A screening of four films by Antonia Luxem, substantiating their ongoing exploration into dreams, falling and altered states. Luxem will be in conversation with curator Anna Colin, discussing dream logic as a method and the relationship between film, writing and performance in Luxem’s practice.

Across Luxem’s work, falling recurs as a psychic condition and narrative structure, where falling gives way to dreaming and dreaming returns to falling. In this loop, perception shifts, attention intensifies, and the boundaries of the self loosen, opening space for transformation and re-worlding.

The screening takes place in parallel with Luxem’s first solo exhibition in London, On Falling, curated by Mariana Lemos at ANNEX by The Koppel Project (on view until 15 March), and the publication of A Manual on Falling and Dreaming (Burley Fisher Community Press), from which Luxem will read during the event.

Programme

On Falling, 2024, 16 mins
On Falling is a meditative and oneiric re-exploration of the myth of Sisyphus that follows Z perpetually falling through a dark void. As we follow their fall, we float, drift in and out of dreamlike thoughts, meeting a child that incubates dreams, the moon and a witness to death and rebirth. The film resonates with Luxem’s previous works in its exploration of dream worlds and dream structures, the re-enactment of deep existential anxiety and the processing of violence, as they seek to re-imagine ways of being queer in the world. On Falling is a quest for mastering the loss of control, a search for lucidity and letting go in order to survive violence and pain.

Red Red Red, 2022, 6 mins
This is a film made from a frame. The frame is made from words. The words are made from life. Red Red Red is an archive of thoughts, feelings and anger, an ode to the intensity of the pandemic, a microcosm of life, a witness to the passing of time, to our road to death, an eulogy to life.

Dreaming X, 2021, 21 mins
Dreaming X follows X’s dreamlike journey inside a mysterious and dark universe on which she encounters a number of puzzling characters. The disoriented and hallucinatory journey, intensified by the confrontation with these societal archetypes, eventually leads her to a troupe of circus performers and magicians, who help her find herself. The film draws on research on the intersections between dreams, phenomenology and queerness. A significant point of departure for the film comes from exploring the ideas of Sara Ahmed in her book ‘Queer Phenomenology’: how is it that people arrive at certain places? Why are we taken or pulled from one space to another, unconsciously? How do we make the strange feel familiar? Structured like a dream, and building on the history of queer cinema where lesbian representation is scarce, the film seeks to create a new language for lesbian identity and sisterhood.

Dearest Degenerate, 2018, 10 mins
This piece is an address, in the form of a letter, to the close and homophobic person. It is a deconstructed reaction to the underlying and violent, invisible and yet prevalent homophobia within our society. It was developed from material found in personal notebooks and diaries and inspired by books including Didier Eribon’s “Insult and the Making of the Gay Self” and José Esteban Muñoz’s “Cruising Utopia”.

Approximate runtime: 110 mins