telematic embrace: the episodes

After a chance meeting online Elsa, a university student living in New York, and Seo-Joon, a young soldier stationed in South Korea, embark upon a spontaneous adventure, sharing with one another the images, sounds, and oddities of their respective worlds. As their connection deepens, inspired by the poetic language of love letters exchanged between Elsa’s great-grandparents, the two young adventurers initiate a game that turns to something like magic, where the senses leaping through the screen and joining in the telematic space, are no longer just sight and sound, but smell, taste, and touch as well.

After living for several years in Florida, a Korean divorced father hasn't been able to maintain any contact with his teenage son, who is still living at home in Korea with his mother. The lack of relation with the father also mirrors the son's difficulty to have normal interactions with people in the real world. As a Hikkikomori, he barely exits his room and is addicted to playing online games with people located in different parts of the world. Within this community he is actually quite popular as one of the most skilled players. So it is not so difficult to find him, when the father decides to dive into the online game world, and try to reconnect with his son. In this episode the audience is brought inside the multiplayer military simulation game ARMA 3

environment to witness how father and son manage to find each other.

WONGA is a hot new Augmented Reality game for your smartphone or tablet! The rules are simple: just point your device’s camera in any direction, and watch a cascade of glittering coins rain down on the screen. But you’d better be fast! Collect as many of these coins as you can in the time allotted, and add them to your treasure chest. Once you’ve collected enough, you can trade up for special abilities and prizes! Everybody loves WONGA! In fact, a little girl in England is playing it right now. She sees her mother talking to her father, who is still “trapped in the computer screen” after months (and a small fortune) spent navigating a bureaucratic spiral of frustrations and closed doors that has seen thousands of British citizens and children torn away from their non-British spouses, parents, or siblings. It is called the UK Family Separation Policy. Of course, this little girl doesn’t understand all of that, but she might know how to help....WONGA!

Cleopatra was named after a distant relative, the iconic Pharaoh of Egypt. At least that’s what her father used to tell her before she ran away from home, before her mother was sent to prison, before her entire world collapsed. Now a single mother, she moonlights as an online ‘cam model’ to pay the bills. Much like

her namesake, she is alluring, seductive, and strong. Much like her namesake, that is all anyone cares to know about her. Still, she persists, guided by a set of rules meant to keep herself safe and her customers happy. When she bends those rules and shares too much with the online world, she is thrust into a whirlwind of abuse to which that world responds with contradictory indifference, and the law, with impotence. Nowhere left to turn, she seeks out the woman who made her, in the hopes of finding some semblance of freedom beyond the expectations, obligations, and burdens of womanhood.

Sori is a North Korean defector who escaped to South Korea with her sister 15 years earlier. During this time, both got married and had children. But for Sori it has been very difficult to come to terms with her past, overcome the sadness of the separation and integrate in the new different society. The dreams and hopes that motivated her to risk her life to reach South Korea have vanished and she feels completely detached

from her life. The level of stress and frustration has become overwhelming, to the point that both her physical and mental health have been affected. She feels entrapped, hopeless, in need to make a radical change. The only way out seems to be going back to her country of origin. Is that possible? What could happen to her is unforeseeable, but for sure she would be forced to cease any connection with her own daughter, who is still

just a child. In this episode we follow Sori as she travels to the airport with the intention of embarking on a plane to Vietnam, where she would hand herself to the North Korean Embassy, in order to be repatriated. As she travels, Sori is recording a video, the final message she plans to leave for her daughter to see after her departure.

Utzil, a young Guatemalan boy, is detained while crossing the border between Mexico and the United States. He is held inside a detention facility where social workers race to prepare him for an immigration hearing. He must officially declare asylum. The problem? Utzil speaks only Mayan, the language of his indigenous tribe, and as of yet he has not said a word except to ask for the presence of his mother. Only she can calm her son, convince him to say what must be said, and do what must be done. But she is thousands of miles away, living in a rural community in the jungles of Guatemala. With days to go before the hearing, Utzil’s mother sets out on a mission: to reach the top of the Mountain Atitlan, a dangerous journey, but the only place where she is sure to find the strength of signal necessary to impart upon Utzil a story. The story of his name, and of his people. The story that he must carry with him if he is to face the choice that he and so many others are forced to make: to renounce his home, and to say goodbye to all he knows, for the hope of something better. It seems, however, as we delve deeper into this world of declarations and separations, of border patrol officers and divisive policy and politic, that the “better” he seeks is even further away than he imagined.

This episode is inspired from the story and work of journalist Behrouz Boochani author of the book No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, from the interviews and testimonies of many refugees that had to endure torture, beating and abuse by both illegal traffickers and police alike, during their long journey towards the hope of a better life. These people are stripped of every basic human rights and of their dignity. Many remain trapped in a limbo of existence and never manage to reach a safe place that they can call home. We hope to celebrate the resilience of the human spirit that is able to react and find harmony and beauty even when faced with the worst kind of brutality and cruelty.