ENDO EXO contemplates the origins of humanity’s impulse to collect, catalogue, and preserve life—the ancient fascination that gave rise to wunderkammern, where creatures were stuffed, mounted, and skeletonized. The film asks whether the root of this practice lies in a more primal voyeurism: a desire to possess, to observe, to make nature hold still. Under glass and artificial light, these preserved skeletons reveal both reverence and transgression—illuminating the tension between curiosity and care, fascination and ethical reflection.
The camera moves through spaces of accumulation, where thousands of remains lie archived in quiet rows. Here, the boundaries between devotion and domination blur—a manic pursuit of order that mirrors the human longing to master the living world even as it slips away. For both Carsten Nicolai and Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose shared awareness of ecological fragility shaped their collaboration, ENDO EXO becomes a meditation on mortality, presence, and the silent legacies left in death’s wake.
No human figure enters the frame. Instead, the gaze drifts through the traces of what once lived—the skeleton as both vessel and void, its geometry speaking of memory, loss, and transformation. Sakamoto’s composition 20220207 from 12 (2023) resonates within this space, its restrained tonal pulse interlacing with Nicolai’s visual rhythm to form a fragile equilibrium where perception deepens into reflection.
As part of Nicolai’s 24-part film cycle 20,000 —inspired by Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea— ENDO EXO extends a meditation on perception, ethics, and transformation. It traces the faint, enduring light that shimmers within the structures of the past, illuminating how the act of seeing can also be an act of remembrance.
director / editor / director of photography: carsten nicolai
music: ryuichi sakamoto
producer: norika sora
executive producer: toni jaschke
production manager: safien van westing
1st assistant camera (crew 1): oliver blind
1st assistant camera (crew 2): daniel merget
2nd assistant camera: tristan guercovich
digital imaging technician (crew 1): frank hellwig
digital imaging technician (crew 2): mario krohnfuß
postproduction: simon mayer
postproduction: axel klostermann
technical assistant / design: nibo
20220207 by ryuichi sakamoto from the album 12 (2023)
courtesy of kab america inc.
special thanks to: museum für naturkunde leibniz-institut für evolutions- und biodiversitätsforschung in berlin, christiane funk & gesine steiner
supported by: anorak film gmbh, acht frankfurt
© studio carsten nicolai, noton . archiv für ton und nichtton, all rights reserved