Pandemic Technologies (Control)

How can one lose CONTROL? The movies in this program closely zoom in on the control infrastructures we live by, which propagate across the networks, affects and media screens that dividuate us. These unquiet interventions relentlessly track the feudal and paranoiac modes of social regulation that are reactivated nowadays — modulating access, banal yet hegemonic images, simulated discussions, unseen surveillance, ideological remediations, policed dissent.—RP

Golnaz Moghaddam, A Friendly Conversation
Iran, 2021, 0:08, 429 KB

Moghaddam takes our breath away in laughter, as a familiar situation, told through the most familiar objects, creates an uncanny effect. Watch it three times so you can see it.—SB

Furkan Dönmezer, Ordinary Images
Canada, 2021, 0:31, 492 KB, processing time <1 second

A Rorschach test for state surveillance. The banal image = control—the possibilities are endless.—RP

Nadia Shams, Indoor
Iran, 0;47, 3.1 MB

Two rooms, two screens, two entirely different worlds.—LM

Ryley O’Byrne, Makellos
Canada, 2021, 0:44, 1.3 MB, processing time 7 seconds

Typing, ty-ping, t.y.p.i.n.g. Departing from pre-pandemic places. Eternally (and exclusively) arriving online ever since.—FY

Felix Klee, Police Running Wild
Germany, 2020, 0:40, 947 KB, processing time 10 seconds

A glimpse of culture parents may not understand and a commentary on societal structures that may not be worth hundreds of thousands.—SB

Leila Ahang, Sara Hanif, Maryam Alavi, and Marzieh Kordloo, Malayz
Iran, 2020, 2:00, 6.2 MB

An incredibly cute theatrical animation of the games played in the natural world. Hanif takes us to the deepest depths where a fish puts itself at risk! A political allegory?—SB

Qianlin Wang, Waiting Room Special Education Programme (series)
United Kingdom, 2021, 15:14, 11 MB, processing time 0:56

Dangerous as a drunken chihuahua with a laser pointer, Waiting Room Special Education Programme carves an art manifesto with a small-file chainsaw. Instructed by a humorless AI on the superiority of popular culture to art, Wang gamely inserts herself into the melee. No ducks were harmed in the making of this hilarious bingeworthy series.—LM

Sufan Wu, Stalker
China, 2020, 3:21, 5 MB, processing time 0:30

Hidden from view I lurk in the shadows. You don’t see me but I breathe down on your neck and make you run for cover. Hitchcockian suspense for the societies of control, surveillance, and (digital) compression.—RP

Dave Lojek, Do Kwan Tae
Austria/Germany, 2021, 2:43, 5.3 MB, processing time: 1 hour