Life on the CAPS is the final chapter in Meriem Bennani’s film trilogy of the same name, set in a supernatural, dystopian future surrounding a fictional island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This new work is a result of the artist’s research and reflections on the histories of island societies, biotechnology, and vernacular music.

In the world of the CAPS, teleportation has replaced air travel, and displaced populations utilize this portal to cross oceans and borders. Over three generations, what started as a detention camp has developed into a bustling megalopolis where the descendents of families who “illegally” teleported, are held by the state.

Kamal, the main character we follow through the story, got himself a new body, doubling his life span in the hope to take part in a CAPS liberation movement and fight for causes that are impossible to solve “within one’s lifetime.”

What stands out in the narrative is the experience of someone in transition between spaces, ages, bodies, and the diasporic nostalgia for a place or time that will never return.

MERIEM BENNANI (b. 1988 in Rabat, Morocco) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has been developing a shape-shifting practice of films, sculptures and immersive installations, composed with a subtle agility to question contemporary society, its fractured systems, individual identity, and ubiquitous dominance of digital technologies. Bennani’s work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, The Guggenheim Museum, Art Dubai, The Fondation Louis Vuitton, Public Art Fund, The Kitchen, and CLEARING, among other venues.