Lisa Freeman is an artist based in Dublin whose practice spans film, installation, text and performance. She explores the interdependence of power structures and relations, the body, site specificity and the presentation of the self in the everyday. Specifically, she examines how intimacy emerges and might be used as a form of resistance, in the context of psychological states shaped by personal interaction, the built environment, the media, and imagination.

This film follows an Irish woman as she makes her way through an unfamiliar city in the south of Europe. On a sunny day, moving among tourists and locals, she happens to meet several strangers – including two twin sisters and a third woman – both in holiday rental-style accommodation and outside. These dreamlike sequences appear as a mix of references to reality and out-of-body sensations and feelings. The lightness and ordinariness of the minor encounters are seen through the detached lens of the unacquainted protagonist, creating an atmosphere of anxiety and alienation.

The film brings together moments that rupture public and private spheres, such as engaging in an affectionate conversation in public, on a mobile phone or on the street, to create glimpses of human connection. It meditates upon how the people we spend time with, however briefly, can take up disproportionate space in our psyche, shaping our perception of the world.

This film is co-commissioned by SIRIUS and aemi. This exhibition is curated by SIRIUS’s director, Miguel Amado.