2020

single channel HD video, 18mins (test)

multichannel HD animations, 1min loops

'In Napoleon Complex, one is never really sure where to look amidst a constantly shifting frame of context. In a de-sanitised office space, two men, seemingly bad actors, awkwardly portray a high-powered interview for a job in which one must predict extreme weather patterns. 
Watching from the garden outside and the card-strewn desk within, the audience is drip-fed context in a non-linear fashion - firstly that one man is not a performer but an actuarial scientist, parsing the details of his profession as a global reinsurance analyst, and secondly that the two share a complicated mutual family history. Scenes swing between the investigative, the improvised and the interpersonal, conflating the practice of financialised modelling of global weather systems with an intricate familial structure, and emphasising the emotional consequences of complex processes through gamified roleplay. A purple emperor moth writhes in a cocoon before entering the building, the illusory ‘eyes’ on its wings animating and becoming independently perceptive as the material, mutative consequences of global risk modelling are unpacked.'
text by Rachel Pafe

Camera, Lighting and Audio
Nicola Baratto, Leslie Lawrence, Kitty Maria

Production
Monica Mays

Colour Grade
Mariæ Larsøn

Playtesting
Áron Birtalan

Thanks to
Mirre Yayla Séur, Jurgis Lietunovas, Callum Copley