'Hypervigilance,' CPH:DOX's InterActive Showcase Interview: AI, Racism
'Brains in the State of Suspension'
Courtesy of CPH:DOX Inter:Active
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For those ready to explore and experience creativity at its intersection with technology, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX), is offering a space full of curiosity: its Inter:Active Exhibition at the Danish capital’s Kunsthal Charlottenborg.
It features a curated selection of immersive experiences, educational games, VR offerings, and anything else that doesn’t neatly fit into our traditional understanding of film or TV. This year’s title, “Hypervigilance,” feels extra timely and fitting for an age of digital saturation, global unrest, and the rise of authoritarianism, oligarchs and surveillance.
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Or as Mark Atkin, the curator of CPH:DOX Inter:Active and head of studies at talent development program CPH:LAB, put it when unveiling this year’s program: “The works expose the collective anxiety of a society on high alert, where we struggle to retain agency over our image, body, and voice. For queer, disabled, and displaced communities, this state of watchfulness is deeply ingrained, a survival instinct in a world built on scrutiny and exclusion. For others, it has become the new norm shaped by 24-hour news cycles, extractive capitalism, authoritarian violence, and the pressure to conform in a world where we’re always being watched.”
In this environment, the artists in Hypervigilance look to expose and take on these pressures, looking to wrest back control through activism and defiance, or sexual expression. The 23rd edition of CPH:DOX runs through Sunday.
Asked what goes into the curation of a broad-based program like this year’s, Atkin tells THR: “The way this exhibition comes about is through seeing lots and lots of work, talking to artists and other curators, and also people submitting ideas to me through different programs, such as CPH:LAB, an incubation program that I run.”
He may come from the more traditional film and TV world, but has focused on immersive works for a long time now. And his approach differs from that of film programmers. “The way the exhibition is curated is a little bit more akin to how you curate an art exhibition rather than most film festivals,” Atkin explains. “We are trying to see what artists are thinking about at the moment, what’s bothering them, and then we draw these threads together, which is why we have the theme of hypervigilance this year.”
Shares the curator: “I’m really quite interested in stories from people from marginalized groups, because they generally have a lot to say, and this is a documentary festival, so it’s probably even more the case here.”
Such groups have long been used to being hypervigilant, but that mindset is something Atkin sees spreading in our time. “We have works made by people from these marginalized groups in the exhibition, but it also seems as though this state is even more widespread in society now,” he explains. “We feel that we’re manipulated by unseen forces that we don’t properly understand, but we know that they’re there. I think the general level of hypervigilance is rising across society. And it proved to be quite prescient as bombs are now raining down in the Middle East. It’s pretty much the state that we’re all in right now, globally.”
What does that mean for the tone of works featured in the Inter:Active exhibition at Copenhagen? “It’s quite dark,” Atkin tells THR. “But also embedded within each of them is a form of resistance or rebellion, and that rebellion comes either through artistic creation or, in some cases, through sexual liberation. Or through activism.”
Concludes the curator: “There’s also the hope that people, through experiencing these works, many of which are multisensory, will feel much closer to the works as more of a participant than a passive viewer. And we hope that this activates activism in the individuals going through the exhibition as well.”
Check out brief descriptions of this year’s Inter:Active works below. Of course, to really feel and understand them, you have to experience them yourself.
Brains in the State of Suspension
Kakia Konstantinaki
This live performance horror film explores disembodied intelligence, domination, and horror as self-aware brains confront the monstrous consequences of th