About this Event
Below, Upon, Above is a screening of three short films that engage with how our encounters to surfaces on Earth might inform ways of relating to environments off-Earth.
How might our relations to the ground beneath us inform ways of encountering environments beyond Earth? We bring together a series of video essays to explore the surface as a meeting place between different forms of attachment and imagination. Moving below, upon and above the surface, the programme considers how these positions shape the way we relate to worlds both near and distant, with the hope that these registers offer a starting point for thinking about extraterrestrial imaginaries.
Below the surface, Strata Incognita, by Grandeza Studio and Locument, encounters soil as a living ecosystem entangled with industrial processes, histories and mythologies. Its exploration of the hidden worlds beneath our feet invites us to reconsider how we approach environments that sustain us yet remain scarcely understood.
Upon the surface, Planetary Poetics, by Bethany Rigby and Sitraka Rakotoniaina, explores machine, microbial and ancestral relations to ground. Moving between earthly and extraterrestrial encounters, the film explores how intimacy and attachment might develop across differences of scale and experience.
Above the surface, a selection of short works by Joseph Popper considers how looking beyond Earth shapes perceptions of our own planet: Line Drawings, examines imagery of lunar exploration, Clear Ideas, connects promises of space settlement with visions of earthly collapse, and The Lonely Ones, brings imagined experiences of Mars into relation with an Earth transformed by wildfire.
Bringing these works into conversation, the screening offers a space for collective reflection on how our encounters with unfamiliar worlds are shaped by relationships already unfolding on Earth. Returning to the surface as a place of encounter, we want to consider how those relationships might inform ways of approaching other worlds, and how imagining elsewhere changes our attachments to this one.
Event venue & nearby stays
St. James' Hatcham Church (exhibition space & labs), Saint James's, London, United Kingdom
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