Hostile Atmospheres
Human beings exist in perpetual negotiation with the invisible forces surrounding them. The weight and pressure of the air itself can have an immense effect—a barometric flux that disrupts the delicate balance of fluid in the inner ear, causing dizziness, nausea, disequilibrium. 3hd’s “Hostile Atmospheres” moving image program responds to such a world in vertigo, the imbalance prompting our society to claim greater receptivity to care. Screening online at 3hdTV and IRL at Berlinische Galerie, four intimate works share personal experiences of how illness, disability, and trauma intersect with systemic oppression, framing the body as a site of vulnerability, repair, and healing.
Billy Klotsa’s “Scaffold” follows a lesbian couple whose relationship fractures as the terminal illness of one partner’s mother unfolds, blurring boundaries between the maternal and the romantic, the real and the fantastical, against a shifting coastal landscape. JJJJJerome Ellis’s music video/poem “Evensong” meditates on stuttering, where the pauses between words and music become moments of liberation, while rhythm and interruption reconnects us to a shared, collective narrative. Holly Márie Parnell’s “Cabbage” documents her family’s navigation of an ableist system, centering her brothers’ rhythmic, eye-tracked writings and her mother’s reflections on being forced to prove her son’s humanity, while moving between lived experience and the violence of bureaucracy. Sophie Hoyle’s “Hyperacusis (Part 1)” situates nature metaphors within political narratives about the body, unfolding through biohacking experiments to examine mental health, trauma, access to healthcare, and the intergenerational legacies of racism, colonialism, and socioeconomic inequality.
To care means recognizing the bonds that we inhabit, acknowledging their vulnerability, and responding with attention and responsibility. It asks us to examine our relationships and the structures that shape them through sensitivity and openness. In practicing towards social transformation, the “Hostile Atmospheres” program asks: How can we live moments of vulnerability to create a sense of social power of trust and care?
