Tate Modern: Celebrating 25 years Film

Meriem Bennani: Life on the CAPS

7 May 2022 at 19.30–21.20

The face of a large cartoon reptile is seen behind the globe on which red circles mark out an island. The text reads 'LIFE ON THE CAPS'.

Meriem Bennani, Life on the CAPS 2022, poster image. Courtesy the artist

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The artist’s science fiction trilogy explores displacement, surveillance and resilience in imaginative ways

Meriem Bennani, Life on the CAPS 2022, teaser video. Score by Fatima Al Qadiri. Courtesy the artist.

Meriem Bennani joins us to present and discuss her recently-completed short film trilogy Life on the CAPS.

Set on a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean called CAPS (short for ‘capsule’), the series transports us to a future where teleportation has replaced air travel. Enclosed by a magnetic shield, CAPS houses migrants who have been caught teleporting illegally. Settled into bustling enclaves, the citizens of CAPS have developed their own hybrid culture and modes of defiance to the US troops that patrol the island.

The series layers live action footage and computer-generated animation, making playful use of special effects and mixing visual references drawn from reality television, advertising, music videos, phone recordings, documentary and science fiction.

In Party on the CAPS, we learn about life on the island via a CGI crocodile named Fiona, viral videos and a lively birthday gathering. In Life on the CAPS, a liberation movement takes form as identities transition between bodies, ages and places. Guided Tour of a Spill acts as an interlude between these two works, offering a sensorial impression of how media circulates in the world of the CAPS.

Together the films offer timely political commentary on immigration, geopolitics, diasporic identity, resilience, biotechnology, data, state control and privacy. They comes to highlight joy and humour as important forms of resistance.

Programme:

Introduction by the artist
Party on the CAPS 2018, video, sound, 26 minutes, captioned (digital video file)
Guided Tour of a Spill 2021, video, sound, 16 minutes, captioned (digital video file)
Life on the CAPS 2022, video, sound, 34 minutes, captioned (digital video file)
Conversation between Meriem Bennani and Nicole Yip, Chief Curator, Nottingham Contemporary

This screening coincides with the opening of Meriem Bennani’s exhibition Life on the CAPS at Nottingham Contemporary, which features ambitious multi-channel installations of Party on the CAPS and Life on the CAPS.

Meriem Bennani, *Life on the CAPS* 2022, film still. Courtesy the artist

Meriem Bennani is a New York-based artist from Rabat, Morocco, whose work spans video, sculpture, installation, digital media and drawing. Mixing multiple media, genres and aesthetic references, she develops highly original approaches to storytelling through magical realism and humour. Her works explore the intersection of globalised popular culture with the vernacular and traditional representation of Moroccan culture and history. They comment on contemporary society, identities in transition, geopolitics and the ubiquity of digital technologies.

Nicole Yip is Chief Curator of Exhibitions and Live Programmes at Nottingham Contemporary. From 2016 to 2019, she was the Director of LUX Scotland and previously worked at LUX, London; Firstsite, Colchester; and ICA, London. She has curated exhibitions and projects at venues including Tramway, Glasgow; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, Nassau; the Kochi-Muziris Biennale; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and The Showroom, London. She is a trustee of Film London and chair of Film London’s Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN).

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7 May 2022 at 19.30–21.20

This screening contains flashing lights and coarse language

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