Today opens IDFA's The DocLab, perhaps my favourite part of the festival. With its own competition, commissions and exhibition, this is the realm of digital experimentation. For this edition, I visited the VR works in the Tolhuistuin and what I saw was of enormous variety. From slow essayistic documentaries (but in 360 degrees) to a game very suitable for children: the selection showed what is possible in terms of new narrative forms for documentaries.
By chance, my first selection contained only work by female creators. I had not chosen it for that and only noticed it in retrospect. I picked four works that promised the greatest variety in form and content. In this, I was not disappointed. Take for instance Cabinets of Wonder by Susanne Kim. At first glance, it is an adventure game in which you get to open treasure chests and solve riddles. The entrance, a wonder room full of children's goodies, looks like a traditional game but it gives access to mental worlds of children who fall outside society. The animations and games give a light tone to heavy stories about autism or racism. That playfulness makes it great for tackling tough topics with children. And for adults, it is a beautifully crafted game for people who like to be able to click on anything in a VR work.
Oxygen aesthetics
Also animated, but with a very different subject is Corpus Misty by Aubrey Heichemer. In a soft and bacon-pink world, women talk about their bodies, sexuality and gender identity. Is it still groundbreaking to report that you were shocked when you first saw your vulva, pre-programmed by porn ideals? Or that you like shaping your own gender identity? Maybe not, but as long as not everyone can do the latter without repercussions, we should just keep hammering away.
The soft world represents the safe inner world where you can speak openly about yourself. The lack of tactile experience gets in my way here. I want to be able to actually touch all those soft pink and yellow shapes, not just distort them with my controllers. I want to touch foam rubber and plastic, smell sweetness. For me, Corpus Misty just doesn't go far enough. I understand and endorse what Heichemer is trying to say and why she is going for an oxygen aesthetic. For me, it can all be just a bit more extreme, a bit more abrasive.
The politics of disorientation
I was impressed by the beautiful Ferenj: a Graphic memoir in VR By Ainslee Robson. We fly around in Robson's memories, a pointillist world made of crowdsourced images that use technology from the gaming world to form a 3-D world. The spheres shape and distort as we get closer to the school bus; her parents' restaurant in Cleveland; and Addis Ababa where she has lived. And everywhere she is a stranger, a ferenj. Robson herself uses the concept of liminality for this: ambiguity or disorientation, transition from one state into the next. It is in her identity and in the image: it moves constantly, there is no solid ground, no unambiguous idea of home.
The construction of the images keeps you just short of arriving at the next state, then the image already blurs and turns into a new one. It reflects impressionistic memories in all their volatility and changeability. It also appeals to Robson's bicultural background (Ethiopian-American) with which she is nowhere as naturally at home as her surroundings. The nostalgic Ethiopian music refers to its golden period, but also to the period before Mengistu's dictatorship. In image, story, music and concept, that elusiveness, the just not getting anywhere is very strongly portrayed. Go see this work!
Tintin in the USSR
Of entirely different order is the calmly observant 360 work Bridge to Sovietopia by Marie Alice Wolfszahn. A linear work, we move in a slow rider through the history of Soviet architecture. And thus of the dreams, ambitions and downfall of an empire. We glide over the Soviet Union's largest satellite dish of the Institute of Ionosphere. A name that seems straight out of Tintin, where they could generate electricity blasts more powerful than lightning. We also whiz through a megalomaniac steelworks. And we arrive at the faded glory of a theatre that has seen better days. The working-class neighbourhood was where the biggest stars came but nicely. In form, this is the most traditional documentary, it is utterly linear, not interactive, but simply: beautifully made film in which the scale of architecture is made palpable by the 360-degree technology.
Remarkably, all 9 works on show ask questions about identity and place. How does where you live influence who you are? To what extent can you deviate from a norm without becoming uncomfortable or unhappy? What do place, identity, and politics have to do with each other? Some work excites more than others, but overall it is a strong edition of the IDFA VR.
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