a collaborative video from students of Zürich University of the Arts and Geneva University of Art and Design
Artistic direction Swetlana Heger and Frank Westermeyer
2025, HD Video length: 29 minutes
Set in a near future, the video follows a mascot known as The Dream Maiden, whose mission is to inspire citizens to hold onto their dreams and believe in the future. Each night, she roams the city with her eyes closed, turning dreams into reality only for those who can pay the price. The film reflects on a world where dreaming itself has become a commodity, melting into the logic of streaming subscriptions, where even hopes and fantasies are monetized.
I Want The Images I Dreamt Of reflects on the saturation of life lived within digital environments and the emotional turbulence of metabolizing an endless stream of images. Composed from Instagram posts and found footage, the work unfolds in the logic of Internet Cinema, tracing how timelines, posting loops, and emergent online vernaculars shape the experience of selfhood.
This work explores live streams as liminal spaces between presence and absence, connection and isolation, rendering these tensions as virtual environments. It reflects how streaming platforms commodify attention and private life, framing self-conscious displays from the mundane to the bizarre as part of a continuous performance that blurs the line between public stage and private life.
the weather is WHAT?? – weather forecast of switzerland, febuary 10, 2031 – by meteoswiss, 1:28 – Gal Abramovich
The short video presents a future version of the weather forecast for the 10.02.2031. The video playfully tackles themes of traditional media: how do you keep them appealing, while maintaining their quality? In their unrestrained striving for attention, the makers of this weather forecast seem to have already abandoned the neutral tone that was once a hallmark of quality in public media.
After Memory – Verified by DataSafe stages a fictional corporate ad in the wake of a global data collapse. Framed as a provider of truth and trust, DataSafe exposes the seductive yet manipulative nature of corporate aesthetics. The work reflects on control, dependence, and the fragility of collective memory in the digital age.
“Virtual Dreams” blends digital animation and live-action footage, following the inner dialogue of a character trapped alone in a world between reality and virtuality. The inner dialogue takes the form of a prose, celebrating imagination and dreams.
Skin is more than just a covering — it's a living screen, reflecting what's inside us. This short visual journey explores the creation of artificial, lab-grown skin, blurring the line between biology and technology.
The video interweaves two entangled narratives—one exploring a post-human sensorium, the other tracing the Cold War’s toxic legacy beneath the Ice Sheet. A divided screen allows visual layers to echo, bleed, and interrupt each other, forming a porous ecology of perception and memory. One thread imagines the body inhabited by a non-pathological entity born of digital and natural debris, which alters sensory capacities while enabling new modes of relationality. The other follows resurfacing pollutants and infrastructures through glacial melt, exposing the fragility of climate models and the politics of uncertainty. Mineral, water, and skin serve as shared thresholds between the two narratives, dissolving boundaries between body and world. Time dilates across the work, inviting viewers into an unstable terrain where sensation, history, and geology converge.