Digital Poetics #20 x F(r)ictions: A field of islands by Edmund Hardy

Presenting the third of four collaborations with screening space and video art platform F(r)ictions. This screening was held from September until December 2020.

Inspired by atmospheric adventure games such as Myst, and a poem by Édouard Glissant of the same name, this is a short film which starts with the desire to undo pain and constriction by finding 'negative islands' from which the world might be unmade. Nisha Ramayya plays 'S', who circles between lime kiln tunnels, observation decks high above a future city, and the London clubbing scene, trying to find a re-beginning, or a good way through this field of islands and into a world beyond.

Edmund Hardy is a filmmaker and writer currently based in London. He wrote a book about poetry called 'Complex Crosses', often writes about Marxism and race, and is working on a long film called 'Negative Worlds' - about the search for another world within this one. Born in Tokyo he is Japanese-English. https://edmundhardy.org/

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F(r)ictions is a screening space for experimental film and video work, making room for imperfections, unfinished work, left-field pieces, and diy work. The screening series is a space for feminist film, putting an emphasis on work by queer and trans people of colour.

F(r)ictions is invested in the risks audio-visual works take: film can play on time and create abstractions in ways that hint at multiple possibilities/differences/contexts and provoke curiosity and questioning. At its best, film builds networks of escape and paints out new worlds and imaginations. frictions.net

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This publication is in Copyright. Edmund Hardy, 2020.

The moral right of the author has been asserted. However, the Hythe is an open-access journal and we welcome the use of all materials on it for educational and creative workshop purposes.