FluxusMuseum Prize for Experimental Video
Jenna Collins 
jennacollinspa@gmail.com
+44 7967671722

PROPOSAL: ‘Cosmic Cold’ 

‘Cosmic Cold’ (working title) experiments with who gets to speak about scientific, technological, and engineering developments. The project explores how the viewer can be physically engaged by following simple instructions to speak—specifically, to whisper—a script displayed on the screen, drawing them into the action.

I am interested in the power dynamics of knowledge dissemination. While not a critique of technological development, I am concerned with the limits placed on its discussion by the belief that the sciences are purely rational. The imaginative use of technology holds creative, political, and critical potential beyond its intended use when activated in inventive ways, prompting critical awareness of its effects.

My intention with Cosmic Cold is to immerse the viewer in a sensory and imaginative world where the mess and muddle of our technological lives are acknowledged, explored, and re-articulated.

‘Cosmic Cold’ will expand on my short experimental video The Ballards and The Damp and Buttery (2024), which replaces the words spoken by experts in archive footage of university lectures and broadcasts from significant institutions with a new text that responds poetically, politically, and bodily to the technological world. The voice-over is timed to suggest the new text is being spoken by the experts themselves, effectively putting new words into their mouths, a strange cousin of generative A.I.

The words I put in the experts mouths comes from my writing practice, which engages with various references, images, and experiences related to technological encounters. For instance, the text references the chimney stacks depicted in L. S. Lowry’s portraits of industrial Manchester, the Challenger space shuttle disaster, and the title Cosmic Cold is taken from Christa Wolf's novel They Divided the Sky (1963), reflecting the conflation of literary, political, and technological themes that characterise my practice.

‘Cosmic Cold’ will expand on this earlier experiment in two ways:

More Archive Footage & Voice-Over: I will source additional footage from lectures and broadcasts similar to those already used, and add voice-over to complement and extend the themes explored. This footage will be edited to flow with the audience script, discussed below.

I have 25 minutes of unused voice recordings from a voice artist, and a stock of archive material, all with the appropriate Creative Commons licenses. I understand and take full responsibility for any necessary clearances.

Audience Engagement through Whispering: The viewer will be brought into the work through an on-screen instruction to whisper a new text. This audience script will be written to complement the archive footage and voice-over, framing the viewer as a solicitous and critical chorus that helps shape the meaning of the footage. For example, at the start of the video, the viewer will be prompted to whisper the word “welcome.” Later, when the lecturer in the footage discusses someone reading a text, the viewer will be asked to whisper, ‘Do we have enough human warmth to contend with the cosmic cold?’ 

While the viewer’s participation is voluntary, those who choose not to whisper will still experience the video as a continuous flow, but they will be sensitised to their physical presence through the invitation to engage.

The Ballards and Damp and Buttery