2024
Personal and Collaborative Works
Al Kahf
An Archive To Disappear
Undergrowth
Sound Design and Music Production
Synopsis An arts-based research on shadow narratives in Eastern mysticism/The second chapter of AKQ features a recitation of verses (9-26) of the 18th chapter of the Qur'an (Al-Kahf). The verses tell the story of the Sleepers of the Cave, who decide to abandon their society in favor for a long sleep that lasts 309 years.
Editing, Sound Design, and Music Production
Synopsis An experimental film made up of home videos of lesbians from the Netherlands in the 1990s. Disrupting the dominant heteronormative history that is constructed through archiving practices, it challenges institutional archiving not as a practice of constructing history, but as one of erasure. Through anarchiving with a lesbian gaze, Raats’ film explores personal desires in images of the past.
Synopsis Undergrowth is an experimental short that captures a night of unsettling stillness looking through a bedroom window, at a seemingly innocuous bush across the street. Finalized in two weeks undergrowth utilizes AI generated images, found footage on the internet overlaid with a voice over that fluctuates in pitch, timbre, and intensity. This film was screened as part of the "Stranger Than Fiction" program curated by Nour Ouayda, 2024 in Beirut and Brussels.