Home Invasion

On paper, Graeme Arnfield’s first feature Home Invasion sounds a bit like a dry terrestrial TV documentary. The history of the doorbell isn’t what I’d normally tune in for, but Arnfield invites us to peer (quite literally) through the peephole and look at how the everyday device opened the floodgates for present-day anxieties around surveillance and security. Tracing a trajectory through Luddite revolutions and horror movie tropes, fear-driven behaviour is the common thread in the stories Arnfield has assembled for us, complemented by an array of found visuals ranging from patent prototypes to dystopian Ring cam footage and a lurching soundtrack from collaborators Baudouin Oosterlynck and Hannah Hartman.

~ Dan Guthrie

Graeme Arnfield is an artist, filmmaker and composer living in London. Producing sensory essay films from networked imagery, his films use methods of investigative storytelling to explore issues of technology, ecology and history. His work has been presented worldwide including at Berlinale Forum Expanded, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Courtisane Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Sonic Acts Festival, European Media Arts Festival, Transmediale, IMPAKT Festival, Kasseler Dokfest, Plastik Festival, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, LUX, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Berlinische Gallerie, Signal Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery and on e-flux & Vdrome.

Pervading Animal (2021), The Phantom Menace (2019), Pedigree (2018), Shouting at the Ground (2017), Asbestos (2016; Made in Collaboration with Sasha Litvintseva), Colossal Cave (2016), Sitting in Darkness (2015)