Future in ICU - 2000

The smell of burned metal and smoke fills the air. I lay still, deprived of physicality and bodily experiences. I am surrounded by visions of canceled futures as far as the eye can see. This brave new world is braced for real and imaginary threats. Am I in an actual war zone or is a post-apocalyptic computer game becoming reality? My head is buzzing. With a pervasive sense of disorientation, failed expectations and hopelessness I undergo an emergency treatment at the Future in ICU. How can we deal with uncertainty, restore our senses and heal collective world wounds? A drone passes by, pulling a banner exclaiming: “Zero Emissions!” The strange sounds of sandstorms and buzzing drones lure me to sleep.

Nazanin Karimi

Sunburned Land
Nazanin Karimi

Located close to the shores of a politically strategic territory and placed in the middle of digital warfare, this island carries aggressive and charged news about drones, tankers, oil, weaponry, rivalry, deceptive claims, and false flag operations. The Sunburned Land is a fictive portrayal of an actual location and its occurring events.

In this new work, Nazanin focuses specifically on the ‘physicality’ of the landscape and the effects of the landscape on narrative and the body of the audience. The warmth, colors, and ambiguous topography are the natural elements of its physical presence. Lying down and looking at a holistic picture on a tilted angle engages the body and mind in an experience that brings us closer to feeling the contrasting tranquility of the island. (The tilted surface, at -6° to -24°, stimulates blood circulation to give a neutralising and numb-like feeling while looking at the screen). Together, the flying movement of the camera, the physical weightlessness and numbness, and the storyline, create a bodily experience of a digitally narrated story—questioning our trust in perceptions that are shaped in the absence of bodily experiences. The work engages the audience in a critical exploration of the political reality of the Hormoz Strait, allowing the audience to move between the slippery space between fiction and Non-fiction.

Nazanin Karimi is a Digital artist and design educator, born in Iran and based in Rotterdam. Her art direction, visual identities, multimedia productions and visual storytelling span the cultural and social domains. In her project, she focuses on the digital narration of a physical landscape using the tension between fiction and reality.

Currently, she is active in the field of design education, contributing to empowering the new generation of critical and socio-politically active designers. She is Graduated with BA in graphic design from Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague and MA in design from Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam.