What does it mean to live and work in the dig­i­tal present?

Doc­u­men­tary can some­times be seen as sta­t­ic, form­less, a lit­tle too inert. This is not some­thing that could be said of Eduar­do Williams’ inven­tive, dis­rup­tive and propul­sive debut fea­ture The Human Surge, a lurch­ing vor­tex of con­tin­u­al motion that, while switch­ing between more lacon­ic pac­ing and moments of greater inten­si­ty, nev­er real­ly stops moving.

In his first full-length effort, Williams elab­o­rates upon the style and themes estab­lished in his exper­i­men­tal, explo­rative shorts – a vir­ile, agile series of hybrid docs built around motion and the per­pet­u­al trans­fer­ence of ener­gy and ideas, all of which are pre­oc­cu­pied with issues (work, tech­nol­o­gy and the meet­ing of the two) of con­tem­po­rary con­cern that he con­tin­ues to rumi­nate on in the feature.

In a kind of cin­e­mat­ic relay race, actors in the films hand over to each oth­er in con­tin­u­al con­nec­tive chains, Williams’ cam­era bound­ing behind in rear medi­um shot. Rolling and rov­ing around his char­ac­ters, snip­pets of their exchanges are heard before the focus moves on. Moment pass­es to moment, sce­nar­ios roll one into anoth­er. As each invis­i­ble baton pass is made, junc­tures form between peo­ple and their envi­ron­ments, con­nec­tions made across glob­al, net­worked plains, and sen­sa­tions, feel­ings and impuls­es explored as they occur, on the move.

Ful­ly mobile, high­ly intox­i­cat­ing explo­rations of the dynam­ics of bod­ies and space, in these films flu­id and rhyth­mic con­nec­tions are made out of idle chat­ter, pur­pose­less hang­outs, and the walks to and from places, and ideas sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty are explored with­in frame­works that glob­alise these networks.

A trip­tych of dif­fuse, mean­der­ing micro-sto­ries, The Human Surge pass­es between three sep­a­rate loca­tions: Argenti­na, Mozam­bique and the Philip­pines. It also switch­es between three dif­fer­ent cam­era for­mats, tying each through a nov­el, unex­pect­ed con­nec­tive device. Start­ing in Argenti­na, the mut­ed, grainy visions of Buenos Aires are left behind as the Super 16mm cam­era glides into a com­put­er mon­i­tor, com­ing out of anoth­er screen in Maputo, cap­tured on Black­Mag­ic dig­i­tal, then filmed back onto Super 16 off a mon­i­tor to rough­en, tex­turise and qua­si-dig­i­talise the image.

Out of Mozam­bique and into the Philip­pines, down the deep­est cav­i­ties of an anthill, tun­nelling out into the Bohol jun­gle to show a hand oper­at­ing a smart­phone in pris­tine RED dig­i­tal, where even­tu­al­ly the cam­era rests on a tri­pod for the first time for the film’s con­clu­sion, locked upon the fluc­tu­at­ing, unique­ly mod­ern tint­ed hues of of a tablet factory.

In these tem­po­ral­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly dis­parate moments, we wit­ness first the cross-con­ti­nen­tal usage of tech­nol­o­gy, then final­ly the cre­ation of it. And in the image, a par­al­lel slide from cel­lu­loid to an ana­log-dig­i­tal hybrid, to the ful­ly con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal for­mat – process and then tech­nol­o­gy, work and then automa­tion. In much of cin­e­ma, tech­nol­o­gy is seen as oppres­sive, but for Williams it appears to be liberating.

The Human Surge is a film of asso­ci­a­tions, famil­iar to any­one who has grown up online. Williams moves between ideas and between loca­tions as we nav­i­gate tabs in the brows­er, scrolling, absorb­ing, con­nect­ing. It reveals how we com­mu­ni­cate through dig­i­tal medi­ums, in frag­ments and pieces, in thoughts and digres­sions. It is a patch­work: of dia­logues clipped from the inter­net, over­heard, writ­ten and imag­ined. Of char­ac­ters found, cre­at­ed, dis­cov­ered, and sourced online and in the streets; and of places, chanced upon, found on google maps, and heard about and trav­elled to.

The film also bears wit­ness to the mun­dan­i­ty of menial labour, in super­mar­kets. offices and fac­to­ries, and to the lan­guid promise of idle time, in carparks, bed­rooms and the jun­gle, as well as look­ing into strange con­fla­tions of the two. A stand­out sequence sees a group of Brazil­ian boys lazi­ly and casu­al­ly per­form homo­sex­u­al acts on each oth­er for the view­ing plea­sure of web­cam sub­scribers around the world, which leads into a sim­i­lar sequence in Mozam­bique, where the par­tic­i­pants quick­ly grow tired of the same exploit.

Williams and his col­lab­o­ra­tors ask, in their activ­i­ties as much as their words: what would life be like if peo­ple more active­ly con­front­ed their dis­in­ter­est in the work­ing world, or if sys­tems exist­ed to facil­i­tate a dif­fer­ent struc­ture, one out­side of the work eth­ic and the cen­tral­i­ty of organ­ised drudgery?

The Human Surge screens at London’s ICA on 23 April as part of the sec­ond Frames of Rep­re­sen­ta­tion fes­ti­val. For more info head to ica.art