480’
Close your eyes and think about what’s happening just beneath the surface of your skin. Blood vessels contracting and rapidly expanding, pumping blood like pistons in a revving combustion engine. Electrical impulses igniting neural networks and injecting streams of neurotransmitters into synaptic spaces – serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin. Imagine the distilleries in your adrenal glands, enthusiastically moonshining like an amateur brewer, producing potent concoctions laced with hormones – adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol.
Our bodies are petrochemical refineries, nitrogen plants, and mobile drug labs, in which millions of complex chemical reactions occur every moment. The results? Uncontrollable laughter, paralyzing fear, euphoria, desire, and overwhelming sadness – life itself.
For decades, our collective imagination in this domain has been shaped by animation – the anthropomorphic bearded sage escorted by red blood cells in Once Upon a Time... Life, and “Sadness” from Pixar’s Inside Out, crying like a city fountain. This year’s immersive section proposes a creative dialogue with that tradition – an anagrammatic reconfiguration that, in the alchemical setting of the Old Brewery’s Słodownia space, temporarily transforms the Animator into Rotamina – a psychoactive substance that allows us to dive into the current of chemical compounds surging through our bodies.
A total of eight VR works will let us experience the full spectrum of extreme states and emotions triggered by the chemical processes within us – both naturally occurring and those stimulated by substances introduced into the body. From the psychedelic journey of ayahuasca (AYAHUASCA) to the nightmarish plunge down the rabbit hole caused by a date rape drug (MISSING 10 HOURS), from the perception-warping experience of migraine (TURBULENCE: JAMAIS VU), a simulation of an ADHD-stimulated brain (IMPULSE: PLAYING WITH REALITY), and a body mutating under the influence of microplastic particles (PLASTISAPIENS), to a grotesque journey through a fever-ridden organism (FEVERLAND), a mind emerging from the depths of depression (DARKENING), and finally, a visit to a diagnostic art studio that paints the full spectrum of our emotions (SOULPAINT).
Stanisław Liguziński - lead programmer of the VR Imagine Film Festival in Amsterdam, coordinator of research initiatives for the “Research in and Through Cinema” master's course at the Dutch Film Academy, video-essayist, curator of film and XR (immersive) programs for international film festivals and cultural institutions. He collaborates with the vnLab Film Essay Studio in Łódź.