Futures Elsewhere Film Programme Part One

"It is doubtful if cinema is sufficient for this; but, if the world become a bad cinema, in which we no longer believe, surely a true cinema can contribute to giving us back reasons to believe in the world and in vanished bodies." – Gilles Deleuze

Join us live at the gallery for a night of film as we look at narratives and experiences that move beyond a Eurocentric view on technology as part of Among the Machines exhibition at the Zabludowicz Collection. Building on the legacies of western projections of the future, we look at technological and cultural dimensions of futurity, notions of time and change when opened up to a broader range of perspectives, struggles and traditions.

The film programme is divided into two parts, the first one focuses on film-makers from South East Asia and the Pacific, including, Thao Nguyen Phan, Gabber Modus Operandi, and Gavin Hipkins.

Whilst the second iteration expands on the entanglements of social technologies filtered through a trans-historical narrative of empire and colonialisation through the works of Kidlat Tahimik and Tabita Rezaire.

Thao Nguyen Phan
Trained as a painter, Phan is a multimedia artist whose practice encompasses video, painting and installation. Drawing from literature, philosophy and daily life, Phan observes ambiguous issues in social conventions and history. She started working in film when she began her MFA in Chicago. Phan exhibits internationally, with solo and group exhibitions including Tate St Ives, (Cornwall, UK, 2022); Chisenhale gallery (London, 2020); WIELS (Brussels, 2020); Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai, 2019); Lyon Biennale (Lyon, 2019); Sharjah Biennial (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2019); Gemäldegalerie (Berlin, 2018); Dhaka Art Summit (2018); Para Site (Hong Kong, 2018); Factory Contemporary Art Centre (Ho Chi Minh City, 2017); Nha San Collective (Hanoi, 2017); and Bétonsalon (Paris, 2016), among others. She was shortlisted for the 2019 Hugo Boss Asia Art Award. In addition to her work as a multimedia artist, she is co-founder of the collective Art Labor, which explores cross disciplinary practices and develops art projects that benefit the local community. Thao Nguyen Phan is expanding her “theatrical fields”, including what she calls performance gesture and moving images. Phan is a 2016-2017 Rolex Protégée, mentored by internationally acclaimed, New York-based, performance and video artist, Joan Jonas.

Gavin Hipkins
Gavin Hipkins is an New Zealand-based artist who works with photography and moving image. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia. He is currently Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. His photographs and moving image works interrogate how images create meaning through evolving technologies. His work explores the nation state, particularly in colonised countries in an era of re-imagined communities and ideas of social and political utopia. His recent moving image works engage film as a cinematic art that blurs conventional genres of essay film, documentary and experimental narrative structures. In 2014, Hipkins’ first feature film Erewhon — an essay adaptation of Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon, Or Over the Range — premiered at the New Zealand International Film Festival and Edinburgh Art Festival. His work has been exhibited widely over the last three decades including: Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Switzerland (2021); Recontres Internationales Paris/Berlin (2020); Videoex, Zurich (2019); 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2018); International Film Festival Rotterdam (2018, 2015); International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2017, 2016); The Jewish Museum, New York (2015); Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York (2014); Edinburgh Art Festival (2014); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011); Austrian Museum of Applied Art and Contemporary Art (MAK), Vienna, (2011) amongst others.

Gabber Modus Operandi
Gabber Modus Operandi is an Indonesian project expanding the sound of gabber music with elements taken from both the local pop music genre of dangdut koplo and traditional jathilan trance rituals. Gabber Modus Operandi combines frenetic music with equally intense performance, with DJ Kasimyn keeping the tempo around 200 bpm and Ican Harem screaming and thrashing, part rapper, part grind core vocalist. All with a healthy dose of dark humour.

This event is FREE, booking recommended.