Film and Video Umbrella, Somerset House Studios and HOME Manchester are pleased to announce a newly commissioned film and installation by artist Jenkin Van Zyl.

Enclosure is an immersive film installation that explores a culture where technological advancement has outpaced our ability to make sense of it. 

Set within a decaying facility that once allowed tourists to inhabit replicas of other people, Enclosure unfolds over a single day known as Founding Day, the annual window in which Donors must renew or terminate their corporeal doubles, known as Cherubs. When the film's protagonist Mercy, a starlet who lent her likeness to the programme, arrives to terminate her double, the ritual intended to sever their connection instead draws them closer.

At its core, the work asks what happens when systems built on desire and self-preservation outlast the conditions that created them. In a world where meaning erodes faster than systems can adapt, Enclosure presents maintenance as a form of denial, as institutions, technologies, and individuals persist in upkeep beyond its purpose.

The installation extends Enclosure into a large-scale immersive environment where audiences move through the material remains of the facility — fairground signage, holograms, inflatable cocoons, decaying ephemera — a world still performing long after the system it served has collapsed.