Films

Shifting Perspectives (2020)

Reimagining life through screendance and synthetic biology

Shifting Perspectives is an experimental screendance inspired by Moving the Needle, a dialogue between synthetic biologists Sarah Richardson and Tom Knight whose contrasting views on microbial life sparked the project. Bringing art and science into conversation, the film expands notions of agency, embodiment and relationality, moving across the boundaries between human, nonhuman and microbial worlds.

Created by Sarah Pini with Jestin George and Melissa Ramos during the Responsive Research Residency at Critical Path, Sydney (April–May 2020).

Premiered during National Science Week, Australia, on 15 August 2020; screened at DRHA2021 Digital Matters, Berlin/online.

Published in Body, Space & Technology (2022).

Moving Perspectives: Biology is Technology (2019)

Moving Perspectives is an interdisciplinary experimental film developed by Sarah Pini and Jestin George during the Choreographic Hack Lab (Critical Path and Sydney Festival 2019).

It challenges the binary between nature and technology, approaching synthetic biology as a living, growing technology that could reshape our relationship with the Anthropocene.

Featured in Anthroposphere: The Oxford Climate Review (2019).

Labs & Talks

Choreographic Hack Lab: Hacking the Anthropocene (2019)

Invited artist at Choreographic Hack Lab, a one-week laboratory organised by Critical Path and Strange Attractor with the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS), Sydney, where five choreographers and five practitioners from other disciplines developed creative responses to the Anthropocene.

The lab was shared with the public through talks, presentations and a publication.
Funded by the City of Sydney, the Australia Council for the Arts and Create NSW, with support from Woollahra Council.

Synthetic Organisms:

Performing Promise and Doubt (2019)

Invited speaker at Talking Dance: Hacking the Anthropocene

Sarah Pini and Jestin George shared ideas developed during the Choreographic Hack Lab at this public sharing at Kings Cinema, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS), Sydney.

Together with the other speakers, we reflected on futures shaped by human and nonhuman entanglements, deep time and posthuman perspectives, asking how dance can help us imagine new ways of living in the world.

Event organised by Critical Path and Sydney Festival at Kings Cinema, MAAS, Sydney, January 2019.

Published in Critical Dialogues 11: Hacking the Anthropocene (2019)

Making Space

Bodies, Space and the Anthropocene

Invited speaker at Making Space: Bodies, Space and the Anthropocene

With Astrida Neimanis, Bek Conroy and Jodie McNeilly-Renaudie.

Building on Talking Dance: Hacking the Anthropocene, the panel reflected on artist–non-artist collaborations and on thinking through practice in the Anthropocene.

Organised by Festival March Dance, in collaboration with the Sydney Environment Institute, 107 Redfern, Sydney, March 2019.