We are delighted to share this online screening of Babeworld’s new film, ‘Would You Rather’ (2025) until April 28.
The film explores the experiences of a mentally ill autistic person outlining their approach to social interactions in their day-to-day and their professional life as an artist. By following a character outlining how they utilise the game ‘Would you rather’ to create a technique to thrive in conversations. The film explores key elements of the neurodivergent and autistic experiences, highlighting the relationship between mania and delusions of grandeur, and the self-assured sense of confidence one must have across a capitalist arts sector and monetized content creation to ensure success. Across a range of chaotic and unhinged ‘WYR’ questions, this film provides an insight into neurodivergent traits like masking, and systemising / hyper-focusing within social situations. Whilst the nature of the – possible imaginary – interactions narrated across this film shed light on scripting as a coping mechanism.
Shot and edited over two days, this film was an experiment in alternative ways of scheduling creative work. With the dates and pace for filming left undefined, and instead harnessing a phase of acute mania that could not be planned with diaries, taking an experimental approach to productivity that allows it to sit symbiotically with the ebbs and flows of mental illness.
About the Artist
BabeworldOpen accordion
Babeworld are an art collective based across Stoke-on-Trent and London. Babeworld’s work uses popular-culture inspired film, installation and sound design to interrogate themes of political and societal identity, disability, access, neurodivergence and race. By using a tongue-in-cheek approach to serious themes, Babeworld are able to playfully explore these themes whilst capturing the lived-experiences within the collective. Underpinning this work is an ongoing commitment to researching what it means to make, participate in and spectate art as marginalised individuals. Across their work, Babeworld aims to capture a life of contrast – one in which oscillating mental health, mania and delusion can make things feel hopeless and paralysing, or thrilling and obsessive.
Babeworlds aesthetics and world-building across their film and installations use autofiction narratives that do not create boundaries between online and offline worlds, devices, spaces or temporalities – capturing the role different online spaces have played in their understandings of themselves and their communities. Their work is underpinned by an ongoing body of research that explores what it means to make, participate in and spectate art as marginalised individuals. They are committed to capturing a version of themselves that feels like an authentic blend between all of the collective – whether that’s about their lived experience, or a funny reddit post they saw that day. Alongside this, Babeworld are consistently motivated by the questions – how can we make work for the CEX and Tumblr generation who may not feel comfortable in a traditional gallery? And how can we get another little residency to play board games and TTRPGS?
![a still from ‘Derby Day’. A blurred, out-of-focus image of a football pitch and the stands sits on a plain black background. A caption, written in a white text against the black background reads ‘And they were going to let their old, decrepit gooner, their leader, kill me.]](https://cms.grand-union.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-04-at-14.21.46.png)