What does light do to a body? Restless Glows is an experimental video essay that traces the entanglements of light, the human body, and contemporary technoscientific imaginaries. Filmed across Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Bolzano, and Zürich, the work weaves together live-action footage, CGI sequences, motion-capture studies, and AI-generated imagery into a layered visual inquiry.

Moving between laser acupuncture, consumer light technologies, choreographed urban illuminations, and large-scale luminous infrastructures, the film follows the circulation of light-based practices across therapeutic, aesthetic, and speculative domains. Digital avatars and fragments of on-screen text reflect on vision, translucency, bodily porosity, and the affective agency of light.

Shifting between intimate bodily encounters and expansive metropolitan nightscapes, Restless Glows approaches contemporary lighting regimes as ambivalent systems: infrastructures of care and optimization that simultaneously operate as subtle apparatuses of control, desire, and attention capture. Oscillating between documentary trace and speculative animation, the film invites viewers to consider how luminous environments recalibrate perception, dependency, and aspiration within increasingly technologized urban ecologies.

This project was generously supported by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council, the Mind the Gap digital arts fund, and by the Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain (FCAC), Geneva.