climatefuture
TRUTH PERFORMED / TRUTH DISRUPTED
Unfinished film, abandoned at 05:35 (scripted duration: 12:00)
TRUTH PERFORMED / TRUTH DISRUPTED is an unfinished poetic video essay, a collaboration between Parham Ghalamdar and Dr Lone Sorensen. The film was conceived as a 12-minute work and deliberately abandoned during editing at 05:35. What remains is a partial edit rather than a completed statement.
The film examines populism as a performance of truth, focusing on how political authority is staged, embodied, mediated, and contested across broadcast media, social platforms, and hybrid digital spaces. Through archival footage, AI-generated imagery, and voiceover, the work traces how emotion, spectacle, and algorithmic circulation shape what comes to be felt as “true.”
The project was developed through Leeds Creative Labs, an interdisciplinary programme run by the Cultural Institute. Leeds Creative Labs pairs artists with researchers to support open-ended collaboration and experimentation, without requiring a fixed outcome or final product.
This edition of Leeds Creative Labs was themed Climate Futures, delivered in partnership with the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds. The Climate Futures programme invited participants to explore how climate change intersects with culture, politics, communication, and public life, beyond purely scientific or policy frameworks.
Within this context, TRUTH PERFORMED / TRUTH DISRUPTED approached climate futures indirectly, by examining the media conditions under which climate knowledge, authority, and belief are produced, contested, and undermined. Rather than proposing solutions or future scenarios, the film focused on the instability of truth itself as a condition shaping political action and inaction.
The film remains unfinished. The unproduced sections would have shifted from disruption toward questions of revelation, care, and future imaginaries. Their absence is part of the work as presented here.
CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO PLAY THE FILM
EMBEDDED MEDIA
https://www.youtube.com/embed/fUR9hIkOStE
