Alma

Documentary - 2020

"The details of the script for Alma were modeled from data that the artist collected from her own digital devices. The film describes a woman who enters into a private contract with a room. The objects in the room monitor how she feels as they respond to her in real time, comforting her with their physical presence and touch. The room tracks the character’s steps and her screen time, but it also monitors impossible data points, like what she would have accomplished if she had lived a different life. The first half of the film celebrates the unreality of her wishful thinking that technology is capable of solving any problem. In the second half of the film, these optimistic ideas are traded for a catastrophic vision of her digitally connected self. In the end, she is immersed in a space that describes what it once was like to be among other people. While physically separated, she waits indefinitely in a digital rendering, surrounded by a phantom of human presence." — Jane Lombard Gallery