The Archival Futures Collective | Outer Space Film Quartet
Founded by Ceridwen Dovey & Rowena Potts in 2022, the Archival Futures Collective makes experimental films about human and more-than-human relationships to nature on Earth and off-Earth, inspired by library and museum archives/research materials/collections.
The Archival Futures Collective quartet of short experimental films explores ethics and emotion in outer space. These films are designed to be screened together, but each film is also being screened in film festivals, museums and cultural institutions in Australia and internationally.
MOONRISE (2021, 11 minutes)
The Moon's surface may soon be subject to permanent human occupation. Do we want to stand by silently as irreparable damage is done to our sister satellite? What might happen if we listened to what the Moon has to say?
MUSCA (2022, 5 minutes)
A visitor from another planet wonders about the human practice of naming star constellations after particular things.
MEMORABILIA (2023, 16 minutes)
A daughter mourns the loss of her father, a passionate collector of space memorabilia, as she falls under the sway of the 'flown' space objects in her inheritance.
REQUIEM (2023, 16 minutes)
Real astronauts who have spent time on the International Space Station or Mir Space Station (including Dorin Prunariu, Yi So-yeon, Claudie Haignere, Paolo Nespoli, and Cady Coleman) perform a sonnet cycle that laments the imagined future loss of the ISS when it is deorbited within the next decade. Parts of it will burn up in the atmosphere, and the rest will end up in pieces on the ocean floor at Point Nemo, the spacecraft cemetery in the remote Pacific.
© Image courtesy of Andrea Valtolina
Festivals and Screenings
St. Kilda Film Festival, Melbourne (2021)
Selected for the short film festival and screened in Melbourne and online (May, 2021).
Slow Canoe Live Journal, Melbourne
Slow Canoe is a live journal event and publication, curated by Anna Thwaites and Oliver Driscoll, presenting works of non-fiction, fiction, poetry, film, sound and imagery.
Bunjil Place Outdoor Screen Program, Melbourne
Museum of the Moon
June 26 - July 4 2021
Selected to screen as part of a curated program for Museum of the Moon, a giant replica of the moon created by UK artist Luke Jerram, installed at Bunjil Place in Melbourne.
Mimesis Documentary Festival, Boulder, Colorado
August 4-10, 2021
Selected to screen as part of the Biomythophilia block of documentary shorts: a diverse group of documentaries linked by the theme of sustainability, exploring ideas of mythical communion with the land and others, the search for scientific and eco-existential answers, more-than-human solidarity, and the rejection of human exceptionalism.
Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Making Space for the Social Sciences
August 17, 2021
Screened as part of a panel discussion titled Sensemaking about Space.
2021 Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design Prize finalist
2021 Antenna Documentary Festival (Sydney)
2021 Uppsala International Short Film Festival (Sweden)
Screened as part of Performance Space's Live Futures: Remapping Ecologies with panel discussion, curated by Holly Williams
October, 2021 | Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art 2021
As the inevitability of global warming becomes impossible to ignore and human-caused extinctions become widespread, how might the body-centred practices of the deep ecology movement, activist interventions and the work of contemporary artists inform where we go from here?
How can we reinstate different relationships between humans and the network of animals, organisms, weather and environment that we are inextricably connected to? How can we constructively meet the grief, fear, rage and guilt that marks this time? Where might hope lie?
LIVE FUTURES is a series of curated public conversations that explore the pivotal role of artists in defining the new civic life we are entering, in a sustained period of disruption and change.
Calcutta International Short Film Festival 2021
The vision of the Calcutta International Short Film Festival is to create a dynamic platform to acknowledge the filmmaking efforts of independent filmmakers and showcase their best stories to the cinephiles in India and around the globe.
Imagine Science Film Festival (New York City, October 2022)
Imagine Science Film Festival is an annual science film festival in New York since 2008 that takes all across the city in diverse venues, including cinemas, universities and museums. The organization also hosts a series of satellite events worldwide, and serves as a major venue for the release of singular and bold works bridging the worlds of science and film. We also seek to challenge and expand the role of science in the current cultural discourse by providing a forum for adventurous interdisciplinary collaboration.
Revelation Perth International Film Festival (2022)
Revelation includes over 200 international films presented at cinemas and bars across Perth and Fremantle. Combined with our moving image art collaborations at the Fremantle Arts Centre, Revelation attracts around 22,000 patrons and 50 national and international guests over 13 days.
Sydney Science Festival | Powerhouse Space Imaginaries Symposium (2022)
Rowena & Ceridwen spoke on a panel about art, ethics and emotion in outer space, and screened clips from Moonrise as well as other films in progress from their Archival Futures of Outer Space film quartet.
Down Under Berlin Australian & NZ Film Festival (2022)
Nature Feelz Symposium | Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney (December 2022)
The quartet (as work-in-progress) was screened at the curated arts event for Nature Feelz.