IDFA on Stage: Tuning Room

Three experimental short films: A luxury hotel room dreams of idyllic holiday destinations; an airplane feels the weight of time, starts to panic, and hijacks itself for an unmanned flight into an existential crisis; as it slowly dies, a data centre hallucinates the Internet before finally fizzling out forever.

Through a mediumistic channelling of sound, image, and text, filmmaker Michael Bucuzzo interweaves a performative lecture with these films compiled from American commercials, archive footage, and movies. He suggests that many of our fears, dreams, and desires are shaped by mass media—film and television—to such an extent that we can only live our lives filtered through it. The risk is that we will be overwhelmed by visual pollution and overdose on auditory stimulation.

It’s no coincidence that in Bucuzzo’s films, humanity is notable for its complete absence. The media need only each other and are only concerned with the media. People are no longer necessary to bring new images into the world.