A Site Gallery is where you can experience a range of works currently leading the field of experimental documentary making, which speaks to our theme this year of ReConnection, exploring how both the digital and the physical can connect us.
The featured events in this show include:
Conversations with Bina48
A quest for friendship with a humanoid turned into a rabbit hole of questions regarding the future at the intersection of technology, race, gender and social equity. In 2014, artist Stephanie Dinkins started interviewing Bina48, one of the world’s most advanced social robots. Videotaped interactions aimed at getting the robot to answer the question, ‘Who are your people?’ The aim was to see if an artist and a social robot could build a relationship over time. After a few encounters, it became apparent that though Bina48 presents as a black woman, her retorts are often the constructions of the white men who programmed her. Possessing a black American's memories (data), she ultimately does not address the concerns or trauma of people of colour.
Captured by an Unprecedented Task
A film by the legendary cinema studio KyivNaukFilm, which popularized complex science concepts, and the explanation of what cybernetics is, not just as a “science, but also as a certain position, attitude to the world. Capturing with an Unprecedented Task presents two modernist phenomena at once, which are important for Ukrainian history and present and which help understand an emphasis on the term “cybernetic art.” A film by the legendary film studio KyivNaukFilm, which popularized complex science concepts in the accessible form of cinema. And the explanation of what cybernetics is, not just as a “science, but also as a certain position, attitude to the world.” Capturing with an Unprecedented Task collects the facts that demonstrate the decolonization approach to the history of Soviet science and its great contribution to global science. Kyiv of the 1960s–1980s (Ukrainian SSR) emerges here as the key center of cybernetics, the avant-garde metascience of the 20th century, and the first computers under a Ukrainian name (Promin) are mentioned.
Safe Space
A film illustrating the digital and physical resistance of ballroom cultures over the last thirty years showing their plight and resilience. Ballroom was created by trans and queer people of colour in response to a society that marginalises their existence. Safe Space edits together footage of ballroom performers from the early nineties, when the AIDS epidemic surged in New York City, and overlays it with contemporary statements from LGBTQIA+ refugees sourced from the internet and voiced by an AI.
KidzWorks
An interactive audio story told through the customer service line of a deeply dysfunctional toy company. KidzWorks is the story of a toy company where something has gone terribly wrong. The experience begins with the KidzWorks catalogue. Whoever chooses to call the company phone number is launched into an interactive adventure that burrows down into a dystopian scenario which proves, even more, Kafka-esque than the usual automated customer service line.
Out of Body Experience
Ukrainian artist collective Photinus Studio created an online performance where all participants become one malleable body and documented it in video.
A TikTok War
From sheltering in bunkers to travelling across Europe as refugees, TikTok has been appropriated to chronicle and explain the horror of the Ukraine war.
Santa Barbara
Inspired by the artist’s mother, who travelled to the US in search of the American Dream, this single-screen work explores sacrifice and aspiration.
On the Morning You Wake (To the End of The World)
Through the voices of people who experienced the 2018 ballistic missile alert in Hawai’i, this VR experience explores the real and imminent threat of nuclear weapons.
ROZSYPNE
A VR piece set in east Ukraine in 2014, where war raged - elderly Nina tries to preserve her everyday life in her small village, Rozspyne.
Gondwana
This VR project allows you to roam through Australia’s ancient Daintree rainforest as it simulates 100 year of climate change impact.
OnlyBans
A digital game that critically examines the online policing of sex workers and marginalised bodies.
Ravi and Emma
A world-first web doc experience that celebrates diversity and inclusiveness through humour and a unique take on love.
after HOURS
A full-motion video game that allows players a glimpse into the life of someone with a borderline personality disorder.
Feminist Economics Football: A Co-operative Game for Sheffield
A public football match, with three sides playing on a hexagonal pitch, illustrates intersecting themes in Feminist Economics.
AMERICA
This ‘guerrilla’ newsreel documentary portrays reactions to Vietnam by anti-war teenagers and African American militants, who talk tough and battle the police.