Crisis Acres
Line up: Tom K Kemp, Pernilla Manjula Philip

As part of If I Can't Dance's programming into health-care, access, and medical histories, on September 16 we will screen Crisis Acres (2025) by Tom K Kemp, followed by a discussion between Kemp and Amsterdam-based artist Pernilla Manjula Philip. Simulating a day in an imaginary NHS hospital, the film integrates role-playing, improvisation and pseudo-documentary filmmaking to expose the breaking points in the world’s largest healthcare system. In the after-talk the film will be approached from the perspective of chronic illness and DIY medical tools and hacks, as entry points stemming from Philip's practice.
 

[ID: Two people sit behind a desk in a workspace. The person on the left is gesturing in an explanatory way to a drawing on a large piece of paper that the person on the right is holding up so that it can properly be seen. The drawing is of one big body in which many, many smaller bodies figure as its different organs. The heart is identified as the patient, while other figures dispersed throughout the drawing include doctor, occupational therapist, IT, medical student, paramedic, etc. Under the large body is written ‘Hospital’. The subtitles to this still image from Tom K Kemp’s film Crisis Acres reads ‘and then you’ve got all the support staff’.]