog is that it’s impossible to tell what is real and what is not. Can you tell us about the filming process and how you balanced documentary and fiction?

DSM: We spend a few days just documenting the life of the school, getting into its rhythms, and getting to know the dogs that lived there, gaining their confidence by petting and giving them cakes.

We inserted a variety of situations, some spontaneous, like asking someone to repeat something, and others more complex, but open to chance. Many wonderful things happened in front of the camera that were impossible to use in the editing room: There was a take were a dog entered the frame, timed ideally, greeted an arriving student, and sat in the perfect spot. This wasn't credible in the film, it felt staged, and the dog felt trained.

The scripted parts came with different challenges: On one hand, they were simpler, as we had more control over them and could be much more precise, but on the other, it became clear to me that I couldn’t impose my own words or my point of view. To bring from abroad an entirely pre-conceived script would have been a repetition of colonial violence. So, while being there, I tried to figure out how to write an exact situation and then create the time and space for the subjects' point of view to be expressed in their own words.

Daniel Steegmann Mangrané is represented by Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, New York City, and Brussels, and Esther Schipper, Berlin.

Daniel Steegmann Mangrané: Dog Eye runs until November 22nd at the Kunsthalle Münster, Hafenweg 28, 48155 Münster.