Is there such a thing as a person who is all good or all bad? Could you kill someone? And how malleable is our world? These are questions that arise in TM, an interactive, personal experience, in the form of a combination of a job interview and thought experiment. During a one-on-one meeting with someone from the “TM movement,” a barrage of questions and assignments aim to determine whether you can become a member of this club.
The issues raised make you reflect on your own moral standards; the direct and sometimes absurdist questioning undermines the norms and values you take for granted. The experience is sometimes reminiscent of controversial psychological experiments in the past, where participants slowly but surely begin to cross their own boundaries in the name of science. But unlike these experiments, TM is built on hope and faith in humanity.
Presented by IDFA DocLab in collaboration with de Brakke Grond.
About IDFA DocLab
IDFA’s new media program DocLab has been exploring the art of interactive and immersive non-fiction since 2007. Over the years, IDFA DocLab has developed into one of the leading platforms for interactive documentary art and storytelling. Every year, IDFA commissions new pieces, initiate collaborations between artists, and offer a wide range of industry activities to support those shaping the landscape of emerging media and art.
In celebration of IDFA DocLab’s fifteenth anniversary, the festival presents the special theme program Liminal Reality: a celebration of ambiguity in life, tech, and art. Referring to an in-between state that is both familiar and unknown, Liminal Reality reflects on the collective ambiguity we now find ourselves in: somewhere between the old normal and a post-COVID world; on the threshold of digital, physical, and hybrid realities.
IDFA DocLab will take place in Amsterdam from November 19 to 28, with the main new media activities taking place from November 19 to 24.
