for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world *

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for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world

Split screen science-fiction documentary /

double-screen video installation.

France, 2024, 19 min, colour.

Download the presskit (ENG)

Trailer

Written, directed and edited by Gala Hernández López

Production: Gala Hernández López / After Social Networks and Quentin Brayer / Don Quichotte Films

Voice over: Olivia Delcán and Joseph Grossi

3D animation: Xinxin Kong

Sound design: Mathias Arrignon

Color grading: Juan José González

Music: Diego Delgado

Graphic design poster: Esteve Padilla (131gd)

Project supported by Salon de Montrouge

A woman dreams of a future economic crisis affecting the cryptocurrency market. Thousands have been cryogenized, waiting for better times… for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world, a two-channel work, is a dizzying psychedelic epistolary laden with doom and unease. Are we all suspended or are we falling into the void? And what strange relationship do we have with the future?

“Recycler of mass internet content and portrayer of YouTube communities, Hernández López borrows texts from Finn Brunton’s Digital Cash to compile an obscure cyberpunk nightmare. “How come you are not scared Hal?” asks a velvety, frightful voice to American cryptographer and techno-optimist Hal Finney in an imaginary conversation. In 2014, Finney had entered cryostasis, financed by his crypto points. The film uses his time travelling arc to construct an anxious collage of past and present wherein digital currencies, future phobia, extropian philosophy and life extension technology converge. At times, the double screens resemble the windows of a space station and we float high above a world eternally collapsing, where people have withdrawn from life in the hope of a techno-fix.”

(Ane López, Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival)

« What is the opposite of nostalgia? Perhaps it’s fear for the future, as Gala Hernández López suggests. In for here am I sitting in a tin can far above the world (yes, Bowie’s “Space Oddity”), the experimental filmmaker fleshes out a world of our very current anxieties, the weight of which bends the logic of an abject dreamscape. This dream may be a nightmare, for a dystopian future awaits when a total crash of the Bitcoin market leads many to choose a cryogenic state over waking life, but the soft-spoken voiceover pulsates with longing. Under the reign of technocapitalism, the future is a monetary asset, but the urge to predict—to gain and lose and gain and lose in the process—conceals a need for control. When conversing with Hal Finney, Bitcoin legend, devout extropian, and present cryogenic patient, the young woman addresses him directly: his beliefs, his phrases, his home videos. It is in that need to talk, to ask, and to share, that we see the dualities that make up an ambivalent world, in and out of dreams. Two screens, two voice tracks, colour negatives, and a future tense of vulnerabilities: “Ground control to Major Tom”… »

(Savina Petkova, Glasgow Short Film Festival)

Director’s note:

for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world is an experimental double-screen film that addresses the links between crypto culture and cryogenics as two speculative technologies for which the future becomes an economic resource to be exploited. Through a collage of YouTube videos, archival images and 3D animations, for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world explores the links between financial speculation, speculative science-fiction and the prediction and governance of the future.

Examining the fantasies conveyed by crypto-currencies, the narrative is carried by the enveloping text of an invisible narrator recounting her intimate dreams and fears. Accompanying us on a dreamlike, poetic, historical and futuristic audiovisual journey, she evokes the figure of the American extropian and cypherpunk Hal Finney, a crucial figure in the history of Bitcoin but also a cryogenic patient since 2014. In the narrator’s dreams, after a future Great Depression, Finney integrates a part of society that has gone into suspended animation or subsidized biostasis in order to accelerate economic recovery. The narrator engages with Finney in an imaginary conversation about faith or fear in the future, and how an optimistic bet on the future might actually endanger its potentialities through the political disengagement from present struggles.

The installation also explores the sensation of temporary floating: through the figure of “suspended animation”, it evokes a historical epoch marked by a high degree of unpredictability and uncertainty, due to the acceleration and disruption of new technologies, as well as to the multiple consequences of the Anthropocene. The idea of temporary suspension is questioned through the dichotomy “suspension-free fall”: Is humanity floating in uncertainty, or are we rather in free fall? How can we differentiate between the two, given the limits of human perception and knowledge?

for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world works through the non-linear temporality of dream and memory, the broken temporality of time travel narratives, such as the one in which Hal Finney embarks on his cryogenic capsule.

The video contains some quotes from the book: Digital Cash. The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency, by Finn Brunton.

PRESENTATIONS & FESTIVALS

Salon de Montrouge, France, October 2023 (WIP, double screen installation)
Project presentation at the artist talk “Próxima parada” by Mediadistancia, Cineteca Matadero, Madrid, October 2023
Project presentation at the seminar “Capitalisme numérique et idéologies” of the Centre Internet et Société, CNRS, December 2023
WIP Presentation + Artist talk with Mohamed Berro “Content or freedom?”, Transmediale 2024, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, January-February 2024
WORLD PREMIERE: Berlinale Forum Expanded, Berlinale, February 2024
Biennale NOVA XX, Centre Wallonie Bruxelles, Paris, February 2024 (installation version)
Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, UK, March 2024
Glasgow Short Film Festival, Scotland, March 2024
D’A Film Festival, Spain, April 2024
Busan International Short Film Festival, South Korea, April 2024
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival, Spain, April 2024
DONE – Foto Colectania, Spain, April 2024
FICCI Festival Internacional de Cine de Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, April 2024
Lichter Filmfest Frankfurt International, Germany, April 2024
FICIC, Argentina, May 2024
Istambul International Experimental Film Festival, Turkey, May 2024
Documenta Madrid, Spain, May 2024
Athens Digital Arts Festival, Greece, May 2024
Alterna – Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente de Zaragoza, Spain, May 2024
Champs Elysées Film Festival, France, June 2024
Côté Court, France, June 2024
Syncro Film Festival, Argentina, June 2024
Estivales de Sceaux – Festival d’art contemporain du Grand Paris, France, June 2024
Leiden Shorts, The Netherlands, June 2024
Raindance Film Festival, UK, June 2024
Festival du film de Contis, France, June 2024
Thessaloniki Short Film Festival, Greece, October 2024
Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Canada, October 2024
Escape, voyage au coeur des cultures numériques, Institut Français, November 2024 – November 2026 (exhibition, installation version)
Exhibition of the Miquel Casablancas Art Award – Sant Andreu Contemporani, Fabra i Coats, Spain, November 2024