Diabolical Architectures of Colonialism (2023)

A lone spectre drags their injured body across a barren landscape decimated by numerous forms of extraction. What are they looking for?

This film explores time, labour, psychological, material and climate decimation in the afterlives of colonialism. Responding to data from the Cecil Rhodes archive during the Kimberley diamond rush (1871), South African gold rushes (1873-1886), and African expansion as a result of British, German, and Portuguese imperialism. A speculative invocation of awkward spectres peeks at the haunted underside of perfect digital utopias, as the capture of land and resources, still shapes today's economic disparities and fantasies of interplanetary colonisation. An unknown narrator offers poetic musings throughout the film, drawing our attention to the negative spaces of extraction typically ignored by official records. What is the consequence of an economic system that stands on these legacies of extraction?

Created with game engine software, this film self-referentially asks whether emotional resonance is possible in imagined virtual futures powered by energy-intensive GPUs often using rare metals. It focuses on the complications of the present moment when more energy is required for more innovation, to an end we are not yet sure of, where often invisible limping spectres across time and space, still communicate something important to us.

Director: Michael Salu
Writer: Michael Salu
Sound: design Kyprian Rainey
Producer: Michael Salu
Cinematography: Michael Salu
Set Design: Michael Salu
Animation: Michael Salu
Art Director: Michael Salu
Editor: Michael Salu
Colour Grading: Michael Salu
Narration: Michael Salu