Projects matching: Graeme Arnfield

Synopsis

THE FLESH OF LANGUAGE draws connections between zoological research related to the extinct ‘Irish Elk’, parapsychologist Konstantin Raudive’s EVP tape recordings and tactics of media preservation as explained by an archivist. Analogies are drawn between extinct deer and dying media formats which come head to head in a choreographed, exuberant species-resurrection scene.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2024

Synopsis

A nightmarish essay film on the history of the doorbell, tracing its invention and constant reinventions through 19th-century labour struggles, the nascent years of narrative cinema, and contemporary surveillance cultures. Along the way producing a terrifying portrait of the technological ideologies that have shaped our present and the nightmares of the people they emerged from.
Official Selection Berlin International Short Film Festival 2023 - Forum Expanded - World premiere

Synopsis

Equal parts systems literacy and kaleidoscopic ecological fantasia - an essay film about butterflies, computer viruses and all the things they touch.
Official Selection Hamburg International Short Film Festival 2022

Synopsis

Welcome to the age of cosmic radiation! THE PHANTOM MENACE compiles stories from the recent past of interaction with cosmic rays at ever descending altitudes. Planes crashing, computers malfunctioning and elections going haywire - these were just the prequel to the future.
Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2020 - Forum Expanded - World premiere

Synopsis

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

Synopsis

Excavated from the world’s largest cave system 'Colossal Cave' is a love letter from the prehistory of the Internet.

Synopsis

Out of the darkness a sound emerges. Terrified people take to the streets in search of its source. They get their cameras out, documenting the sky. We watch on, our muscles contract and our pupils dilate.
This film piece explores the circulation, spectatorship and undeclared politics of contemporary networked images.