Mimeisthai

Mimeisthai is part of an ongoing and multimodal project that includes multi-channel video installation and single channel film formats. This version was officially selected for Cinedans 2024, 'ongoing installations', presented at the Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam. A previous, shorter version (12mins) featured in ‘Dance (Lens)’ 2021 at Dancehouse Inc, and an earlier incarnation of this film was a four-channel gallery installation (8min loop), presented at Kings Artist Run Initiative (Naarm/Melbourne, Australia) in 2020.

'Mimeisthai' is a cine-choreographic exploration of Walter Benjamin’s 1933 concept of the 'mimetic faculty'. As a generic skill, the mimetic faculty refers to an ability to perceive and/or reproduce similarity, without necessarily implying sameness. This skill is possessed by all living things and finds expression on various levels, from the biological to the behavioural; such as in reproduction or camouflage, to the myriad ways that creatures communicate. In 'Mimeisthai' movements are shared, transformed and repeated between performers both on and off-screen, and then amplified across multiple frames. Through duplication, repetition, and layering multiple exposures, this work explores the mimetic faculty of dance and digital video.

  • Phoebe Robinson
    Director
  • Oonagh Slater
    Key Cast
  • Chloe Arnott
    Key Cast
  • Rhys Ryan
    Key Cast
  • Luke Fryer
    Key Cast
  • Mathew Rolfe
    Music
    Secret Towns, Ronny Quasar (bands)
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    16 minutes 35 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    November 30, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 AUD
  • Country of Origin:
    Australia
  • Country of Filming:
    Australia
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne
  • Cinedans 24 Festival
    Amsterdam
    Netherlands
    March 20, 2024
    Dutch premiere
    Official selection
  • Dans (Lens) 2021
    Melbourne
    Australia
    November 19, 2021
    World premiere
    Official selection
Director Biography - Phoebe Robinson

Phoebe Robinson is a professional dancer/choreographer, research assistant, independent scholar and filmmaker. Her research interests include Walter Benjamin's ‘peculiar phenomenology’ of embodiment, and the ‘archival turn’ in performing arts. She holds a PhD titled ‘Dancing the Mimetic Faculty: A Peculiar Phenomenology’ from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia.

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Director Statement

As a choreographic filmmaker, I am deeply interested in how people move in their everyday lives and how gestures evolve within specific spaces and over time, via live and mediated interactions. I am particularly fascinated by the way the filmic apparatus enhances the visibility of these movements through framing and interruption. Drawing inspiration from Walter Benjamin's concepts of the 'optical unconscious' and the 'citationality of gesture', my works explore the duplication, repetition, and layering of movements, inspired by early motion study experiments by pioneers like Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey. By reflecting on film's origins as a tool for studying motion and its modern digital transformation, my work engages in a form of mimetic play.