Julia Curl

Thesis

Julia Curl (b. 1998) is a New York City–based photographer whose work examines the architectural landscape of American post-industrialism. She is a current student at Parsons The New School for Design and will graduate with her BFA in photography and BA in literary studies in December 2020. Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions across the United States and Europe, including "Rayko’s 9th Annual Plastic Camera Show" at the Rayko Photo Center in San Francisco, CA (2016); "Residual Form" at the Nave Gallery in Somerville, MA (2016); and "Absences" at Millepiani in Rome (2018).

My thesis project is an experimental, first-person
perspective film which takes place through the eyes of
an anonymous narrator as they wander through an
industrial wasteland, travel through a wormhole in their
television, and enter into an alternate universe. The film
—heavily influenced by science fiction and existential
literature—is set in an imagined future in which
humanity has receded indoors and into a digital space.
As the narrator walks through the desolate, empty
streets, they grow increasingly suspicious of the nature
of the reality which surrounds them, writing out a series
of journal entries on the screen of their iPhone. The
beginning of the film is shot in a stop-motion style on
35mm film. Each frame is composed and edited as if it
were an individual photograph, but the images are
sequenced as video to create a semi-continuous flow of
events. Halfway through the film, as the narrator
watches TV, there is a break: the film abruptly shifts
into a combination of 16mm found footage and
photograms as linear narrative is replaced by a
bombardment of apocalyptic media.