WELCOME > SCHEDULE > EXHIBITIONS > OUT OF OFFICE

HEART OF HAWICK, FLOOR 2 LOBBY
THURSDAY 1 – SUNDAY 4 MAY
10:00 – 17:00

Content warning: contains strong language. 

FREE ENTRY

PROGRAMME NOTES
by Tom Swift

Set in the not-too-distant future, Out of Office is a new reimagining of late capitalism and its self-cannibalising instincts amidst climate collapse, co-designed by attendees of Film Club, Alchemy’s monthly filmmaking and discussion provision for 16-30-year-olds. Film Club is delivered as part of Film Town, our year-round programme of community filmmaking, skills development and creative learning.

What might our daily world of work look like if a climate catastrophe changed everything we know? How would everyday people react? These were the initial questions that drove the early stages of the process leading to Out of Office: over the course of the past year, participants have collaborated on an interactive exhibition imagining how society might change if some of the institutions, governments and organisations that dictate our lives crumbled around us. Imagine, indeed!

The group has created a timeline of fictitious events spanning a 10-year period leading up to the present moment. The present moment itself is encapsulated by the exhibition, fashioned after an abandoned office space inviting audiences to explore what has been left behind by the employees of a company known only as OZMO Innovations.

Introduced to and deploying a range of filmmaking techniques, Film Club attendees have designed three workstations left behind by OZMO employees, including hardware containing disgruntled email chains, exposés of corporate excess, evidence of protest by environmental action group Green Thumb, and a panel discussion featuring Alchemy staff and artists in residence assuming fictitious roles alongside and written by participants. Attendees also commissioned, with support from Alchemy, an original song – framed as Green Thumb’s anthem – written by Alchemy musician in residence Miwa Nagato-Apthorp, which can be prompted and heard by interacting with OZMO’s desktop machines.

Deliberately fracturing their creative outputs across an interactive immersive workstation, participants playfully invite audiences to investigate the origins of the fictitious fallout, and to consider their own relationship to themes explored and presented. Will the end of society as we know it bring about despair? Or would people come together in solidarity and support of each other? Film Club know which they would prefer.