The film Xenon is based on an ambitious performance project by Mikhail Karikis entitled Xenon: an exploded opera. It is a political allegory created in response to recent global economic upheavals and the state of human rights, and explores the politics of work, notions of censorship and freedom of speech. Featuring Karikis and the original performers of the stage production of the work – Maurice Causey, Monica Ross, Elaine Michener, Juice Vocal Ensemble, Amy Cunningham, Conall Gleeson, Jade Pybus, Jane Chapman – Karikis invited the filmmaker David Bickerstaff to collaborate on the direction of the moving image version of the project.

Synopsis

The unusual absence of a colleague and the news heard on the radio trigger unlikely reactions in seven characters working in the claustrophobic routine of an austere office. Yearning to overcome their oppressive circumstances and pursuing the impossible, each character enters an imaginary space where s/he battles with self-censorship, frustration, high aspirations and failure. The bare banality and bleak automation in the office are juxtaposed with striking dream-like sequences staging each character’s quest, including an office worker’s flight attempt from his chair, the recitation of the Declaration of Human Rights from memory and an encounter with the Ferryman of Death.