forms of the surrounding futures: screening brings artworks from GIBCA 2023 into schools, homes and phones around Sweden. The platform features film works selected from the exhibition presentation of  forms of the surrounding futures in Göteborg and reframes them online as entry points, questions and approaches to thinking differently about the futures you want to dwell in.  

The platform included a reel of films selected by GIBCA 2023 curator João Laia, available for all to view, along with a prompt sheet offering some questions to consider whilst watching the films. Alongside this is a resource exclusively for pedagogues, featuring three individual films accompanied by lesson plans suited for students from the age of 15 years.  

forms of the surrounding future: screening is a project supported by the Swedish Film Institute. 

If you are a pedagogue and would like access to the educational resources, please email: contact@gibca.se 

forms of the surrounding futures forward a plurality of different, non-normative positions throughout the exhibition and program. This screening reel brings a cross-section of these positions into focus with one another offering an insight into the theme and what you can expect from the exhibition in Göteborg.  

Atomic Garden by Ana Vaz (BR) offers a beautiful stroboscopic view of the resilience of nature and humans in the wake of crisis. The footage was shot in the city of Nahar on the edge of the fallout zone from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. It offers a view of the slow but sure return to a version of the pre-disaster inhabitation but with all the punctuating presence of Geiger counters and contaminated soil close at hand.

Following this is A Whale is a Whale is a Whale: Swansong for the Arabian Humpback by Sophia Al-Maria (QA/US). This short but impactful video essay focuses on the diminishing population of humpback whales which inhabit the Arabian Sea. This population is static, unlike other humpback whales which migrate and have developed their own language and culture. The whale is set against the accelerated extractivist backdrop of the Gulf States and highlights the tensions between economic development and environmental diminishment.  

I’ll Remember You As You Were, Not as What You Will Become by Sky Hopinka (US) is a dreamy ode to Anishinaabe-Chemehuevi artist and poet, Diane Burns. The film works through the process of life, death and the transcendent spirit, speaking to the opportunity for new forms this return allows. With Burns’ wry poetry providing a unifying strand through the piece, the film journeys with the viewer across the landscape of life and death. 

S by Luiz Roque (BR) is similarly visually hypnotic and pointed. The film presents a choreographed response to Jota Mombaça’s essay Towards a Gender Disobedient & Anti-Colonial Redistribution of Violence bringing sensuality with a sharp edge with the choreography leaning heavily on ballroom and voguing traditions. The film presents the importance of a level of disobedience and non-conformity in creating a better future. 

Completing the reel is Dedicated to the Youth of the World II by the duo Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk (UA) which offers a view into the Cinemx techno party in Kyiv. Hypnotic music accompanies a sea of bodies, moving together, collected in exaltation, but alienated in the same moment. The film, and reel, end with portraits after utopia, faces not ready for a new day and its old reality.