What does an image dream about when humans stop telling it what to do? That’s the question Niklas Poweleit seems to keep circling. His practice moves away from representation, testing what happens when images are no longer tied to familiar ways of seeing, and are instead allowed to operate on their own terms. The result is cinema that feels less like observation and more like emergence. His work has been presented internationally across festivals and institutions. Volume premiered at DOK Leipzig and was later shown at BOZAR in Brussels and CERN in Switzerland. The Unknown Painting won Best Short Documentary at the Rome Prisma Film Awards, premiered at the Cartagena International Film Festival, and received the Critics’ Choice Award at the 2026 Milan Machinima Festival.
At Kinomural, he presents She Said: ?!, a short audiovisual work that slips between music video, experiment, and something harder to define. A piece that resists category almost as a method. Which, for Poweleit, might be the whole point.
Light and colour swirl into shapes — and slowly, almost reluctantly, a face begins to emerge. Eyes, mouth, nose. Close and indistinct at first, then distant and clearer. She Said: ?! is a music video for the artist IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII (Barcode), and an experimental visual investigation into AI-generated animation computed with an intentionally minimal number of generation steps. The result is imagery caught in a permanent state of tension — hovering between the almost-abstract and the almost-recognisable, between form and dissolution. A balancing act between knowing what you’re looking at, and not quite being sure.
