The Axis of Big Data. 2024. China. Directed by Zhou Tao. Produced by Topography Practice, Vitamin Creative Space, and M Art Foundation. North American premiere. No dialogue. 58 min.
Terminal Island. 2024. USA. Directed by Sam Drake. North American premiere. 13 min.
Chinese artist Zhou Tao is known for finding otherworldly landscapes where humanity and nature intersect, which he captures in long, static shots. In The Axis of Big Data, he delves deeper into this thematic obsession, but employs a different method: cinematography in continuous motion. A data center in the mountainous southwestern province of Guizhou is at the heart of his newest work, presented through a panoramic sweep around the facility’s surrounding rural farmland. In a play of contrasts, the camera drifts across blades of grass, meeting local farmers, tourists, and animals along the way, all to a joined hum of whirling hard drives and chirping insects. The point of view feels uncanny: it’s hard to tell whether Zhou’s lens embodies an observant creature or a surveilling technology. Either way, its curious gaze brings together a constellation of entities that co-exist in the same environment but seem worlds apart. In Terminal Island, Milwaukee-based filmmaker Sam Drake’s camera similarly alienates familiar spaces. Heat is overtaking Los Angeles, and Drake finds small corners revealing evidence of ecological collapse.