The Meltdown was an underground party during London Climate Action week that provided a raw space for people who are tired of performing optimism in a world that feels more impossible every day, yet somehow, still have genuine hope that revolution is within our grasp.
In partnership with Purpose and the Climate Film Festival, The Meltdown was organized by Messy Women and HERO. The event featured a special program of short films curated by the Climate Film Festival.
About the Films:
Terra Mater - Motherland (2023, dir. Kantarama Gahigiri): Technology and waste, in our lands, our systems, our bones. Here she stands, confidently, like a goddess surrounded by endless mountains of plastic, stench and rare earths. She cannot help but wonder, where is the space for healing?
Data Ghosts (2024, dir. Erica Shires): Data Ghosts is an experimental video that combines art, technology, and science. It was developed during a recent fellowship at ZiF: Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Bielefeld, Germany. The video includes images captured with a microscope, alternative photography processes, 3D LiDAR scans, and generative AI. This interdisciplinary approach examines parallels between the history of photography and the visual language being shaped by our rapidly evolving emerging technologies.
Our Ark (2021, dir. Kathryn Hamilton and Deniz Tortum): Our Ark is an essay film on our efforts to create a virtual replica of the real world. We are backing up the planet, creating 3D models of animals, rainforests, cities and people. We are archiving as if ecological collapse could be staved off through some digital Noah’s Ark of beasts and objects.
Vision of Paradise (2022, dir. Leonardo Pirondi): The great voyages to the "New World" were seen as expanding the frontiers of the visible and displacing those of the invisible. Therefore maps from that time render the real and imaginary. The film follows a voyage of the Brazilian Military in search of an imaginary island with the same name as their country. In the myth from 1483 Brazil, or Hy-Brazil, is known to exist to the west of Ireland and above the Fortunate Islands. Visão do Paraíso is an examination of the capacity of the human imagination and computer simulations to construct environments. Amidst the fine threshold of the real, simulated, and imagined, the film analyzes the contemporary ideas of virtual reality and their ambition to expand the frontiers of the physical world into a "New World."
