SCI-FI APOCALYPSES
I make post-apocalyptic films about technological futures that may seem unlikely, but could be possible
My trilogy of sci-fi shorts, END TIMES, addresses the three central themes of my work on technoculture over the past 15 years: technology and waste (The Cults, 2021), technology and violence (Bunkeridylle, 2024), technology and intimacy (The Source, 2026). The films connect my installation-based work with my theoretical exploits and extend these into the realm of speculative fiction. The films have each formed the centre piece of a larger topical exhibition (Disobedient Devices - Nairobi National Museum, 2021; Destructive Circuits - V2_Lab for the unstable media, 2024; Radiate - ArtBase Terneuzen, 2026). But can also be screened together as part of a one-hour cinema lecture performance, in which I present the films accompanied by theoretical contexts, historical documents and cinematic references.
The Cults, 2021. 16mm film, 6’12”, 4:3. Film still
The Cults (2021) teleports an early 20th century colonial text about a Kenyan anti-European cult to a future technoculture. In a dystopian landscape of endless waste - shot on Dandora dumping site in Nairobi - a European is still scrounging for resources and worshipping standardized digital gadgets. Meanwhile, three women create a mythic lifeworld with reappropriated waste technologies.
16mm film, 4:3, 6’12”
Bunkeridylle, 2024. Digital video, 11’48”, 2.39:1. Video still
In Bunkeridylle (2024), militants hiding in a WW2 bunker in the Dutch countryside build a weapon from the left overs of high-tech culture. Communicating in a regional dialect with foreign accents, they run a techno-folkloristic resistance movement against a centralist government. Inspired by theories on violence by Paul Virilio and Jean Baudrillard, they prepare an ultimate act of symbolic terrorism.
digital video, 2.39:1, 11’49”
The Source (2026). Digital video / MiniDV, 15’44”, 4:3. Video still
The Source (2025) re-imagines a nuclear accident that took place in Georgia in the early 2000s, drawing from documentation material of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Members of a matriarchal cult find a mysterious metal object in the forest, which becomes the centre piece of an intimate ritual. At the end of time, a recovery team attempts to extract the lost object from the inferno.
Digital video / MiniDV, 15’44”, 4:3
Destructive Circuits, 2024. Solo show at V2_Lab for the Unstable Media
The individual films formed part of exhibitions, such as Disobedient Devices at the Nairobi National Museum in 2021, together with Joan Otieno and Greenman Muleh Mbillo, my solo show Destructive Circuits at V2_Lab for the Unstable Media in 2024 and my forthcoming solo show Intimate Radiation at ArtBase Terneuzen in 2026.
The Cults was featured as artwork of the week in Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, received a Special Jury Award at the ASVOFF Film festival in Paris, was included in the Official Selection at London Short Film Festival 2023 and was presented on the European shortfilm streaming platform This Is Short, among others. Bunkeridylle was the opening film of the regional programme at Film by the Sea film festival in Vlissingen, NL, in 2024.
Destructive Circuits, 2021. Exhibition at Nairobi National Museum, together with Joan Otieno and Greenman Muleh