Format VR Installation, Print Essay "Ascend. Become."
Year 2024
With the support of FFF Bayern, CNC, MBB, Eurimages
Residencies Venice Biennale College VR ’21, Berlinale Talents ‘22, IFFR Darkroom '24
Nominations Women in Immersive Tech x Meta Grant
Year 2024
With the support of FFF Bayern, CNC, MBB, Eurimages
Residencies Venice Biennale College VR ’21, Berlinale Talents ‘22, IFFR Darkroom '24
Nominations Women in Immersive Tech x Meta Grant
Festivals 81st Venice Film Festival (2024), ArtVR (2024), Filmfestspiele Hof (2024), Digital Body Festival (2024)
Awards 4DR Studio Best Pitch Award (Cinemart ’22), Eurimages Outreach Award (IFFR Darkroom '24), Chrystal Owl Award (Stereopsia '24), Impact Award (New Images Festival '25)
Written & Directed by Lilian Hess
Produced by Sarah Arnaud (Tchikiboum), Kathrin Brunner & Oliver Czeslik (mYndstorm productions)
Performer Chihiro Kawasaki
Art Director Arnaud Desjardins
Original Score and Sound Design Fritz Rating
Animation & Development Femme Fatale Studio
Hardware & Software Engineering i-mmersive
Awards 4DR Studio Best Pitch Award (Cinemart ’22), Eurimages Outreach Award (IFFR Darkroom '24), Chrystal Owl Award (Stereopsia '24), Impact Award (New Images Festival '25)
Written & Directed by Lilian Hess
Produced by Sarah Arnaud (Tchikiboum), Kathrin Brunner & Oliver Czeslik (mYndstorm productions)
Performer Chihiro Kawasaki
Art Director Arnaud Desjardins
Original Score and Sound Design Fritz Rating
Animation & Development Femme Fatale Studio
Hardware & Software Engineering i-mmersive
The female form, once displayed without agency, breaks free from convention as Duchampiana chooses to move upward, skyward. There is no finish line: the journey towards a free and authentic self means pushing forever onwards. An exercise in resilience and an encounter with truths buried deep within our physical bodies.
Duchampiana is an artistic VR installation focused on the theme of body politics. Departing from one of art history’s most notorious paintings - Duchamp’s “Nude Descending A Staircase No 2” - this immersive installation invites its audience to engage in a physical transgression of social constructs.
“Descending and ascending are poetically charged motions. While the descent bears the symbolism of retreat, a journey into the unconscious, or to hell, the ascent is associated with awakening, rebirth, a journey towards light, and freedom. I am fascinated with the politics of space, and how those inevitably impact the way we move and hold ourselves within these spaces. It’s a dynamic which is being revisited repeatedly in feminist discourse, for Woman’s place is not a given, but requires to be laboriously claimed ever anew. While reversing Duchampiana’s journey down the infinite staircase is my commentary on Woman reclaiming her body, it is in the realm of poetics that the audience experiences this story.”
Lilian Hess, Director
Lilian Hess, Director
