Book Launch: Room Tone

Rosa Aiello and Theresa Roessler present Room Tone, published by DISTANZ Verlag, a reflection on methods of documentary and experimental filmmaking as a relational and collaborative practice. What do filmmaking processes generate beyond stories told through images and sound—social and interpersonal dynamics, out-of-the-ordinariness, a hierarchy of roles, shifting states of observation, performativity, belonging, and resistance? Within the conceptual space of this question, Aiello has invited filmmakers Helin Çelik, Beatrice Gibson, and Ivana Mladenović to respond. An essay by Yaniya Lee contextualizes Aiello's ongoing interest in methodology and collaboration, and discusses her film works from her exhibition A Good Reputation at Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster (2025/26).

Room Tone is part of KONTEXT, a series by DISTANZ, that brings together artists and writers for an exchange between the worlds of writing and contemporary art.

Rosa Aiello is an artist, filmmaker, and writer. Her works, at once intimate and alienating, primarily take the form of time-based media: experimental films, as well as architectural installation and photographic series. She is interested in structures; both social constructs, like the family, and the actual built world, like architecture and city infrastructure. Her most recent solo shows include Westfälischer Kunstverein, Muenster (2025), Mint, Stockholm (2024), Anorak e.V, Berlin (2023), Kevin Space, Vienna (2022), Her works have been shown at Kasseler Dokfest, Matatabi Moving Image, Centre Pompidou, Fluentum, ICA London, The Whitney Museum, Cittipunkt, and SculptureCenter among others.

Theresa Roessler is a curator and writer currently serving as Artistic and Managing Director of the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster, Germany (since 2024). Her recent projects there include the performance-based exhibition Basically by Nikima Jagudajev; solo exhibitions by Eve Tagny, Rosa Aiello (both 2025), and Julia Heyward (2026); as well as collaborations with Peggy Ahwesh, Olga Hohmann and Sanna Helena Berger. A forthcoming exhibition by Steffani Jemison is scheduled to open in June 2026. From 2020 to 2023, she was a curator at Kunstverein Freiburg. Her independent curatorial projects include, among others, Taking Notes, presented as part of curated by at SOPHIE TAPPEINER (Vienna, 2023), as well as Fatima Moallim’s first exhibition in Austria at tart.vienna/Galerie Thoman (Vienna, 2024). She also contributes regularly to magazines and exhibition catalogues.