#76 Cosmic Entanglements

Since March 2024, Buro Stedelijk has hosted the monthly speculative fiction reading group Goddess Change, initiated by artists Anna Hoetjes and Müge Yılmaz, who are also the initiators of Taking Root Among the Stars, an exhibition that features the work of artists and writers who use science fiction not only as a theme in their work, but also as a tool. The exhibition centers an interdisciplinary exploration of feminist, decolonial, trans-inclusive, speculative worldbuilding, using it as a tool to critique the society we live in and write ourselves into the future(s) we want to see.

As an extension of the exhibition at W139, Buro Stedelijk will host a film screening evening that brings together films that expand on the quantum realm—using it as a framework to propose different social realities and relationships to time, alternative futures, and communal relations to nature.

The program opens with Larissa Sansour’s The Nation Estate (2012), a 9-minute sci-fi short film and a photo series offering a clinically dystopian, yet humorous approach to the deadlock in the Middle East. With its glossy mixture of computer generated imagery, live actors and an arabesque electronica soundtrack, the Nation Estate film explores a vertical solution to Palestinian statehood. Palestinians have their state in the form of a single skyscraper: the Nation Estate. One colossal high-rise houses the entire Palestinian population – now finally living the high life.

Tres Lunas más Abajo [Three Moons Below] (2024) by Patricia Dominguez will have its Netherlands premier as part of this film program. Tres Lunas más Abajo is a spi-fi (spiritual fiction) cinematic exploration that crosses the spiritual and quantum realms. In this fictional universe, CERN’s physics experiments and the astronomical observatories in the Atacama Desert converge with ancient petroglyphs, creating portals that transport the protagonist and her robotic bird companion. Together, they embark on a journey through otherworldly realities, consulting with mystical beings and acquiring celestial antennas and particle detectors. Domínguez’s personal, futuristic, and unearthly imagery is informed by her extensive research, spanning experimental sites to studies in ethnobotany and South American spiritual practices in plant healing. At the heart of their quest lies a prayer to identify and care for one’s entangled particle.

The protagonist contemplates the nature of her entanglement, wondering if it could be with a machine, a wounded bird, or even a star in the distant Andromeda galaxy. The film explores the desire to feel, experience, and learn through these entanglements, offering a world vision in which everything is intertwined in a cosmic knot. By merging ancestral knowledge and contemporary science, the film expands our understanding of the universe beyond the tangible and visible. It advocates for a need to form connections between all living things, machines, and other entities, to develop more sustainable and supportive ways of existing.

The second film in the program is a work from Black Quantum Futurism that documents the Time Zone Protocols (TZP) Surveyors group and brings together a summary of themes and explorations that took place. Leading up to the Prime Meridian Unconference, Black Quantum Futurism convened the TZP Surveyors Discussion Group–21 individuals who met several times to examine and discuss TZP research materials, including an archive of readings, images, sounds, and videos on time zones, time, temporality, prime meridian, temporal oppression as experienced by Black communities, and social, political, and cultural concepts of time and temporality. The discussion centered on new ways of understanding our relationships to space-time, utilizing specific social, geographical, and cultural frameworks that depart from colonial linearity and shift the standards and protocols of time that leave Black people locked out of the past and future, and stuck in a narrow temporal present.

Free entrance with ticket / Gratis toegang met ticket
January 9, 18:30 – 20:30
Location: Central Space
Entrance: Paulus Potterstraat 13, Amsterdam

Note that this event will be in English.