For the Record and Te Moana Meridian were presented as part of the remote. response. request. series of film exhibitions at transmediale festival 2021. Crossing the lines between cinema, exhibition, and performance, remote. response. request. offered a distinct film-festival format through a series of commissioned works extended across the transmediale studio space and website.
The imagination – an essential capacity of the human self – can open up the world and allow us to see other realities untethered from dominant political and social structures. From the individual mind to the collective consciousness, the imagination can bind us together, establishing common affinities that can advance change and overhaul societal structures. The works presented in the first programme of remote. response. request. ask what place the radical imagination has in how we see and shape the reality around us; bringing action to the present by asking us to live, and not just imagine, a different way of being.
For the Record is a call-and-response exchange between London and Vancouver that resonates from opposing ends of the new transmediale studio space. In the commissioned work, filmmaker Rhea Storr and writer Phanuel Antwi reinterpret each other’s practice and sense of place, advancing a form of diasporic archive told through the bonds of Black kinship.
Sam Tam Ham’s Te Moana Meridian calls for a relocation of the Prime Meridian from Greenwich, UK, to Te Moana-nui-ā-Kiwa (the Pacific Ocean). Based on a real proposal to the United Nations General Assembly, Ham’s work activates the radical imagination as a method to challenge prevailing Western realities of space and time.
Artists:
Phanuel Antwi, Rhea Storr and Sam Tam Ham
Photos:
Luca Girardini and Ben Evans James
The imagination – an essential capacity of the human self – can open up the world and allow us to see other realities untethered from dominant political and social structures. From the individual mind to the collective consciousness, the imagination can bind us together, establishing common affinities that can advance change and overhaul societal structures. The works presented in the first programme of remote. response. request. ask what place the radical imagination has in how we see and shape the reality around us; bringing action to the present by asking us to live, and not just imagine, a different way of being.
For the Record is a call-and-response exchange between London and Vancouver that resonates from opposing ends of the new transmediale studio space. In the commissioned work, filmmaker Rhea Storr and writer Phanuel Antwi reinterpret each other’s practice and sense of place, advancing a form of diasporic archive told through the bonds of Black kinship.
Sam Tam Ham’s Te Moana Meridian calls for a relocation of the Prime Meridian from Greenwich, UK, to Te Moana-nui-ā-Kiwa (the Pacific Ocean). Based on a real proposal to the United Nations General Assembly, Ham’s work activates the radical imagination as a method to challenge prevailing Western realities of space and time.
Artists:
Phanuel Antwi, Rhea Storr and Sam Tam Ham
Photos:
Luca Girardini and Ben Evans James
