Yanyun Chen, Alex Scollay, Corentin Derbre, Jevon Chandra — In times like these…
Reviewed by Lauren Levato Coyne

The most enigmatic artworks build a world and transport the viewer into it. Science fiction does this most successfully when it splinters off from a recognizable world, branching into one we are barely familiar with and dropping us into a world for which we either yearn or from which we recoil, or a confusing mix of both. In times like these… is one of these artworks and was a highlight of the entire WaveForms event. The eight minute film is a seductive, believable, and atmospheric meditation using digital trees with spectral light sources and marigolds, an edible flower that is also a potent symbol of luck, prosperity, healing, and death.

Each member of the collaborative team has an impressive list of achievements in their own right and together they created a film that is wholly unique while also recalling Marseus van Schrieck’s fictionalized paintings of the forest floor, the pastoral dreamscapes of painter George Inness, and channeling Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation story as directed by Alex Garland. These references are yet another marker of the short film’s success. Digital artworks sometimes work so hard to be new, to be bigger-better-more, that they miss the important aspects of carrying our human experience forward into the e-realm. That bridge between the two worlds is a vital connection and it’s clear the makers of In times like these… held their humanity fast while building an elegiac experience for the viewer.

[Edited by curator, Georgie Friedman]