_A journey about human resilience
and the power of poetry
AWARDS
OFFICIAL SELECTIONS
MARKETS
_Synopsis
My Identity Is This Expanse! is a virtual reality film and installation that tells you the story of a child who, resilient to despair, seeks relief through memories, imagination, and the strength of poetry. Mahmoud Darwish’s poem, “If I Were Another,” is both the child‘s and the viewer’s entrance into this realm of relief and resilience.
Combined with the memory of a missing mother and family, the poem guides and sustains the child amidst the grueling reality of exile, violence, and confinement to a wooden box — both a hiding place and mode of transport for refugee children.
The journey is based on the true story of Yunus Yusuf, who was transported under these circumstances from Afghanistan to Luxembourg at the age of 13. It is also the story of millions of other refugee children and adults, both today and throughout history.
_Technical sheet
Format: VR short
Running time: 15'
Status: Completed
Year: 2020
Version: English
Authors: Karolina MARKIEWICZ and Pascal PIRON
Directors: Karolina MARKIEWICZ and Pascal PIRON
VR artistic collaboration (dream sequences): Tamiko THIEL
Producers: Marion GUTH, François LE GALL
Associate producer: Laurent WITZ
Production company: a_BAHN (LU)
In association with: Zeilt productions (LU)
Voices: Elisabet Johannesdottir, Jules Werner, Pitt Simon, Catherine Elsen, Lara Windeshausen, Christina Khoury, Ben Andrews, Eddie Hudson
With the support of: Film Fund Luxembourg (LU)
Karolina MARKIEWICZ & Pascal PIRON
Authors & film directors
The collaborative work of Karolina Markiewicz and Pascal Piron since 2013 creates links between cinema, visual arts, and theater. At the center, the individual is part of a human community, oscillating between impermanence, resignation, and hope.
Karolina studied political science, philosophy, and theater and works as a writer and director of cinema and theater. Pascal studied visual arts and works as an artist and director. Both also work as teachers with students from immigrant or refugee backgrounds and with students from the University of Lorraine.
Their artistic works include both documentary and fiction films, experiences in virtual reality, as well as painting, photography, and theater. They see the importance of experimentation in techniques and different collaborations.
Fever and Sublimation released in 2019 are their latest interactive virtual reality pieces.
My identity is this expanse! is their animated film in virtual reality (6DOF), in collaboration with the American-Japanese digital artist, Tamiko Thiel. This project will be part of an exhibition at the Casino Luxembourg - forum for contemporary art, scheduled for autumn 2021.
Sublimation was part of the official selection of the 76th Venice International Film Festival.
Fever was presented at the European Photography Month, VR Arles, and the Louvre in Paris as part of the Rencontres Internationales Paris / Berlin. Les Formidables was released in 2013 and Mos Stellarium (documentary and video installation) in 2015 and was selected for the 56th Biennale di Venezia di Arte to represent Liechtenstein.
Side-Effects of Reality (2016 - in progress) is their series of short films on contemporary history and myths.
They had a solo exhibition, entitled pfh * - fucking human factor, precious human factor at the National Audiovisual Center, and are part of the collective exhibition, Me, family at Mudam Luxembourg.
And they have just released their new documentary film, The living witnesses.
www.markiewicz-piron.com
The collaborative work of Karolina Markiewicz and Pascal Piron since 2013 creates links between cinema, visual arts, and theater. At the center, the individual is part of a human community, oscillating between impermanence, resignation, and hope.
Karolina studied political science, philosophy, and theater and works as a writer and director of cinema and theater. Pascal studied visual arts and works as an artist and director. Both also work as teachers with students from immigrant or refugee backgrounds and with students from the University of Lorraine.
Their artistic works include both documentary and fiction films, experiences in virtual reality, as well as painting, photography, and theater. They see the importance of experimentation in techniques and different collaborations.
Fever and Sublimation released in 2019 are their latest interactive virtual reality pieces.
My identity is this expanse! is their animated film in virtual reality (6DOF), in collaboration with the American-Japanese digital artist, Tamiko Thiel. This project will be part of an exhibition at the Casino Luxembourg - forum for contemporary art, scheduled for autumn 2021.
Sublimation was part of the official selection of the 76th Venice International Film Festival.
Fever was presented at the European Photography Month, VR Arles, and the Louvre in Paris as part of the Rencontres Internationales Paris / Berlin. Les Formidables was released in 2013 and Mos Stellarium (documentary and video installation) in 2015 and was selected for the 56th Biennale di Venezia di Arte to represent Liechtenstein.
Side-Effects of Reality (2016 - in progress) is their series of short films on contemporary history and myths.
They had a solo exhibition, entitled pfh * - fucking human factor, precious human factor at the National Audiovisual Center, and are part of the collective exhibition, Me, family at Mudam Luxembourg.
And they have just released their new documentary film, The living witnesses.
www.markiewicz-piron.com
Tamiko Thiel was the lead product designer on the Connection Machine CM-1/CM-2 (1986/1987), the first commercial artificial intelligence supercomputer, and in 1989 the fastest computer in the world. CMs are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art New York and the Smithsonian Institution.
Her first work in virtual reality (VR) was as creative director/producer of Starbright World (1994-1997), an online virtual play space for seriously ill children, in collaboration with Steven Spielberg.
Her VR artwork Beyond Manzanar (2000) is in the collection of the San Jose Museum of Art/Silicon Valley. As a Google VR artist in residence, she created Land of Cloud (2017), which won the 2018 VRHAM audience award.
She is a founding member of the augmented reality (AR) artist group Manifest.AR, participating in their path-breaking AR intervention at MoMA (NY) in 2010 with ARt Critic Face Matrix, which seems to question the validity of AR as an art form, and main curator/organizer of their intervention into the 2011 Venice Biennial with Shades of Absence, a work on censorship of artworks.
In 2018 the Whitney Museum in New York commissioned her AR artwork Unexpected Growth, now in the permanent collection.
Tamiko THIEL
VR artist
Tamiko Thiel was the lead product designer on the Connection Machine CM-1/CM-2 (1986/1987), the first commercial artificial intelligence supercomputer, and in 1989 the fastest computer in the world. CMs are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art New York and the Smithsonian Institution.
Her first work in virtual reality (VR) was as creative director/producer of Starbright World (1994-1997), an online virtual play space for seriously ill children, in collaboration with Steven Spielberg.
Her VR artwork Beyond Manzanar (2000) is in the collection of the San Jose Museum of Art/Silicon Valley. As a Google VR artist in residence, she created Land of Cloud (2017), which won the 2018 VRHAM audience award.
She is a founding member of the augmented reality (AR) artist group Manifest.AR, participating in their path-breaking AR intervention at MoMA (NY) in 2010 with ARt Critic Face Matrix, which seems to question the validity of AR as an art form, and main curator/organizer of their intervention into the 2011 Venice Biennial with Shades of Absence, a work on censorship of artworks.
In 2018 the Whitney Museum in New York commissioned her AR artwork Unexpected Growth, now in the permanent collection.
PRODUCED BY
WITH THE SUPPORT OF
