performance,film
FALSE
A found-footage horror film
made in realtime.
(This is a work-in-progress. )
FALSE
WITNESS
A found-footage horror film
made in realtime.
(This is a work-in-progress. )
2023-2024
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False Witness is an imitation of found-footage horror that indulges in the haunting lure of technological mystification through layers of processed footage, forging a cryptic absence. Blending wildlife trail cams, AI forgeries, and dreamlike nigh-vision footage, the film’s narrative evolves uniquely through code-based randomisation, emerging from a constant flux.
As part of the artist's investigation on layers of witnessing and the impact of absence amidst censorial erasure, the film looks at how technological processing, appropriation, and simulation of found footage – including the ones powered by today’s AI – mystify the act of ‘witnessing’. It will also offer a highly personal and empathetic response to the experience of living in an openly censored culture where only euphemism and simulation can carry messages within. The depths of said messages depend solely on the viewer’s willingness to deduce from the obvious, the gibberish, and the absent.
Throughout the experience, the off-screen gaze from the ‘witnesses’ and their complicity is invoked by a fluid spiral of content between surveillance, documentary, and fiction. Their expectations are repeatedly perturbed as the film morphs and takes shape. False Witness has no single purpose. It depicts, it arouses, it generates loopholes and crosses fourth walls. Four decades after Baudrillard’s prophecy of ‘simulacra’ – how are we coping with the disorientation, knowing what we know?
Exhibition:
False Witness (Pilot, 3-channel video art, 4”):
2023.9 - Sysco’s Creative AI Challenge, Outernet London, UK
False Witness (Film with live performance, 11”):
2024.3 - Violent Divinity, Luckypot 196, London, UK
2024.6 - Our Slanted. Deserted. Pursuit, hARTslane, London, UK
False Witness (Single-channel video, 2”):
2024.4 - Melting Walls, Montreux, Switzerland
Award:
2023-24 - The Jamie Iddon Award, Blast Theory, UK
As part of the artist's investigation on layers of witnessing and the impact of absence amidst censorial erasure, the film looks at how technological processing, appropriation, and simulation of found footage – including the ones powered by today’s AI – mystify the act of ‘witnessing’. It will also offer a highly personal and empathetic response to the experience of living in an openly censored culture where only euphemism and simulation can carry messages within. The depths of said messages depend solely on the viewer’s willingness to deduce from the obvious, the gibberish, and the absent.
Throughout the experience, the off-screen gaze from the ‘witnesses’ and their complicity is invoked by a fluid spiral of content between surveillance, documentary, and fiction. Their expectations are repeatedly perturbed as the film morphs and takes shape. False Witness has no single purpose. It depicts, it arouses, it generates loopholes and crosses fourth walls. Four decades after Baudrillard’s prophecy of ‘simulacra’ – how are we coping with the disorientation, knowing what we know?
Exhibition:
False Witness (Pilot, 3-channel video art, 4”):
2023.9 - Sysco’s Creative AI Challenge, Outernet London, UK
False Witness (Film with live performance, 11”):
2024.3 - Violent Divinity, Luckypot 196, London, UK
2024.6 - Our Slanted. Deserted. Pursuit, hARTslane, London, UK
False Witness (Single-channel video, 2”):
2024.4 - Melting Walls, Montreux, Switzerland
Award:
2023-24 - The Jamie Iddon Award, Blast Theory, UK