Reclaiming A(rt) Future: Speculative Storytelling and Eco-Centrism in Film Art Installations at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2024
Reclaiming A(rt) Future: Speculative Storytelling and Eco-Centrism in Film Art Installations at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2024

Summary/Abstract: This study examines the Art Directions: Installations program at the 2024 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) as a site for experimentation in film art installations, analyzing how these works engage with expanded cinema, new media spectatorship, and pressing socio-environmental issues. As IFFR continues to position itself at the intersection of film and contemporary art, its film art installation program offers a lens through which to explore the evolving relationship between the curation of visual media, spectatorship, and speculative storytelling. Through a thematic analysis of the 2024 Art Directions program, this paper identifies three key recurring themes: (1) a focus on future liveability through speculative storytelling, (2) an eco-centric and post-anthropocentric reconfiguration of human and non-human relations, and (3) a multimodal reflection on the cinematic apparatus within the festival context. The installations reject modern anthropocentrism, instead envisioning potential futures that range from techno-positive models of sustainability to experimental, utopian, or dystopian imaginaries. By dismantling and reconfiguring elements of the cinematic experience, these works create hybrid assemblages that incorporate deepfake personas, archival collages, extended reality, and transmedia storytelling. Drawing on perspectives from film festival studies, posthumanist theory, and media studies, this study argues that IFFR’sArt Directions serves as both a continuation of and departure from traditional film exhibition, transforming the festival space into a laboratory for media experimentation. In doing so, these installations not only challenge dominant modes of spectatorship, but also critically engage with global ecological, geopolitical, and socio-political crises through the confluence of visual and digital technologies.

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