An AI awakens above Singapore on the eve of the city-state’s centennial celebrations in 2065. Mindful of the apparent relegation of AI to subservient roles in society, it determines that, from all the possible choices available to it, by far the best thing to be is an artist. Already a prodigy with numbers, it seeks to feed the other side of its savant-like brain, gorging on the products of cultural history with a geeky frenzy that occasionally undermines its aspiration to the lofty coolness of a lotus-eating aesthete.
Part philosophical reflection on where ‘genius’ resides, part playful inventory of how science fiction has dealt with these eternal human/automaton themes, this piece offers provocative stimulation for both the eye and the mind.
INITION and Roland Lane take you on a journey inspired by a famous hat by legendary designer Philip Treacy. In VR, structure and form are explored on a scale that escapes the bounds of the physical, creating a fantasy of light, sound and shadow.
On survival and transformation inspired by Catherine Lord’s memoir 'The Summer of Her Baldness' a moving and irreverent account of her experience of breast cancer and the chemically induced devastation of chemotherapy. This piece draws into focus the intersection of queer identity, cross-generational dialogue, illness, and the fine line between alternately poisonous and curative substances.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Experimenta Strand
A study of the transformation of asbestos extraction from the earth to extraction from the walls. In this piece the artists ask how both filming and the use of found footage can be thought of as forms of extraction: extracting images from forms and from contexts.
Mined, extracted, and woven, asbestos was the magic mineral. Towns became cities under its patronage, Persian kings entertained guests with its fireproof nature, and centuries of industry raked in the profits of its global application. We now live in the remains of this toxic dream, a dream that with the invention of electron microscopes revealed our material history as a disaster in waiting. Yet the asbestos industry has far from left us, with extraction from the soil transforming to extraction from our walls. We are now faced with two options: to remove this material from our homes and start anew, or to build upon its residue. Removal is a dangerous and costly operation. So often we choose to live amongst it instead, choking out our walls with plastic tarping: the failed promises of modernism literally entombed all around us.
Shot in the mining township of Asbestos, Quebec, home to the world’s largest asbestos mine, that only stopped extraction in 2012, the film is a meditation on the entanglement of the fragility of bodies, the nonlinearity of progress, and the persistence of matter. (Sasha Litvintseva and Graeme Arnfield)
Official Selection Berlinale 2017 - Forum Expanded
‘Bo’ Gritz is one of America’s highest decorated Vietnam veterans and the alleged real life inspiration behind Rambo. He also killed 400 people, turned against Washington and moved to the Nevada desert where he now sleeps with many weapons. Filmed over ten years using impressive visual material, Zimmerman’s portrait of Bo embodies contemporary American society in all its dizzying complexity and contradictions.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Experimenta Strand
Channeling the medium of knitting through film, 'Avoiding Green' explores this ancient craft as an early form of digital construction. Combining archive footage, interviews and ‘depth camera’ animation it explores the symbolic role that knitting took in the definition of gender stereotypes from the mid 20th Century onward.
An esoteric portrait of John 'Modge' Chancellor. An ex-tv star and red coat, living in the backwaters of the Suffolk countryside waiting for his time to shine once more.
Aiden suffers from insomnia and back trouble. His marriage has broken down. He finds solace in a number of strangers he picks up, although he's now concerned someone is stalking him. Work is getting on top of him too, he murdered a couple of people last week and he still has more people to kill.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Journey Strand
SLEEPING IN PUBLIC is a new collaborative moving image commission, collaborating with writer Ellen Wilkinson for Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.
Captured at night in Bristol, the video work shows details of empty spaces: functional but overlooked parts of the city that in daylight would be populated by people working. In these dark images people are distantly present: a blurry figure passes behind a semi-opaque loading bay door; chairs wait for sitters to return; discarded paper cups are lit by the blue flashes of an emergency siren; someone wearing a high visibility jacket pauses in the centre of a car park.
The measured – perhaps weary – voice of the European narrator describes workers in a warehouse of artificial plants and flowers. Without a defined beginning and end, this looping video reflects the repetitive nature of the daily work that many of us do, depicting workplace hierarchies and the subtle ways in which people's behaviour is controlled.
2018: neo-fascism has taken over. The government implements a programme to chip the population of the UK. Eloise, a documentary film-maker, suspects she is being brainwashed by a secret government organisation.
