Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Graeme Arnfield

The Phantom Menace

Vidéo | 4k | couleur et n&b | 36:32 | Royaume-Uni | 2019

Welcome to the age of cosmic radiation! In 2021 the Sun fell to its lowest point of activity since the birth of science. Its magnetic waves that once shield the Earth dramatically weakened. During this solar lull powerful intergalactic cosmic rays penetrated our atmosphere. Originating eons ago from the explosive remnants of dead stars these silent, invisible and highly charged particles were only noticed in their affect - in what they did to our bodies and to the technologies we thought we could rely upon. Compiling stories from the recent past of interaction with cosmic radiation at ever descending altitudes, “The Phantom Menace” is a techno driven stroboscopic climate fiction film written in conversation with various Amazon warehouse workers. Initially inspired by the proposed plans for the U.S government to install their fragile predictive supercomputers deep underground in order to protect them from these upcoming ancient alien invaders, the film uses once costly low-resolution scientific visualizations produced on these supercomputers to speculate on the role of image labour in the subterranean near future. Planes crashing, computers malfunctioning and elections going haywire - these were just the prequel to the future.

Graeme Arnfield (b. 1991, UK) is an artist filmmaker & curator living in London, raised in Cheshire, UK. Producing sensory essay films from found often viscerally embodied networked imagery his films use methods of investigative storytelling to explore issues of circulation, spectatorship and history. Research topics have included: the politics of digital networks, the material distribution of ecological matter such as peat and asbestos and the adaptive circulation of global and local histories. His work has been presented worldwide including Berlinale Forum Expanded, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Courtisane Festival, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Sonic Acts Festival, European Media Arts Festival, Transmediale, IMPAKT Festival, Kasseler Dokfest, Plastik Festival, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, LUX, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Berlinische Gallerie, Signal Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery and on Vdrome. He graduated with a Masters in Experimental Cinema at Kingston University and recently completed a film with FLAMIN.