Pandora's box

Notes

The future imagined in the past, the past as a part of the future, the here and now is the path this programme travels.

‘We missed you, where have you been?’ asks a deer. German filmmaker, photographer and painter, Hanna Maria Heidrich’s video for an environmental campaign was the start of her career that has brought her 40 international awards for commercials and shorts. Nature returns to a future Toronto as imagined by Lisa Jackson, a Canadian and Anishinaabe film director and producer while Anna Zhilyaeva, a French/Russian immersive artist and tilt-brush live performer paints an unnamed landscape in an unspecified time. She is followed by feminist Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, whose agenda include climate change, identity, power structures and gender politics as seen in the trailer for the series based on her book The Handmaid’s Tale. Kara appears to be yet another handmaid who, having been developed by the French company Quantic Dream, resists the logic of our near future. The assumptions of the video game world is questioned by Skawennati, a Mohawk multimedia artist who time travels her avatar through redefined indigenous cyberspace.

The Jamaican-born Canadian writer and editor Nalo Hopkinson then explains the importance of Black science fiction and Ursula K. Le Guin, (1929–2018), whose literary career as writer of speculative fiction started in 1959, talks about assailing what was an almost exclusively male dominated territory. Katherine Johnson, an African-American mathematician and NASA employee, whose calculations proved critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landing programme, is painted by Rosie Summers, a British virtual reality artist and tilt-brush live performer for the International Women’s Day 2020, the year Katherine Johnson died.

The programme finally arrives in the past of the here and now with Maltese–Australian artist and filmmaker Pia Borg’s house that evolves, collapses, reconstructs and reconfigures itself in space and time.

We miss you, 2:08

Source: Vimeo

Nature returns to a future Toronto as imagined by Lisa Jackson, a Canadian and Anishinaabe film director and producer .

Imagine if Toronto were reclaimed by nature, 4:12

Source: YouTube

Anna Zhilyaeva, a French/Russian immersive artist and tilt-brush live performer paints an unnamed landscape in an unspecified time.

Unnamed landscape in an unspecified time, 1:08

Source: YouTube

Margaret Atwood

On Fiction, the Future and the Environment, 4:09

Source: YouTube

KR Voyage

Feminist Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, whose agenda include climate change, identity, power structures and gender politics as seen in the trailer for the series based on her book The Handmaid’s Tale.

Source: Vimeo

Kara appears to be yet another handmaid who, having been developed by the French company Quantic Dream, resists the logic of our near future.

Quantic Dream, 7:01

Source: YouTube

The assumptions of the video game world is questioned by Skawennati, a Mohawk multimedia artist who time travels her avatar through redefined indigenous cyberspace.

Profile, 3:00

Source: Vimeo

The Jamaican-born Canadian writer and editor Nalo Hopkinson explains the importance of Black science fiction.

Why it’s Radical for Black People to Imagine the Future, 2:32

Source: YouTube

Ursula K. Le Guin, (1929–2018), whose literary career as writer of speculative fiction started in 1959, talks about assailing what was an almost exclusively male dominated territory.

Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, 2:13

Source: Vimeo

Rosie Summers

Katherine Johnson, an African-American mathematician and NASA employee, whose calculations proved critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landing programme, is painted by Rosie Summers, a British virtual reality artist and tilt-brush live performer for the International Women’s Day 2020, the year Katherine Johnson died.

Painting Katherine Johnson in Virtual Reality!, 1:20

Source: YouTube