VISTAS Il /

IS IT FUTURE?

Curated by the festival team.

The Future Ahead Is Going To Be Weird AF, Part 2

Silvia Dal Dosso, Italy, 2024, DCP, colour, 10', slovenian subtitles

Welcome to the post-post-post-truth AI world. You know it’s not real. But you have to eat some bread in order to survive. And there is more out there. Synthetic personalities await you at the door. The short film is inspired by the work of Adam Curtis and is actually narrated by his synthetic voice, made with the Generative AI Text to Speech and Voice Cloning software ElevenLabs. Like Adam Curtis’s original documentary series, the movie is a compilation of archival materials, collected from the endless source of news and oddities that the internet still is.

Pacific Vein

Ulu Braun, Germany, 2024, DCP, colour, 12', slovenian subtitles

An endless tracking shot through a picturesque panorama of the American West. Among fake classical buildings, there is Julian Assange as a soda salesman pondering the digitalisation of our world. Around him, hippies, artists and homeless people struggle to express themselves, their messages captured by surveillance cameras. Fictional scenes merge with documentary footage. The empire is busy (with fitness and self-optimisation) and nervous (with the military and weapons) as the American Dream slides into a ghostly auto-suggestion. Where, actually, is the enemy and who has the image rights? A big glug of revitalising energy drink might help to make heavy thoughts seem light.

Tropic Temper

Elisabeth Gabrielle Lee, Singapore, 2024, DCP, colour, 16', english/slovenian subtitles

Tropic Temper cracks open Singapore’s code as a site of a disciplined tropics, deconstructing the roots that this garden city has forgotten.

This is not your Garden

Carlos Velandia, Colombia, 2025, DCP, black-white/colour, 13', english/slovenian subtitles

Rooted in wetlands, páramos and centennial forests at the verge of disappearing, memories and a speculated future collide. 500 years of exploitation, exile and resilience are nourished by a collective pain and a desire to crack through it all.

Mare Imbrium

Siegfried A. Fruhauf, Austria, 2024, DCP, 2.39, black-white, 12', no dialogue

Some time ago I was able to take a photograph that was as fascinating as it was ordinary: the reflection of the full moon on the surface of the sea. The allure of this double reflection of sunlight, from the moon over the surface of the water, brought me to the third level of reflection – the play of light on the cinema screen.

Loading Suns

Lara Reichmann, Slovenia, 2023, DCP, colour, 12'34'', slovenian subtitles

Loading Suns spark up in the absence of a human gaze. In its stead, ASTER, MODIS, MISR, CERES and MOPPIT brace the satellite for its journey through the harsh conditions of space. Terra, also known as EOS AM-1, is a multinational scientific research satellite, its monitoring mission set in the Sun-synchronous orbit around the planet, where five core sensors, ASTER, MODIS, MISR, CERES and MOPPIT, monitor Earth’s atmosphere, land and water. The story of Terra from its humble beginnings to its eventual demise and downfall. The satellite will one day cease to serve its purpose, its story told through the polyphony of anthropomorphised voices, the inner apparatuses, through which cognition, reflection and remembrance become instances of a communal foretelling.

The Future … Is Just Like You Imagined

Sara Bezovšek, Slovenia, 2024, DCP, colour, 13', slovenian subtitles

The film explores two distinct dystopian futures through the lens of our internet and pop culture imaginary.

Screening in the presence of the filmmakers.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Ulu Braun (1976, Germany) lives in Berlin and Finland. Between 1996 and 2005, he studied painting and film in Vienna, Helsinki and Berlin. He has been using the medium of video to explore the field between the visual arts and auteur cinema since 1997 and is one of the key figures who have transferred painting into video art. His works are regularly shown at film festivals and exhibited in art institutions.

Elisabeth Gabrielle Lee (1994, Singapore) is an artist, educator and research director. Her interdisciplinary practice utilises new media, oration and public programming to interrogate post-tropical environments, the psychospiritual traditional and the neo-gothic. She has exhibited work at various museums and is an Associate Lecturer who teaches cross programme in the School of Media and Communication at London College of Fashion.

Carlos Velandia (1996, Colombia) is a filmmaker with a background in film programming and New Media, whose work focuses on anti-hegemonic representation and expanded animation. His work with Angelica Testrepo has qualified for the 96th Academy Awards, BAFTA and Goya Awards and has won the Uppsala Award in Memory of Ingmar Bergman. Their films have premiered several times at the Annecy International Animation Festival.

Siegfried A. Fruhauf (1976, Austria) was a programme director at the Youth Media Festival Youki Wels. Since 2009, he has been teaching at the University of Artistic and Industrial Design, Linz, first, as a lecturer and now as a senior artist. He is the author of numerous works and shows in the areas of film, video and photography and has participated in various important international film festivals (Cannes, Venice, Berlinale, Sundance...).

Lara Reichmann (1995, Slovenia) is an artist working in video and animation. Her work is often based on stories of forgotten, erased or indefinable places and characters that dwell on the peripheries of archived history. Her recent projects focus on digital interfaces, glitches and time lapses through which parallel virtual landscapes of satellite imagery are built. She has participated in several group and solo exhibitions and has curated several exhibitions.

Sara Bezovšek (1993, Slovenia) is a visual artist working in the fields of internet art, experimental film and graphic design. Her artistic practice is characterized by a reappropriation of online and pop-cultural materials. Her narratives are both a critique and a celebration of the highly saturated online media landscapes we navigate daily. She has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions.

Silvia Dal Dosso (Italy) is an artist, writer and researcher in digital technologies and web subcultures. In 2016, she co-founded Clusterduck, an art collective working in the fields of research, design and transmedia. With Clusterduck, she created and curated collective exhibitions and interactive installations, such as #MEMEPROPAGANDA and Meme Manifesto, and publications, such as The Detective Wall Guide. She writes about art and technology.