The Sky Oscillates Between Eternity and Its Immediate Consequences is Nadim Choufi’s winning project from Art Jameel Commissions: Digital’s open call in 2020. Set in a space colony on Earth, this new sci-film explores how the future of smart cities relies on the promise of “sustainable” closed systems in the face of health and ecological crises. Two protagonists narrate how the control and exploitation of environmental life cycles and organisms become a blueprint to achieve such futuristic visions.

⁠⁠The 18-minute film can be viewed exclusively online through Art Jameel’s online platform here. For an optimal viewing experience, viewing on a large screen is encouraged.

This project was made possible with the support of the following collaborators: Mario Hawat (Lead CG artist), Antony Maalouf (Editor), Dayna Ash and Jad Wadi (Voice actors), Nour Sokhon (Composer), Ziad Moukarzel (Sound Mixing), Roula Seghaeir (Translator), featuring Wake Island’s song Last Ruins

About Nadim Choufi

Nadim Choufi lives in Beirut and primarily works with video, 3D animation, and sculpture. An alumnus of Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace fellowship, he exhibited his work regionally and internationally in Beirut Art Center, Abu Dhabi’s Warehouse421, Sharjah Art Foundation, The New School in New York, and Macao in Milan.

Launched earlier this year, Art Jameel Commissions: Digital invited artists to submit proposals through an online Open Call which attracted nearly 200 project submissions. The commission also provided an opportunity for guidance by experts from MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL). Responding to this year’s theme of ‘Time’, and thinking through how the concept of time has been challenged by technology and circumstance, the commission presented artists with an opportunity to rethink “digital art” and the ways in which it can question, investigate and form meaningful connections and experiences.

The winning proposal was selected by an esteemed panel of experts which included: Nadim Samman, Curator for the Digital Sphere, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; digital and organic media artist Jenna Sutela; and publisher and Chief Technology Officer at the Serpentine Galleries, London Ben Vickers.

Art Jameel Commissions is an annual, multi-year programme foundational to programming at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai’s contemporary arts institution and a hub for exhibitions, educational and research initiatives. This year’s commissioning programme’s digital focus simultaneously addresses Art Jameel’s long-standing commitment to a diverse, global public and current heightened realities of physical isolation. The next iteration of Art Jameel Commissions will centre on painting and drawing, with the Open Call taking place in 2021.