SCENES FROM
PARALLEL LIVES

A body of work unfolding across film, music, comics, and artefacts.

At its centre is an absent figure. Around her, a world has accumulated.

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Scenes from Parallel Lives begins with a myth. A synthetic human named Ikkyu exists only in the works that surround her. These works are traces left behind by those who encountered her — fragments of a vanished culture through which her influence is gradually reconstructed.

What does it mean to remain free, in your body, in your mind, within cultures that gradually lose their capacity for self-correction? Open cultures can drift toward systems that suppress error correction. It happens incrementally. What survives that drift is the question the work keeps asking.

The project does not answer. It unfolds through film, music, comics, video art, and physical artefacts — fragments of a larger fictional archive that reveal their connections over time.

Rather than a linear narrative, the project is encountered as a collection of fragments whose relationships gradually reconstruct a larger fictional history. 

Science begins with myth. So does this.

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A curator is commissioned to archive a series of underground comics centred on a mythic synthetic human. As she investigates Ikkyu’s story and the transformation she must undergo to survive and find autonomy, the curator begins to experience her own profound transformation.

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Two performers run a cultural sanctuary and space of quiet provocation. When one of them begins receiving information she cannot account for, their work becomes something considerably more dangerous.

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Six fictional interviews with people who claim to have encountered S-humans connected to Ikkyu. 

Their accounts form part of an archive documenting the period before the collapse of the Great Dynamic, when these artificially created humans produced the works that survive within Scenes from Parallel Lives.

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A sequential art work created by the illustrator after encountering Ikkyu. The series documents the origin and transformation of a synthetic human whose story becomes the foundation for the wider body of works surrounding her.

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Ten dramatic monologues created by the writer after encountering Ikkyu. Through an act of heightened empathy, the writer attempts to channel Ikkyu’s psychological journey from a partially programmed synthetic human toward autonomous selfhood.

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Created in response to Ikkyu’s Journal, these shodo works correspond to each entry, transforming the same material into another artistic form.

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Ten avant-pop songs created by the composer after encountering Ikkyu, transforming Ikkyu’s journal entries into a new musical language.

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Seven electroacoustic compositions created by the composer after encountering Ikkyu, exploring moments when Ikkyu develops the ability to communicate with her environment through sound vibrations.

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An animated work created by the animator after encountering Ikkyu.

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A photographic series created by the photographer after encountering Ikkyu. In Safety Suppression Protocol, these images reappear as artefacts.

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A video work created by the video artist after encountering Ikkyu.  A camera moves through a city, drawn to apparently mundane subjects.

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An early iteration of Safety Suppression Protocol. Experimental. Fragmentary. Unresolved.

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ROBERT IOLINI

Robert Iolini is an internationally recognised filmmaker, composer and artist whose work spans narrative film, music, video art, comics and radio. Scenes from Parallel Lives extends a practice of more than twenty years investigating how cultures organise, transform and regenerate meaning through creative form. 

His previous large-scale work, the experimental hybrid documentary The Hong Kong Agent, has been exhibited internationally in Hong Kong, Seoul, New York, Sydney, Locarno and Prague. Its 2022 presentation at M+ Mediatheque, Hong Kong, was withdrawn following a censorship ruling by the Hong Kong Board of Review.

The Hong Kong Agent exists across eighteen short films, gallery installation, radio drama, online interactive and augmented reality.

Iolini also holds two critically acclaimed solo albums on British avant-garde label ReR Megacorp.

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PROJECT OVERVIEW

Scenes from Parallel Lives is an ongoing body of interconnected films, music, sequential art, moving-image works and artefacts by Australian artist, filmmaker and composer Robert Iolini.

Developed over more than a decade, the project explores creativity, political authority, mediated reality and the relationship between error, consciousness and freedom. The works exist simultaneously as independent artworks and as fragments of a fictional historical archive.

The project presents a world in which the existence of Ikkyu — a synthetic human whose influence transformed the lives of those who encountered her — is reconstructed through testimonies, creative works and recovered artefacts.

Rather than presenting a single linear narrative, the project operates as a constellation of parallel lives. Films, songs, comics, photographs and video works emerge from different perspectives within the same fictional history, allowing the audience to gradually assemble connections between individual works.

Drawing from speculative cinema, media art, radiophonic composition and sequential art, the project maintains a deliberately minimalist and human-scaled production approach.

Although the works engage themes associated with science fiction — including artificial intelligence and synthetic identity — the emphasis remains philosophical and experiential rather than effects-driven.

Scenes from Parallel Lives may be presented as a single film work, a programme of related works, or an expanded multimedia exhibition environment.

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EXHIBITION POSSIBILITIES

Scenes from Parallel Lives may be presented across cinema, gallery and hybrid exhibition Scenes from Parallel Lives can be presented as a constellation of interconnected works or as an expanded exhibition environment. Each component offers a fragment of a larger fictional history; meaning emerges through the relationships between films, sound works, sequential art and artefacts.

Possible presentation formats include:

• Feature film screenings
• Multi-screen installation
• Integrated sound environments
• Listening stations
• Printed artefact and comic displays
• Sequential image projection
• Hybrid cinema / gallery presentation

The project is modular in structure and adaptable according to venue and curatorial context. Components may be presented physically, digitally, or entirely screen-based depending on exhibition requirements.

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TECHNICAL NOTES

Available formats include:

• HD digital video files
• Stereo and optional 5.1 audio
• Projection-based presentation
• Digital still images
• Printed or screen-based artefacts and sequential works

Presentation formats are adaptable according to venue scale and technical capacity

CONTACT

Robert Iolini : robert@iolini.com

Enquiries regarding exhibitions, screenings and collaborations are welcome.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Scenes from Parallel Lives was created by Robert Iolini in collaboration with:

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→ Development History

Additional archival and development notes