Since modernity the notion of progress nearly always also implies technological progress. In principle the human body hardly changes, thus finding itself at a permanent conflict with the radically changing environment man constructs around himself. Secret Machines re-enacts the intense medical examinations that were conducted during Fordism in order to optimise the cooperation between man and machine. In Future Creatures the freedom of animation allows for the creation of a depressing world populated by strange creatures. A particularly simple robot – a toy panda – undergoes surgery in Naked; although what’s treated is obviously dead matter the viewer can hardly elude their empathic reaction. The dancers in Burning Palace on the other hand move as if by digital animation, the film thus pointing out both the painful process of homogenising man and technology as well as the extend to which our gaze has already been trained by the media.

Secret Machine, Reynold Reynolds, de 2009, 14min *
Future Creatures, Eunjung Hwang, us/kr 2009, 8min *
Naked, Tove Kjellmark, se 2009, 9min
Burning Palace, Mara Mattuschka & Chris Haring, at 2009, 32min

*Director will attend screening and Q & A