The Future Trilogy by Pil and Galia Kollectiv + AXIS XS by Lief Hall

Curated by Cheyanne Turions ► In November 2005, IKEA announced a new store opening in Edmonton, north London, to be accompanied by an offer of a significant price reduction on leather sofas. When 6000 people arrived to compete for the discount, a riot ensued, injuring 16 shoppers. “The Future Trilogy” takes this event as the starting point for a speculative history of a fictional future. The Future for Less (2006) imagines the consumer riot as the foundation of a new totalitarian state religion imposing the tenets of modernism on the masses. In Better Future, Wolf-Shaped (2008), a rural cult perverts this official creed through pagan rituals of architectural worship performed at Celtic burial sites in Cornwall. The Future is Now (2009) stages the triumphant conquest of the industrial wasteland surrounding IKEA Edmonton as a popular uprising, revisiting the original riot as a future re-enactment.

AXIS XS is an improvisational vocal-noise performance piece and digital opera, merging computer animation and shadow artworks to create a surrealist landscape of light and sound. Hall’s vocal improvisations mimic a montage of vocal traditions, landscapes and machines to create new abstract narrative forms.

The Future for Less | 2006. 10 mins.
Better Future, Wolf-Shaped | 2008. 15 mins.
The Future is Now | 2009. 23 mins.

Intermission

AXIS XS | 2010. 20mins.

Co-presented with the Signal & Noise Media Arts Festival, VIVO Media Arts Centre and Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society.