– In which a storm breaks out in a computing division and its simulation is turned inside out – Fourth episode of The Unmanned series, “The Uncomputable” is the story of a failure: the building in the northern plains of Scotland of a giant climate prediction factory by meteorologist Lewis Fry Richardson. This enormous inverted terrestrial globe supposed to host 64,000 women-computers and able to forecast the world weather was never built. Partly shot in a wind tunnel (used for aerodynamics simulation), this episode shows the impossible attempt at building the factory and the collapse of its hypothesis of a global computation. As a storm breaks out over the construction site for the simulation, the film itself and all of the parameters are progressively turned inside out.
The collaborative work of Fabien Giraud and Raphael Siboni is part of a reflection on the history of cinema, science, and technology. For them, cinema is a technological invention which fundamentally transforms our relationship to the world. Giraud and Siboni are fascinated by technological acceleration. So much so that they imagine the possibility of a cinema without a human figure; one which does not subject bodies to the frame, nor bend gestures to duration. Each of their films bring radically different temporalities that are foreign to our present. They choose to film in hidden places, like the particle accelerator under the Louvre museum in La Mesure Louvre (2011), or abandoned places like the Greek temple in Bassae-Bassae (2012) where human absence is hollowly felt. Giraud and Siboni are also inspired by popular culture, micro-histories and major political conspiracies.
– In whiche a lemyng starre returneth in the yeer foretolde and alle thing that spak to us turneth ayeyn to silence – Sixth episode of The Unmanned and sharing the same camera movements as the episode “1997 – The Brute Force”, “Mil troi cens quarante huyt” refers to the appearance of a comet in 1759 – thus validating the computation and rational prediction of its return by the British astronomer and mathematician Edmond Halley...
Olive Martin & Patrick Bernier: New Kahnawaké “From my house I take the Proxad, Nantes and Brittany, to Paris where I get on the Teleglobe which takes me to Montreal via New York, and then finally take the Mohawk which drops me off at the 7 Sultans Casino” (extract from the commentary based on an internet connection route plotted by Traceroute*) The Mohawk, the emblematic Frontier River named during the period of American colonization...
– In whiche a lemyng starre returneth in the yeer foretolde and alle thing that spak to us turneth ayeyn to silence – Sixth episode of The Unmanned and sharing the same camera movements as the episode “1997 – The Brute Force”, “Mil troi cens quarante huyt” refers to the appearance of a comet in 1759 – thus validating the computation and rational prediction of its return by the British astronomer and mathematician Edmond Halley...
– In which he changes the rules of the game and all imitations are suddenly interrupted – Third episode of The Unmanned series and replicating the editing structure of “1834 – La Mémoire de Masse”, “The Outlawed” takes place in August 1953 on the island of Corfu, in Greece, at the Club Méditerranée resort where Alan Turing spent his last summer...
– Thisstoryoffriedrichkurzweiliwanttotellit- myselfhowhelivedinthisroomandh – Inspired by the writings of the feral child Kaspar Hauser and told by the young Friedrich, both father and son of Ray Kurzweil, this story unfolds on the microscope images of a blade cutting through metal...
– In which an intelligence going back to its place of origin discovers the agony of gods on which it thrives – Seventh and last episode of The Unmanned , “a flood” is set in 1542 as the first conquistadors enter the land later to be known as the Silicon Valley...
McCarthy’s Mother Pig performance at Shushi Gallery in 1983 was the first time he used a set, a practice which came to characterize his later works...
Drinks 6pm, Screening 7pm, Conversation 7:15pm ‘Where that which predicts its past lives working and dies fighting.’ Foregrounding a frontal approach and experiments that often push materials and technical resources to the limits of their strength, scale and movement, the works of Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni challenge the ever more obvious power of machines and “modes of existence” that are taking shape separately from us human beings, sometimes without our being able to see or inhabit them...