Virtual Frontiers was created over two months on location in Grahamstown, South Africa. The work combines representations of the town’s history, experiences of the present, and imaginings of the future. The VR films are a loosely-woven phamtasmagoria of interviews, candid footage, re-enactments, archival media, and improvised performance.
The films look at the town as a collision point: here, seven of South Africa’s nine biomes are found. Here, too, ocean and land became a site of convergence for sea creatures and plants 300 million years ago. And here, the first brutal clashing of the British invaders with the AmaXhosa in 1820; the forced assimilation and appropriation which ensued, and the continued violent legacy of colonialism in the ‘post-colonial’ era. Virtual Frontiers is an attempt to make sense of the effects and systems which organize the way people experience this space.
