Graeme Thomson

Humanzee: The Human Chimp

Graeme Thomson

Bhagavan Antle, Neil Dudgeon

Oliver is a chimpanzee who not only can walk upright, but does of his own accord. For years there have been debate's over Oliver's identity. All those who know Oliver swear that he is at least somewhat human. Is Oliver a chimpanzee and human hybrid, a well trained chimpanzee, or something altogether different?

Facs of Life

Graeme Thomson, Silvia Maglioni

The voice coming from a recording of Paris 8 Vincennes university lecture long time ago belongs to Gilles Deleuze and reminds us of the intellectual adventure of the 70s whose political and aesthetical echo resonates in the intermittent, non-mandatory structure in the purely cinematographic field.

Common Birds

Graeme Thomson, Silvia Maglioni

Rinio Kyriazi, Tassos Raptis

Refusing to pay for the debt, two Athenians decide to leave their city. Guided by mysterious crow calls, they wander through a desolate urban landscape until they reach a zone of passage and are spirited to an ancient forest, the Realm of the Birds. Here they meet the Hoopoe, half-bird half-woman, who tells them how the birds live by sharing their resources amid the magical forces of the forest. However, one of the men has other plans for the birds. Though far from easy, the inter-species encounter will be illuminating for all.

and so I'll make myself believe it that this night will never go

Graeme Thomson, Silvia Maglioni

Two-channel video installation shot in Los Angeles by Magiloni and Thomson, commissioned for Schizo-Culture/Semiotext(e) exhibition at SPACE Studios, London, 2014.

In Search of UIQ

Graeme Thomson, Silvia Maglioni

Following the publication of A Thousand Plateaus, a work that marked a highpoint in his creative partnership with Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari began working on a screenplay for a science-fiction film, Un amour d’UIQ. This script, which preoccupied Guattari’s attention for seven years, represented a blueprint for a subversive popular cinema through an imagined hyper-intelligent infra-cellular life substance—“UIQ” (Universe Infra-quark)—capable of controlling global communications networks and plugging into the “desiring machines” of a community of squatters. After discovering the unpublished script, Paris-based artists and filmmakers Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson initiated a multiform research project that culminates in their film essay In Search of UIQ, which takes on Guattari’s central quandary: how to give shape to a bodiless entity, seemingly without spatial or temporal limits.