Experimental science-fiction films as filmic heterotopia

Abstract

This paper questions the concept of the possible heterotopia of cinema by making a creative reading of a corpus of contemporary experimental science-fiction films. We think heterotopia in direct relation to utopia. If utopia can be linked to a form of thought, then heterotopia would be a form of realised or achievable utopia. Heterotopian action would then allow us to experiment subversive, if not new social configurations, where utopian thought allows us to dream of better (or at least other) societies. We propose to look at these issues starting from experimental science-fiction films. The aesthetic and narrative resorts as well as the modes of production of works like Slow Action and Urth by Ben Rivers, Meteor by Mathias Müller and Christoph Girardet, Momoko Seto’s Planet Series or Jérôme Cognet’s Guerilla Hubble, indeed offer us with an audiovisual experience that invites us to re-evaluate our human relation to the world by appealing to our capacity for imagination and by stimulating our free will, notably through their staging of historicity and multiplicity.