HD video, 24 min, 2016
based on a novel by Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Merchant
shot on location: ExoMars testing site, Namafjall, Iceland; Psiloritis (Mount Ida), Crete, Greece
Narratives about Mars reveal how the development of imagination is conditioned by the development of technology. These narratives – scientific, literary, sociological – come to us in various ways: let us treat them and their formats as a testimony of a certain way of thinking, a testimony of a given time. „UNVEILING A PARALLEL” registers these temporal shifts in imagery. It visualizes what people once and now imagined as the future – shifts not only in time, but also in space. Once Mars was that other place, which hosted projections of the future – now we know that there is no other place.
The film uses a fictional narrative based on a Victorian feminist utopian novel “Unveiling a Parallel” (1893), which presents the planet Mars as an idealized parallel world of better governance, equality between men and women, respect for nature and exemplary system of values. The story’s main protagonist, a traveller from Earth, is represented by a mobile camera-sculpture. The narrative is followed by a musical video clip titled “Environmental Catastrophe” which tells about the destructive effects of human activity on the planet Earth. Mars here is presented as a potential (but unrealistic) escape route for fugitives from the devastated Earth.
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