Infected is a film about the nature of the physical body in the context of future technological possibilities, seen through dance and digitally manipulated imagery. The new bio-engineered body is still an sexual, organic, stark, brutal, pounding system. It is beautiful, repulsive, indulgent, curious, emotional, un/controlled, breeding, changing…

 

Infected begins in darkness; a small streak of light expands into a series of more complex shapes, revealing itself as the body of a dancer. Confined within a circular projection screen the dancer moves with the distracted, disorientated impatience of a caged animal. As the film progresses, the image is manipulated until flesh takes on an almost liquid appearance. The figure stutters, jumps, blurs, is broken.

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We observe this image corruption as if by electronic interference. The deformation of the image is analogous to the descent of this once controlled body into trauma. The tortured, hallucinatory figure is destined to repeat its infection in perpetuity.

 

Is this a futuristic vision of the human body infiltrated and changed, ‘infected’ by biotechnology?

Or is the reverse happening? Is the human body, the warm-blooded body of sinews and emotions, corrupting the ‘pure light’ of technology?

 

Infected features Scottish dance artist, Iona Kewney, and a specially commissioned score by Fennesz, whose computer-manipulations of sounds derived from guitar and other acoustic sources have won him worldwide acclaim as one of the most innovative and important artists in electronic music.

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Infected video for installation or single screen projection - 8min (2001​)