Hope transcends reason. EMERGE:NCY (2023) is a site-specific film made for the London Piccadilly lights, trapping a giant nameless and voiceless human in a box. Passersby below the Piccadilly Lights can watch the human’s struggle to break through the box, and contemplate the entrapment of the unknown and the pursuit of what lies beyond. Its title comes from Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Hope in the Dark’, which argues: “Inside the word “emergency” is “emerge”; from an emergency new things come forth.”

The 2.5 minute film captures the ebbs and flows of hope, not as a passive wish but as an active confrontation to challenge. The human’s final breakthrough, with light flooding the darkness of the now broken box, insists in a hope that is not fragile, and that there is always something beyond the boxes that trap us.

EMERGE:NCY is the recipient of the CIRCA 2023 Public Vote Prize.