GRAND PRIX & FINALISTS
GRAND PRIX
SUBASH THEBE LIMBU
Subash Thebe Limbu(b.1981, Dharan) is a Yakthung (Limbu) artist from Eastern Nepal. He works with sound, film, music, performance, painting and podcasts. “Ladhamba Tayem; Future Continuous” imagines futures where Indigenous people’s actions and existence is in the space-time continuum. Through the conversation between two indigenous people from very different timelines – a Yakthung warrior from the 18th century and an indigenous time traveler from the distant future – the film asks the viewer to investigate their own potential role in the space-time continuum in searching for the possible futures to strive for, while reminding of the fight against colonialism and struggles to overcome. The work plays with the idea of time as not something rigid but ductile or weavable, which in turn paves the way for questions like how we might want to weave the future.
FINALIST
ZIKE HE
Zike He(b.1990, Guiyang) is a media artist whose recent projects are developed with research ranging from digital space and machine learning to infrastructure and deep time, and with the exploration of their shapes in daily life. “Random Access” is a mode of reading and writing datum (as in random access memory, RAM) where any arbitrary address can be accessed in equal time no matter where it is located. It also refers to how we process memory, especially in the time interwoven deeply with digital technology. As a speculative hypothesis of the experience in the Cloud World, the film is set in Guiyang, a mountainous and cloudy city, where many big data infrastructures locate, including the first iCloud data center in Asia and the host of FAST (Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope). The story follows a fictional narrative that happens on the second day after the city’s central data center unexpectedly crashes and reboots.
FINALIST
RIAR RIZALDI
Riar Rizaldi(b.1990, Bandung), works as an artist and filmmaker whose “Fossilis” is an oneiric cinema, a phantasmal science-fiction prognosis, an essay film and a tale of the verdant inferno of technological legacy, resonating the complexity of electronic waste in the 21st century of Asia where most of the discarded electronics in the planet is dumped and buried. With live-action sets built from waste materials, scenes from flea market of cannibalization parts, 3D assets and environment from abandoned projects, and AI images generated from unused images from a personal dataset, Fossilis is not just a narrative and representation on ewaste but also engages in the process of film production that involves both digital and physical waste objects as means of artistic practice.
FINALIST
SU HUI-YU
Su Hui-Yu(b.1976, Taipei) explores the connection between mass media, pop culture, memories of martial law and the post-colonial history of Taiwan and East Asia. His work “The Space Warriors and the Digigrave” combines fantasies and folk tales that hint at nationalism, Confucianism and chauvinistic values, based on a unique experience of the collective memory of the island nation during the martial law era. Using nowadays open-source AI tools combining with traditional film skills, Su wants either metaphysically or technically providing a solution of reconciliation for those who’s still struggling with the nations, identities, genders, morals, and ideologies.
FINALIST
zzyw
zzyw is an art and research collective formed by Yang Wang and Zhenzhen Qi in New York in 2017. It produces software applications, simulations and text as instruments to examine the cultural, political and educational imprints of computation.
“Other Spring” critically investigates the societal implications of computational mediation, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI). The project explores the potential of “heretic computing” (Alexander R. Galloway, 2020) to challenge the monolithic idea of efficiency and precision that characterizes our contemporary information society. Set in a speculative future where an all-seeing, algorithm-driven network UNO (Universal Network Observer) dominates, Other Spring reflects on the urgency of privacy, agency, and individuality in our increasingly interconnected world, encouraging dialogue for a more humane relationship with technology.
JURY
AARON SEETO
MARTIN HONZIK
RODERICK SCHROCK
SOOK-KYUNG LEE
YUKIKO SHIKATA
NOMINATORS
BI XIN
DO TUONG LINH
IRIS LONG
JE BAAK
JOEL KWONG
JOSELINA CRUZ
MANUPORN
LUENGARAMMICHELLE HO
MIKI FUKUDA
RITIKA BISWAS
RIZKI LAZUARDI
TAN HUI KOON
WU DAR-KUEN
OFFICIAL SCREENINGS
HEK
MACAN
Objectifs
Ars Electronica
EVM
Vision Hall
Virtual Ceremony