Announcing three new moving image commissions, by Ari Tampubolon (Australia), Ananta Thitanat (Thailand) and Kahurangiariki Smith (Aotearoa), for Homing Instinct.
Homing Instinct is a film project developed in partnership between Composite, Naarm, STORAGE, Bangkok, CIRCUIT, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, and The Physics Room, ÅŒtautahi with each organisation taking responsibility for a new commission developed in their local context. The new works will be joined by Aotearoa based artist Dieneke Jansen’s This Housing Thing, 2021, a work and practice which sparked this series of new commissions related to home, shelter, and belonging. 

Homing Instinct is a response to living in a time that requires not only redress of housing inequalities, but more expansive conceptions of housing-shelter-belonging. As increasing numbers of people are displaced through social and environmental forces, the exchange of stories around housing and home is both politically and personally necessary. As a whole, the project intends to foreground empathetic, courageous works about what home and belonging means in our respective contexts, and to assert the role of embodied, spiritual and psychological experience within any discussion of housing.


The three new commissions were selected following an open call, by a curatorial panel: Mary Pansanga, Sathit Sattarasart, Channon Goodwin, Mark Williams and Abby Cunnane. The public launch will take place in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, in 2024, followed by screenings across the other commissioning sites: Composite, Naarm Melbourne; Storage Art Space, Bangkok, and will be available to tour subsequently.
About the Project partners
The Physics Room: Based in central ÅŒtautahi Christchurch since 1996, The Physics Room is a contemporary art space dedicated to developing and promoting contemporary art and critical discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand.
CIRCUIT: Founded in 2012, CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image is a non-profit arts agency that supports New Zealand artists working in the moving image.
Composite: is a new space in Melbourne Australia dedicated to supporting experimental cinema.
Enjoy Contemporary Art Space: Established in 2000, Enjoy is a non-profit organisation dedicated to developing contemporary art practice—and the audiences and discussion around contemporary art—through exhibitions, events, publishing, artist residencies and other activities.