Still: Lacuna - Maartje Wegdam & Nienke Huitenga Broeren

Dutch artists and filmmakers feature prominently in this year’s IFFR VR programme, with a striking diversity of work on offer.

Lacuna* by Maartje Wegdam and Nienke Huitenga Broeren, and the first work released under the new Podium Biarritz label of Corine Meijers, deals in thoughtful, probing fashion with wartime trauma and loss. The subject is Sonja, an 85-year-old Dutch woman with “keen and twinkling eyes” who was separated from her parents in tragic fashion during the Second World War. Sonja grew up in Surinam. Her parents died in Auschwitz.

“I was doing a research project on objects that were still in people’s attics that related to stories from the Second World War,” Wegdam explains how she first encountered Sonja. She had just received back three napkins rings that she hadn’t seen since she was a very young child.

“I was intrigued by this napkin ring story but when I started to ask Sonja about it, I realised she didn’t have any answers for me. That was the start of looking into what is not there, the gaps and omissions…”

Why VR for such complex and emotional subject matter?

“We wanted to make Lacuna both a project about remembrance but also one about how memories shape your history and identity,” says Huitenga Broeren. “VR is super well suited to let a spectator feel the fleetingness of memory…”

The filmmakers talk of the “very subtle micro-interactions” that spectators will have with Sonja and her story through their headsets. Subtitles which seem to ripple across the virtual space are part of the story. “We wanted to emphasise the documentary quality of it. We didn’t want to dub Sonja,” explains Wegdam explains who also provides the English-language voice-over that we hear together with Sonja’s voice.

Very different in register is Mila Moleman’s raucously energetic work-in-progress Show Me the Light — VR Silent Disco, a work that currently allows up to 10 participants (20 when completed) to put on their headsets and get down to some serious grooving. They’ll be able to see each other’s “avatars” [virtual bodies] and to interact in the virtual world - but they can also touch physically.

“Together, mankind has built cities, woven extensive networks, and brought ideas to life that were once unimaginable,” Moleman writes in her notes for the VR. “But our hyperconnected world - once a triumph of human curiosity - now seems like a technological network slipping out of our own control. Speed and efficiency seem to overshadow direction and purpose. Overwhelmed by a constant stream of stimuli and data, meaning fades as we rush forward-forgetting to ask where we're actually headed.”

Show Me the Light — VR Silent Disco therefore poses an unsettling dilemma, the director suggests. “If we could start over, would we make the same choices, or look for another direction? And are we still in control of our own actions, or have we ignited a flame that slowly consumes us?”

“At my studio, Studio VRij, we specialise in multi-player VR because we think it is much more fun to do an experience together rather than alone,” Moleman further explains her VR philosophy. Her emphasis is firmly on shared experience.

“Normally, you have a vision of VR that would be a nerd in his basement, doing it alone. We try to challenge that perception and make VR a really, really social medium. That’s why we have been working on a multiplayer platform already for five years.”

And, no, she doesn’t mind if her disco participants are a bit tipsy if they wish to heighten their VR rush. “When we started this project, I was really worried it would be over-stimulating maybe because there would be flashing lights and there is a lot going on. I told lead technical artist Joelle Galloni, ‘ok, we need to have an abstract and sober environment so the music can be very active’ - but then she said ‘you’re protecting your players too much!’” The music for Show Me The Light was specially composed by Brass Rave Unit.

Dutch-based Ukrainian artist Sophia Bulgakova’s Otherworlds*also promises to be a mind-bending experience. It combines high tech with Ukrainian pagan folklore.

“I started the research during the pandemic when I was in Ukraine. I was always very curious about Ukrainian traditions,” the director remembers.

The project connects to her earlier works exploring “sensory deprivation and sensory overload.” She adds that Otherworlds is “a new way of rediscovering my own traditions, the traditions of my country and understanding it through new technology.” There are six active participants with headsets - and there is also an audience watching them. The participants will be invited to do some flower weaving. They will be able to see each other and to see the surrounding VR environment. The headsets all have a light cord which is connected to a giant maypole at the centre of the installation.

Otherworlds is based on the cycle of the year. The installation at the IFFR is focused on spring and summer - and Bulgakova is planning a follow-up that’ll deal with autumn and winter.

The elaborate, wide ranging and eye-popping Revival Roadshow*, a collaboration between Dutch-based Anne Fehres (The Netherlands) and Luke Conroy (Tasmania, Australia), looks at the strange and problematic legacy of Dutch colonial explorer Abel Tasman after whom the state of Tasmania was named. The artists liken their work to a “futuristic episode of Antiques Roadshow.” Fehres talks of wanting to “embrace the overwhelming complexity and the messiness” of the Tasman story. “There are a lot of contradictions there.”

The project has interactive audio narration allowing participants to follow different narrative pathways.

“What we really liked about VR was the immersive quality and that you could tell stories in multiple directions,” says Conroy. “The idea with the sound is that there are four channels and they are all happening concurrently. The idea is to overwhelm the viewer through both sound and visuals.”

Each scene in Revival Roadshow is constructed from thousands of images downloaded from museum platforms in The Netherlands and beyond.

Intriguingly, the duo have used generative AI alongside these archival images, blurring the lines between past and speculative future. “Thousands of layers make up each scene and some are generated with AI,” Conroy explains. He sees the main challenge with AI as being an ethical one, primarily to do with avoiding exploiting copyrighted material. “Digital colonialism reflects historical colonialism in its extraction of cultural material. We use these tools both as a creative medium and a way to reflect on and critique their impact.”

IFFR is the world premiere for Revival Roadshow. The dream now is to exhibit it in “a permanent location or a longer-term location in the Netherlands…that’s the challenge of working in VR - it’s really limited who can see the work,” says Conroy. “We meet so many people who are interested in seeing it [but] they need this piece of technology that is quite expensive and prohibitive.”

Find out more about IFFR here.

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*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund