Onassis ONX is bringing Biohacking, AI Cinema, and a Documentary Video Game to this year’s edition of IDFA DocLab

Onassis ONX member Sister Sylvester’s “Drinking Brecht: An Automated Laboratory Performance” is an interactive documentary that fuses synthetic biology and Brechtian theater. Stemming from an ongoing genetic experiment performed on a hat once worn by Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, this alchemical XR piece reshapes scientific narratives through a Marxist-feminist lens. This project is the latest in a series of ongoing investigations by Sister Sylvester into biohacking and Brechtian theory, which also includes the live performance-cocktail party “Good Genes.”

Sister Sylvester is a multimedia artist and amateur microbiologist based in New York and Istanbul. Her work has been called “genuinely subversive” by ‘Time Out NY’; “original” by ‘The New York Times’; “pulse-raising” by ‘Exeunt Magazine’; “perplexing” by ‘Theaterscene’; “apocalyptic” by ‘artforum’; and an “eerie, off-kilter, queer artistic orgasm” by ‘LiFO’ magazine (Greece).

She works at the place where science and technology meet politics and history. In collaboration with Deniz Tortum, she created the VR documentary “Shadowtime” (2023), which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and continues to tour to festivals including IDFA, GIFF, and Thessaloniki Film Festival; and the film “Our Ark,” which premiered at IDFA (2021) and has screened at festivals internationally. In her live work, she creates visual essays and books that become performances, spatial narratives that play with spoken and written text to create communal reading experiences. Most recently, “Constantinopoliad,” with a live score by Nadah El Shazly, was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation, premiered at National Sawdust in NYC (2023), and played at the Onassis Library in Athens and the Internationaal Theater of Amsterdam in 2024; and “The Eagle and The Tortoise,” which premiered at Frascati Theater, Amsterdam, as a part of IDFA On Stage (2022) and at Under The Radar Festival NYC 2024. She is a current resident at ONX Studio, a 2019 MacDowell Fellow, an alumnus of the Public Theater New Works program and CPH:DOX lab. She teaches a bio-art class, “The School of Genetically Modified Theater,” at Colorado College and has also taught and lectured at MIT, Princeton, UCCS, Columbia University, and Boğaziçi, Istanbul.

Emeline Courcier’s “Burn from Absence" is a cinematic video installation and full dome experience that uses AI to reconstruct the artist's fragmented family history. AI-generated images based on existing family photos, accompanied by audio recordings of several generations of family members, weave together stories of growing up in Vietnam, the horrors of war, the complexities of immigration, as well as family dynamics. This beautiful and haunting work was first conceived during the artist's PHI Immersive residency in March 2024. “Burn from Absence” was then exhibited in the Onassis ONX Summer Showcase 2024, and at IDFA the work is co-presented in collaboration with PHI Studio.

Emeline Courcier (b. 1995, Paris, France) stands at the confluence of personal history and artistic experimentation. As a photographer and video artist, her works are entry points into her personal and collective memory of her family. Inspired by their experience of the Indo-China war, resettlement in France, as well as their suffering and resilience, she is the inheritor of their history and the medium of their memory.

Courcier, in an almost dreamlike approach, transforms the spoken testimonies into the raw material with which she explores personal identity, memory, and history. There is a nuance to her artistic practice in her unique approach to technology, particularly how she integrates artificial intelligence into her methodology. Courcier approaches AI as a tool and a conduit to explore and reconstruct the maze of her memory and subconscious. This method enables her to dissect her relationship with her family’s past. Like a prism, one event is seen and understood from multiple perspectives within her family, and using AI to re-fabricate these pasts as she sees them.

“Burn from Absence” is a film about family, about Mami and Papi, Emeline’s grandmother and grandfather, it’s about her mother and her eight uncles and sisters, it is about the stories we are born into, of family histories we will never know, it is an autofiction about making these unknowable realities into material representations of her unconscious

The IDFA DocLab Forum presents an excellent opportunity for industry professionals to meet, pitch and support projects, and get a sense of the most exciting and pressing topics preoccupying artists working in immersive nonfiction. This year, Onassis ONX member Sam Butin will be presenting “Normandie: A Documentary Video Game,” a video game about the transatlantic crossing of the SS “Normandie” in late August of 1939 during World War II. Blending the forms of video game and documentary, “Normandie” uses interactive mechanics to explore the stories of refugees amidst the tensions of a continent on the brink of war. It utilizes personal family history, primary sources, and archival research to embed players into the true stories of immigrants fleeing persecution.

This game, which is still in development, was featured this summer in the Games for Change Immersive Arcade at Onassis ONX in New York.

Sam Butin is a storyteller working in the video game industry and extended reality (XR). His past work includes the historical video game “1979 Revolution: Black Friday” (a British Academy Film Awards nominee, South by Southwest Gaming Award nominee, The Game Awards nominee, and Facebook Game of the Year winner), “HERO” (a Sundance Film Festival official selection and Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes winner), and “Fire Escape: An Interactive Narrative Series” (an official selection at the New York, Tribeca, and Vancouver international film festivals). He has developed original stories for partners, including Google, Verizon, Eko, and the Brown Institute.

Butin is the founder and creative director of On The March, a gaming studio opening windows for players to peer into untold history.

IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) is a prestigious documentary film festival held annually in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Since its establishment in 1988, IDFA has been dedicated to showcasing and promoting documentary films from around the world. The festival features a diverse range of documentaries covering various topics and themes. It aims to stimulate critical thinking, inspire dialogue, and raise awareness about global issues through the power of documentary storytelling. IDFA offers a platform for filmmakers to present their work, connect with industry professionals, and gain international recognition. The festival plays a crucial role in advancing the documentary genre and supporting the growth of documentary filmmaking globally.