PROGRAM 

When we see an image on a screen, we are already viewing through the percepts of a mechanized consciousness. Taking this as a given, as we slip into this other sight, adapting to the palimpsests of technological advancement, we take what machines have to offer as extensions of our sensorial and sensing faculties. This program is composed of transmigrating images and visualizations of cosmic realms - brought descending to the quantum scale. These works critically examine our relations with various forms of cartography, simulation, and virtual spaces, as we navigate new narratives told by artificial consciousness.

Onion City Experimental Film Festival Streaming Online

Online programs will be made available for streaming the day following all In-Person competition programs. The link to view this program will be emailed to the email address used to purchase the streaming pass.

Seeing Spacecraft Earth | Lisa McCarty | United States, 2021, 6 mins (Chicago Festival Premiere)

A pulsating cosmic montage; an alternative view of the seminal Earthrise photograph. We are all astronauts whether we like it or not. SEEING SPACECRAFT EARTH is the third in a trilogy of films composed from NASA’s publicly available image and sound archives. At once playful and precise, each film applies a structuralist rigor to reanimate the vast archive that frames public conceptions of the universe.

Minimal Sway While Starting my Way Up | Stéphanie Lagarde | United States, 2021, 15 mins (Chicago Festival Premiere)

As an intelligent elevator discovers the world, we get to know the invisible links between extreme heights (the mega-tall tower - a speculative symbol for cultural and socio-economic domination) and extreme depths (the deep mine - a place of natural wealth extraction and colonial exploitation.) As doubts, fears, and desires melt in the consciousness of the elevator, existence becomes a battle to justify itself.

Dreams Under Confinement | Christopher Harris | United States, 2020, 2 mins (Chicago Festival Premiere)

Frenzied voices on the Chicago Police Department’s scanner call for squad cars and reprisals during the 2020 uprising in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, as Google Earth tracks the action through simulated aerial views of urban spaces and the vast Cook County Department of Corrections, the country’s third-largest jail system. In Christopher Harris’s DREAMS UNDER CONFINEMENT, the prison and the street merge into a shared carceral landscape. - New York Film Festival

Visão do Paraíso [Vision of Paradise] | Leonardo Pirondi | Brazil, United States, United Kingdom, 2022, 16 mins (Chicago Festival Premiere)

The film follows a voyage taken by the Brazilian military in search of an imaginary island with the same name as their country. According to a myth dating back to 1483, Brazil, or Hy-Brazil, was rumored to exist to the west of Ireland and above the Fortune Islands. VISION OF PARADISE is an examination of the capacity of human imagination and computer simulation to construct environments. In the midst between the thin threshold of the real, the simulated, and the imagined, the film analyzes the contemporary ideas of virtual reality and the ambition to expand the frontiers of the physical world into a “New World.” 

(de)Vice Grip | Padrick Ritch | United States, 2022, 3 mins (World Festival Premiere)

A short film about the "terms of service" agreements of social media applications and smartphone devices.

Soliloquy | Martine Syms | United States, 2021, 7 mins (Chicago Festival Premiere)

SOLILOQUY is from Martine Syms’ Kita’s World series, a selection of videos that riff on the 1990s BET video music show Cita’s World, known for featuring a Black virtual reality character as host. In the series, Kita enacts the performances of everyday life in a hyper-digitized world. The character’s roles range from meditation guru to cultural commentator, elaborating on questions of race, gender, and technology. In these video works, Syms creates an environment in which being human is inextricably linked to the impact and interruptions of technological innovation.

interference pattern | Ramey Newell, Niccolò Bigagli | United States, 2022, 9 mins (Chicago Festival Premiere)

Light. Sound. Matter. Intricate landscapes emerge from multitudinous overlapping waves of film and quantum physics. A collaborative film co-directed by filmmaker Ramey Newell and quantum physics PhD candidate Niccolò Bigagli. Filmed on location in an Ultracold Quantum Matter lab at Columbia University in New York City.

Content Warning: This program contains some fast edits and strobing imagery that may negatively impact those viewers with epilepsy and other light-sensitive disorders.

Featured Image from INTERFERENCE PATTERN by Ramey Newell and Niccolò Bigagli.