The Future of Reality

Everyday life without audiovisual technologies is no longer imaginable. How do we experience reality in the age of generative AI, algorithmic media, and the omnipresence of digital platforms?

How does cinema―and all audiovisual media―construct, challenge, and reimagine reality in times of ecological, political, and technological transformation? The Future of Reality gathers leading scholars, filmmakers, and artists to explore how audiovisual media shape and interrogate contemporary realities. This volume addresses critical questions across (and beyond) five thematic strands: “Beyond Documentary? The Role of Nonfiction Cinema in a Shifting Media Landscape;” “Generative & Algorithmic Realities: AI, Operational Images & Algorithmic Storytelling;” “Power, Truth & Representation: Disinformation, Propaganda & Democracy in Media;” “Material Stories: Sensing Bodies & Ecologies of Nonfiction;” and “The Future of the Archive: Memory, Speculation & the Politics of Time.”

The Future of Reality provides a platform for critical debate, innovative forms of exchange, and the audiovisual production of knowledge by featuring a diverse range of formats and modes of knowledge production. Through scholarly essays, interviews, talks, panel discussions, audiovisual essays, sound mixes, coding components, and experimental interventions, The Future of Reality aims to push the boundaries of traditional academic publishing and enable a multiplicity of forms.

Kevin B. Lee is a filmmaker and media researcher who has produced nearly 400 video essays exploring film and media. His award-winning Transformers: The Premake introduced the “desktop documentary” format. His work has screened at the Museum of Modern Art, Berlinale and International Film Festival Rotterdam, as well as on websites such as those of the New York Times and Mubi. He is the Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI). He co-leads the Swiss National Science Foundation research project “The Video Essay: Memories, Ecologies, Bodies.”

Flavia Mazzarino obtained her Master's degree in Visual Arts at the Università Iuav di Venezia and HfG in Karlsruhe with a thesis on Harun Farocki’s observational films. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Università della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano under the supervision of Kevin B. Lee, with whom she has also taught courses on video essays, cinema and audiovisual futures, and film festival studies. Flavia organized the Future of Reality Conference at the Locarno Film Festival in 2025. She is involved in curatorial projects focused on experimental and avant-garde cinema, having curated programs featuring filmmakers such as Robert Beavers, Morgan Fisher, and Helga Fanderl. Since 2021, she has been collaborating with Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari, producing his last four films, including A Fidai Film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Visions du Réel 2024, and With Hasan in Gaza, which has been nominated at the European Film Awards.

Marine de Dardel is an architect, visual artist, and media scholar. She studied architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) and creative coding at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). She is currently a doctoral research member in the research project “The Video Essay: Memories, Ecologies, Bodies,” funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF 2024–2027) in collaboration with Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU) and Università della Svizzera italiana (USI). Her research and practice focus on the semiotics of the grotesque body and the future of corporeality according to emergent VR and generative AI technologies. She has taught international workshops experimenting with architectural language and computational narratives. She has co-authored and edited several books, including Portraits: Architectural Parables (2022), de la Verticalité / Zur Vertikalität (2024), and Elegies (2024) and her work has been published in various journals, including Cartha, trans, Scroope, and the NECSUS Journal. Her work has also been screened at the Locarno Film Festival.