Simia: Stratagem for Undestining

Forum Expanded 2023

Speculation as a method for worldmaking: Simia was created in conversation with the fictitious artificial intelligence program Project Simiyaa, which aims to create a planned economy and manage infrastructural commons across Africa and the Middle East.

by Assem Hendawi (Director, Screenplay) Egypt 2022 English 26' Colour European premiere

Crew

Director	Assem Hendawi
Screenplay	Assem Hendawi
Editing	Donia Shohdy
Sound Design	Donia Shohdy
Sound	Donia Shohdy
Production Design	Mostafa El-Baroody
Assistant Director	Mostafa El-Baroody
Production Manager	Sarah Zidan
Producer	Sarah Zidan

Produced by

Sarah Zidan

Kairo, Egypt

Assem Hendawi

Assem Hendawi is an artist and researcher who works with videos, computer-based media, and text whose works act as spaces for worldmaking. His work questions historical and sociopolitical events around planetary computation, critical posthumanities, and the way in which technology constructs subjectivity. Through heuristics that extend from the abstract and philosophical to the imaginary and the absurd, Hendawi explores the manipulations that accompany late capitalism’s technologies as the site of rewriting narratives, identities, and traditions.

Filmography

2022 Everything Under Heaven; 17 min. · Simia: Stratagem for Undestining

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2023