2021

​

Smartphone video, 10 mins.

​

Starring Anaïs Comer and Billy Sassi

Camera: Philip Speakman

 

In an unspecified moment in time two spacemen from Earth are stranded on a distant planet while a war rages back at home. They wait to be retrieved and returned to Earth but can't seem to make contact with their colleagues back at the base.

 

Our two unnamed spacemen spend their time expressing discontent at their idleness, playing unknown board games with space rocks and role-playing their imagined part in the war.

 

The work stems from thinking about how our current moment interacts with contemporary anxieties about productivity and raises questions about the value of our time and activity. What does it mean to slow down, to stop moving forward, reduce productivity and waste time? How does this affect our understanding of our roles in society, in particular what does it mean if we can’t personally ‘fight’, can’t go to ‘war’ against the Coronavirus?

 

This film seeks to explore images of amateurism and their aesthetics; how that interacts with politics of taste and how this may be used to engage with ideas of masculinity.

​