Metabolism is the first part of Pierre-Jean Giloux’s four-film series titled ‘Invisible Cities’. Metabolism refers to an urban architectural movement that took place in Japan in the 1960s. The pioneers of this movement viewed urban planning as an organic process, designing buildings in the image of living things: molecules, cells, DNA etc. The artist juxtaposes digitally rendered visuals based on their sketches of what they envisioned as the future with footage from contemporary Tokyo, thus expanding the boundaries of time and space. This twelve-minute film, a meditative contemplation on utopian imagination, overlaps of reality and fiction, and the convergence of biological and material configurations, uses anachronism as a powerful tool to ask questions about the nature of our past and the possibilities for our future. 

Note: Musical score composed by Lionel Marchetti.