Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani

Spelling Dystopia

HD, 2 channel video installation, colour, stereo, 17 min., 2008

From 1974 Hashima island was abandoned because the resources were exploited. Today the island is uninhabited and the concrete-architecture is left to natural erosion. In the year 2000 it became the film location of a science fiction blockbuster „Battle Royale“, and came back into the japanese consciousness, with a different connotation. The younger generation started to know the place mostly from movies, mangas and video games, as an abandoned ghost island. In our film, we combine the memories of a former inhabitant of the island - the son of a coal miner, who lived on Hashima until 1974 with the narration of two high school students who recall fragments of the movie “Battle Royale”. Thereby, the island appears almost as their fantasy, an imaginary playground for their games, where various images and layers of reality and fiction already got in a state on mingling.

Movie
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Spelling Dystopia
HD, 2 channel video installation, colour, stereo, 17 min., 2008
(excerpt 1.27 min.)