The Making of Mikaela Stafford’s Inferno

The shaping of Inferno 

Developed through an NFSA Artist Commission, Inferno draws on rare archival materials and Stafford’s evolving digital practice. Renowned for her hyperreal landscapes, Stafford expands her vision into a bold sci-fi dreamscape inspired by the NFSA collection, classical literature, experimental technology and pop culture. The piece weaves nostalgic and futuristic elements to create a world both familiar and alien – what Stafford describes as a kind of ‘hallucination’. 

Central to making Inferno was the creative freedom and space afforded by the NFSA residency, which gave Stafford the headspace to develop her longest and most complex work to date: an eight-minute sensory journey in monochrome. 

A techno-transcendental soundscape by composer and sound designer Kate Durman deepens the emotional intensity. Together, Stafford and Durman invite audiences to immerse themselves in a layered exploration of memory, identity and simulated existence in the digital age.  

Entering a Dark City 

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The influences behind Inferno span highbrow, archival and pop cultural. At one end is Dante’s 14th-century epic Inferno, which inspired the idea of descent – not as moral reckoning, but as a metaphysical journey of self-discovery. At the other end are musical references, including underground techno and Madonna’s iconic ‘Frozen’ music video (1998), directed by Chris Cunningham, which helped shape the aesthetic of the work’s liquid-metal protagonist, whose billowing cape echoes Madonna’s windswept costuming.  

Inferno’s shifting digital landscapes, vast sandstorms, subterranean caverns and a cocoon-like sculpture that seems to ooze from the screen nod to experimental and sci-fi cinema such as Dune: Part One (Denis Villeneuve, 2021), Dark City (Alex Proyas, 1998) and Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), as well as abstract and biophilic forms and sounds drawn from the natural world. 

A key influence that Stafford encountered during her artist residency at the NFSA was Dark City (1998), Alex Proyas’s cult neo-noir sci-fi and a techno-nightmare of simulated memory, identity and control. These themes resonate with Stafford’s own interest in how virtual environments shape the self.  

In Dark City, the protagonist wakes with no memory, unaware he – and the entire city – is part of an alien experiment probing human consciousness and individuality. Inferno channels a similar techno-sci-fi aesthetic: moody visuals, futuristic beings and a pulsing electronic score. Rare production materials held in the NFSA collection – including memory vial props, figurines and the trench coat worn by one of ‘The Strangers’ in Dark City – offered Stafford tactile inspiration for Inferno’s hyper-surreal tone. ‘Engaging with these objects,’ she explains, ‘helped me understand the abstract narrative I was going to portray.’ 

The Dark City trailer reveals how the film blends genres – noir tropes, futuristic settings and pounding sound design – to evoke a sense of psychological disorientation and narrative instability. This condensed, stylised preview offers a clear snapshot of the film’s thematic preoccupations: control, autonomy and the manipulation of memory. Inferno draws from this language, pairing its own reference points – Dante’s epic and biophilic, screen-based installations – with Kate Durman’s glitchy score. The kinetic soft sculpture at the centre of Inferno visually echoes Dark City’s sea-creature-like aliens, while its overall mood captures a shared sense of being trapped inside a constructed reality. Like Proyas, Stafford is a world-builder, crafting speculative futures that ask what it means to be human in increasingly artificial environments.  

Mystical symbols 

Stafford’s Inferno also draws on a pivotal moment in Michael Lee’s Australian experimental film The Mystical Rose (1976), which utilises religious iconography and is loosely structured as a Catholic Mass. In this clip from Lee's film, the breaking of the Eucharistic host is conveyed through rapid cuts and potent symbolic imagery: dilated pupils, an oesophagus, a blooming moon, erupting volcanoes, and flowers. This sensory overload captures both the ritual’s emotional weight and Lee’s discomfort with it. Stafford adopts similar techniques – fast cuts, emotionally charged sound and symbolic layering – to evoke the same sense of familiarity and discomfort in Inferno. 

Both works build toward a sonic 'drop' or climactic release. Kate Durman’s score for Inferno is designed to 'lock the body in', echoing the immersive pull of Lee’s choral music in The Mystical Rose. Whispered vocals function like an inner voice, 'almost speaking in tongues – simultaneously reassuring and confusing', as Stafford puts it – mirroring the emotional weight in Lee’s film. 

Nature-based symbols are central to both. Lee’s erupting volcano finds a conceptual echo in Inferno (the idea of an inferno as a tinderbox of heat and pressure). Fire, wind, mist and plants are used to reflect both of the artists’ internal states. In Inferno, nothing appears by accident: the wind becomes the protagonist’s inner voice, while mist and mutable environments mirror their emotional world. Even the placement of a kinetic sculpture beside the screen is symbolic, embodying what Stafford calls 'memory leaking out of the digital world' into the corporeal one. 

Where Lee’s film grapples with Catholicism, Stafford turns toward themes of identity, memory and metaphysical journey, maintaining an undercurrent of optimism in the act of 'moving through' rather than arriving. Ultimately, Inferno channels The Mystical Rose’s sensory and symbolic excess to create its own emotionally immersive journey. 

Balancing extremes

Fritz Lang’s German Expressionist classic Metropolis (1927), also held in the NFSA’s collection, equally influenced Stafford’s approach – particularly her use of monochrome to evoke a timeless, cinematic atmosphere that references early cinema. This stylistic choice represents a departure for the artist, who is typically known for her brightly coloured, saturated digital worlds.   

In Metropolis, the mad scientist Rotwang kidnaps a preacher named Mary to create a robot clone in her likeness, designed to manipulate the downtrodden 'Workers' living underground into blindly obeying the affluent 'Thinkers' who control the city of Metropolis above. This excerpt depicts Rotwang successfully animating the robot, culminating in a dramatic close-up capturing the spark of consciousness in its eyes – one of cinema’s earliest explorations of simulated consciousness, which has influenced many artists, including Stafford. 

While modern viewers may find the pacing slow and the lack of dialogue jarring, Metropolis’ iconic imagery – the mad scientist and creator trope – remains enduringly influential, echoed in films like Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935). Stafford’s Inferno omits an explicit on-screen awakening, instead suggesting an off-camera emergence in a digital realm, raising similar questions about identity and simulated consciousness. 

Metropolis concludes with Workers and Thinkers recognising their relationship as symbiotic. Reflecting this union of seemingly opposing forces, Stafford explores the possibility of technology and the natural world – a vital source of inspiration for her – coexisting. She envisions a speculative future where her cave-like, desert, and underwater sea-grass-inspired vistas are inhabited by digital beings, imagining a world in which technology and nature exist in harmonious balance, propelled by an energetic, pulsating soundtrack. 

Dancing on the edge

Melbourne/Naarm-based electronic producer and vocalist Kate Durman – known for her project Purient – crafted the haunting soundscape for Inferno. Drawing from her 2024 track 'Three Mirrors' (from Mwah), Durman and Stafford developed a shared sonic-visual language, aiming to create an atmosphere that would 'fill the room' and evoke uncertainty, unease, suspense and ethereality. 

Stafford’s monochrome, otherworldly visuals inspired Durman to explore the 'tension between discomfort and attraction' – a feeling she identified as central to the work’s emotional weight. This quality is mirrored in 'Three Mirrors', which blends an aggressively beguiling softness with a thumping bassline and glitchy digital textures. Airy, almost weightless sounds are offset by whispered, inaudible vocals that suggest both intimacy and surveillance – unsettling yet beautiful. 

Durman describes the soundscape as 'dancing on the edge … never fully in one or the other', reflecting the collaboration’s core aesthetic: a balance of extremes. Both artists come from underground electronic and art scenes, where immersive storytelling, sound and digital experimentation collide. Their synergy is evident in Inferno’s tightly woven rhythm and image, with Stafford editing her 3D renders to match Durman’s pulsing score. 

The final soundscape layers distorted field recordings of nature captured in Canberra, producing textures that feel, in Durman’s words, 'unplaceable – human and alien at the same time'. Her use of looping, sampling and abrasive elements adds emotional depth, driving Stafford’s protagonist through the liminal, digital space of Inferno. For Stafford, this journey – while shadowed by bleakness – is ultimately optimistic, with the score acting as a propulsive force toward transformation.

Inferno has now closed at the NFSA. It was on display from 22 August to 16 November 2025. 

Looking for more? 

• Find out about other experiences and events happening at the NFSA in Acton
• Immerse yourself in an online collection of Australian film music
• Learn about WINHANGANHA, an acclaimed film by Jazz Money and the NFSA

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Main image: Inferno (detail) 2025, Mikaela Stafford. Inferno at NFSA image (Mikaela Stafford quote inset): Grace Costa.