In the summer of 2024 aemi launched its Tier 2 programme, a twelve month process through which a group of Irish and Ireland-based artists are supported through monthly conversation, workshops and Rough Cut events. ‘Against Stasis’ is a screening programme in two parts of works at various stages of completion from our first group of eight participating Tier 2 artists.

A myriad of dream films, concept pieces and DISSOLUTIONS edits, the electric films in this selection consider a wide-ranging set of subjects and themes from intellectual care, artificial intelligence and rural mysticism to human movement through urban space, making ends meet, teenage angst and a spate of ear bitings in 1990s Derry.

This two-part screening will be introduced by all eight participating Tier 2 artists. 

FILM INFO:

PART I, 8.30pm
Chloe Brenan, Verdigris 10 mins, 2025
Rik Higashikawa, a week in May, one minute per Day (not another documentary film), 6 mins, 2025
Jack Hogan, Stream, 17 mins, 2025
Michael Barwise, That sanity be kept, 10 mins, 2025
Ann Upton, Philip, 1 minute 2025
Total running time 44 minutes

Intermission (15 mins) featuring Screensaver (i) by Colm Higgins 

PART II, 9.30pm
Ann Upton, Not Their Children, 1 min, 2023
Colm Higgins, Saint Brendan’s Dream, 15 mins, 2025
Luke van Gelderen, AUTHENTIC SELF (DISSOLUTIONS CUT), 10 mins, 2025
Temmuz Süreyya Gürbüz, Modelling, 15 mins, 2025
Total running time 41 minutes

FILM SYNOPSES:

Chloe Brenan, Verdigris
Verdigris is a digitised Super 8mm film shot largely during a residency in Paris. Drifting through the city, it explores how architecture shapes movement and how digression can serve as subtle resistance. Through textured, meandering visuals and the layering of specific histories, the film reflects on dailiness, standardisation, time, and mood – suggesting that movement in the city is never truly neutral.

Rik Higashikawa, a week in May, one minute per Day (not another documentary film)
a week in May, one minute per Day (not another documentary film) (2025) explores the possibility of transparency in image making. Structuring its pacing around data that can be found in a telegram channel titled Military Plane Tracker IRE it is ultimately a brief meditation about the end of documentary filmmaking.
Engulfed by the image, which is so accusatory, one could fantasize that the soldiers might turn and talk to us. But no, no one is looking out of the picture. -Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 2003

Jack Hogan, Stream
Stream is the free flow of mundane, magical life. A cinematic choreography of “carrying on” emerges, equal parts melancholy and ecstasy. “Carrying on”—the complicated work of living and reproducing oneself—is laborious, involving a world of sub-atomic decisions. Making ends meet doesn’t leave time for much else. Jack Hogan recorded their commutes, in an attempt to use cracks between errands for their own ends. People’s everyday organisation is captured alongside them; shared rhythms for split seconds.

Michael Barwise, That sanity be kept
That sanity be kept is a piece from an ongoing project about a spree of ear bitings that took place in Derry in the mid 1990s. This piece explores the process of ‘filling in the gaps’ when watching and responding to archive material.

Ann Upton, Philip
Philip is a concept piece towards a not-yet-complete film project of the same title. Reminiscent of an eye-test, it explores issues of reality, truth, trust, and memory. The final film will explore intellectual care, artificial intelligence, empathy for the non-human, and fabricated realities.

INTERVAL

Ann Upton, Not Their Children
An innocent account of halloween antics turns threatening. Not Their Children is a found footage film that transforms a 1980s interview with Irish school children into a piece of folk horror, exploring innocence, retaliation and rural mysticism. Audio from ‘A Cavan Halloween,’ 1986, RTÉ Archives.

Colm Higgins, Saint Brendan’s Dream
Saint Brendan’s Dream is a camp and holy vision of the edge of the world seen through the eyes of Brendan the Navigator. The early Christian saint sleeps in his cell and dreams of the unknowable lands beyond the sea. It is a dream of iconography, floating mountains, glaciers and lava lakes seen through mirages. Filmed in Iceland with original music by the director, it is a hypnotic imagining of the fantastical voyages of Saint Brendan.

Luke van Gelderen, AUTHENTIC SELF (DISSOLUTIONS CUT)
AUTHENTIC SELF (DISSOLUTIONS CUT), examines how trauma is commodified as a marker of authenticity in online content, reflecting on compulsive consumption and the constructed nature of reality. Tracing online subcultures from teenage angst to today’s curated vulnerability, it spotlights the ‘sad male’ archetype as both attractive and requisite for relevance. Exploring the tension between genuine emotion and performance, it questions the ethics of exploiting personal experience for cultural and algorithmic gain.

Temmuz Süreyya Gürbüz, Modelling
Second iteration of Cabbage Lane Productions – the trash trilogy by Temmuz Süreyya Gürbüz and Alina Hernández. Shot in Galway, on DSLR, involving chaos music, skulls and improvisational (non)acting. In the end, it is an ode to “Bressonian minimalism,” being a spectacle, being a mess, being a model.