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the experiment was to fail. Nelly Ben Hayun-Stepanian was in a collapse Spain that resembled the floor of an alien planet, and she or he knew it was time to get out. The purpose was to check how three folks – Ben Hayun-Stepanian and his two lookalikes – would create a brand new society in area utilizing their perspective as folks whose lives have been affected by colonization on Earth.
“My doppelgangers solely stayed with me for 2 nights, then they left as a result of we needed to abort the mission,” says Ben Hayun-Stepanian. “There was a complete dramatic state of affairs taking place.”
If you wish to know what the drama was actually about, you'll have to look at Ben Heyoun-Stepanian's new documentary, Doppelgängers³, which can premiere this weekend at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Suffice it to say, even when the experiment didn't go as deliberate, it nonetheless proved his level: humanity's quest to discover area wants enter from individuals who aren't millionaires or leaders of presidency area businesses. Are.
When she's not making movies, Ben Heyun-Stepanian is an artist and “designer of experiences” for the SETI Institute. One in every of her targets is to carry a “queer ecofeminist perspective” to area journey. Doppelgängers³ She needed to indicate folks like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos — who need to commercialize area journey — what it means to colonize the universe.
“It's a name to motion, a name to members of the general public to take possession of those futures,” Ben Heyoun-Stepanian says of the movie, “as a result of in the event you're not, different individuals are going to do it for you.”
Ben Hayun-Stepanian's methodology for bringing about these sounds is two-fold. For one, she spends portion of the documentary speaking to consultants — planetary scientist Christopher McKay, physicist Michio Kaku, and others — about trauma, area exploration, and parallel selves. For an additional, she depends on her lookalikes: Lucia Kagramanyan and Mariam Amroun, two individuals who share Ben Hayyoun-Stepanian's background however not her life experiences.
{Photograph}: Nick Ballon