Emma Charles, Ben Evans James
UK / Kazakhstan, 65′ 2020

The film brings into focus contemporary processes of nation building and myth-making in Kazakhstan through the remnants of Soviet technological infrastructures that haunt the country’s landscape. Shot on 16mm, the camera is drawn across the landscape taking in locations that include mineral mines, the Eurasian Steppe, the STS decommissioned nuclear site and the newly constructed city of Nur-Sultan. “On A Clear Day…” provides a meditative faux observational film about the continual process of construction involved in nationhood and national identity.

Emma Charles is a London-based artist and filmmaker. Working with experimental approaches to moving image and sound, her research based practice navigates the field of non-fiction while engaging with recurring themes of technology, capitalism and landscape. Playing with the blurred lines between documentary and fiction, her work often reveals the artificiality of both the filmic environment and our lived experience.

Ben Evans James is a curator at transmediale festival, Berlin. Co-founder and curator at the artist run centre South Kiosk, London. Researcher and filmmaker at Film is an Architecture. PhD candidate in film curation and exhibition design funded by AHRC. Senior Lecturer at The Bartlett, UCL and Falmouth University. He is based between Europe and Canada.