Film by Elisa Caldana and Diego Tonus Topography of Terror (19.12.2016) Narrator: voice by actor Khalid Abdalla CGI Film, Full HD, Color/Surround sound, 31 Supported by Hessische Kulturstiftung Germany, in collaboration with ACME Studios London LINK TO THE FILM: www.vimeo.com/231675618/621fa3bb15 BIOS The film Topography of Terror (19.12.2016) is set in the unrealised building of the Topographie des Terrors in Berlin, which was initially planned by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor in 1993. Zumthor s design won a competition for the construction of a Documentation Centre on the site where the Gestapo, the SS and the Reich Security headquarters were all located during the Nazi era, but the project was never realised due to its high costs and the architect s radical and uncompromising attitude. Starting from Zumthor s original drawings and plans, Tonus and Caldana produced a CGI-rendering of the Topography of Terror building; an image of a present-day future which never came into being and therefore provides the perfect stage for a narrative that asks how forms of terror operate now and how they might operate in future. Informed by a series of conversations with psychoanalysts and journalists from Reuters, the BBC, and the Freud Museum, the film tells the story of a news agency journalist who suffers from secondary traumatic stress disorder as a result of overexposure to violent imagery in the newsroom. Through the fictive first-person account conveyed by actor and activist Khalid Abdalla s voiceover, the work explores ways of constructing information in contemporary journalism, articulating a reflection on that role and on the value of images as tools for perpetuating terror and manipulating the perception of reality. The empty building is resignified via the impossibility of defining a unique topography of terror, the schizophrenic nature of contemporary terrorism echoing through the non-places of the internet and the media. In these terms, Topography of Terror (19.12.2016) is at once an entirely compelling reconstruction of a seminal building that never was, a profound investigation of our damaged and damaging mediation of conflict, and a striking exploration of the complex relationship between personal and public ethics. 1 Elisa Caldana (b. 1986, Italy) is an artist currently living and working in London. She graduated from the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, where she was master student in the Fine Art class of Simon Starling (2010-2013) and earned her BFA and MFA from the IUAV University of Venice, in 2008 and 2012. In 2016, she is granted the Hessische Kulturstiftung Atelier in London, with a oneyear residency managed by ACME studios. Her work has been exhibited internationally including at the ar/ge kunst Kunstverein, Bozen (2017); Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Turin (2016); MMK, Frankfurt (2013); Malta Contemporary Art, Valletta (2011). In 2018, Caldana will be artist in residence at Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan. Diego Tonus (b. 1984, Italy) lives and works in Amsterdam and London. Tonus studied Visual Arts at IUAV University, Venice and received an MFA from Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam. He participated in group exhibitions including the 16th Rome Quadrennial (2016); WIELS (2015); De Appel (2015); CCA Singapore (2014); Palais de Tokyo (2013) and Kunstverein Nürnberg (2013). Solo presentations at Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (2013) and Danish Pavilion, Giardini Biennale Venice (2011). His films were presented internationally including at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Whitechapel Gallery London (2015) and Kunsthalle Gwangju (2011). He is supported by Mondriaan Fonds (NL) and has been awarded residency at Jan Van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht (2017); WIELS, Brussels (2014) and Spinola Banna Foundation, Turin (2011). Tonus has been nominated for several awards including the Performance Act Award, Trento (2015) and Furla Foundation Art Award, Bologna (2013). Khalid Abdalla works as an actor, producer and filmmaker, but also in cultural production and alternative media. His work balances between his creative life and political beliefs, aware that infrastructural shifts are as necessary as ideological ones. Acting credits include leading roles in Paul Greengrass s United 93 and Green Zone, Marc Forster s The Kite Runner, Tala Hadid s The Narrow Frame of Midnight, Danis Tanovic s Tigers and Tamer El Said s In the Last Days of the City - which Khalid also produced. In documentary film he has producing credits on Hanan Abdalla s In the Shadow of a Man and the upcoming film by Hanan Abdalla & Cressida Trew, The Vote. He also appears as himself in Jehane Noujaim s Oscar nominated The Square. Khalid is a founding member of three collaborative intitiatives in Cairo Cimatheque, Zero Production and Mosireen. Brought up in the UK to Egyptian parents, Cairo and London are his two cities. 1 Gareth Evans, Film Producer and Moving Image curator at the Whitechapel Gallery, London NEXT PAGE: Rendering Film Still from the CGI Animation, 2017