collaborative worldbuilding 
&  speculative storytelling





︎ HOW TO WAKE UP THE GHOSTS


     2021 – EXH 
     Sculpture, audiovisual 

     Visuals in collaboration with Nadia Piet
     Script writing in collaboration with Lorena Solis Bravo
     Sound design by Ymer Marinus
     Voice acting by Bethany Andrzejak
     CGI by Francesco Luzzana
     
     Photography: Celina Veenendaal for Tetem and Beeldsmits for Roodkapje


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‘How to Wake Up the Ghosts’ is an immersive film installation that explores the consequences of climate crisis within the thresholds of artificial nature and interconnectivity. Based on a 1756 publication in which whale hunters found a piece of coral near the Arctic, the piece presents a speculative future with remnants of human efforts to counter the global ecological crisis. The work reveals a truth that is made up of reconstructed pieces of coral and reflects on the blurred lines between ‘reality’, ‘nature’ and ‘technology’ from a more-than-human perspective.

The voice of the coral takes you on a journey of reflection. As a plural entity, its being carries opposing perspectives on what it means to be alive in a neo-ecological world.

The script is co-written by GPT-2 models trained on texts by a.o. Donna J. Haraway, Bruno Latour, Timothy Morton, Jean Baudrillard and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. The artifical coral imagery is created using a CLIP+VQGAN method in order to let the machine dream up the landscape, while its physical being is 3D-printed using PLA mixed with wood fibers.

This project is supported and commissioned by Tetem as part of the SprintExpo trajectory. Supported by FIBER Festival through participation in the Reassemble Lab ‘Weaving With Worlds, and made possible by a financial contribution from CBK Rotterdam.