DIGITALA DEMONER: EXPLORING MEDIA, MATTER AND SPIRIT 

This is a reserach project that is a road movie about a priest-in-training who is wondering what to believe in today. The journey takes him to the mines in Kiruna and to the village Kautokeino where he meets a shaman. This spring the trip will continue south to the forests of Småland and the churches in "Lilla Jerusalem" 


THE MOUNTAINS ARE CONNECTED TO OUR SCREENS
 
Ofc we all now this. The metals and minerals we are extracting from earth is making it possible for you to read these words right now. Nature bears our media culture


So the film, which I at this point call En liten apokalyps, will be an attempt of exploring the connections between our digital screens and the natural world. A way of using film as a shamanistic tool for healing and sensemaking. 


I'm trying to tell a story that moves between imagination and reality. Between dreaming and awakeIt is also an attempt to understand the apocalyptic narrative and how we tell stories about ecological and exisistential crisis today. 


THE METHOD

A documentary road trips to northern Scandinavia where I met with a shaman (or noajdde). I also met a priest and a woman that used to work in the mines.

 
 Creating a fictional apocalyptic prophet that goes around on the streets of Stockholm and ends up in the digital world.

 World building in Unreal engine and stop motion characters

WHAT ABOUT THEORY? 

I've recently stumbled upon the book A Geology of Media by the finnish media professor Jussi Parrika. I hope it can serve as a good ground for deepening my discussion on metals and the digital world. Here is an excerpt: 

"Hence geology is not only about the soil, the crust, the layers that give our feet a ground on which to stumble: geology is also a theme connected to the climate change as well as the political economy of industrial and postindustrial production. It connects to the wider geophysical life worlds that support the organic life as much as the technological worlds of transmission, calculation, and storage. Geology becomes a way to investigate materiality of the technological media world. It becomes a conceptual trajectory, a creative intervention to the cultural history of the contemporary." (Parrika, 2015, s. 4) 

Parts of the holy fool/prophet character are based on theories about "the idiot" from Byung-Chul Hans book Psychopolitics: 
Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power: 

"The idiot is a modern-day heretic. Etymologically, heresy means ‘choice’. Thus, the heretic is one who commands free choice·, the courage to deviate from orthodoxy. As a heretic, the idiot represents a figure of resistance opposing the violence of consensus. The idiot preserves the magic of the outsider. Today, in fight of increasingly coercive conformism, it is more urgent than ever to heighten heretical consciousness" 

I will also make use of Ursula K. Leguins text Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction to help me become aware and hopefully challange patriarchial and extractivistic ways of storytelling.

OTHER ARTISTIC RESEARCH 
I am also looking towards the works and Reserach catalogue of Lina Persson who is working on building ecological animated worlds whilst considering the production modes dependent on fossil-heavy algorhytmic infrastructure in the artistic field: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/266314/266315 

 


THE PROCESS

In an early attempt to orient myself in my theme and visual interest I made a short film out of the videos I had on my phone combined with an interview I did a couple of years back with a 
priest and activist. 

I hoped that this way, of starting from a visual point rather than text, could open up some new ideas of how to tell the story

To do further research into how religious imagery have been used in film and literature I did a videographic essay about Andreij Tarkovkij, Sergei Parajanov and Selma Lagerlöf connected to holy images and storytelling. 

And so finally me and a very small film crew made our way north. With me I had Carl-Oscar who was the sound technichan and also expert on the mining industry, and my friend and photographer Johan. 

Here are some slides from the trip: 

THE HOLY FOOL 

After the first part of the little road movie was made I didn't feel quite happy with my documentary approach. The conversations I had with the shaman, the priest and the miner felt a bit stiff.

Maybe I had the wrong approach. Maybe I needed more time with them. Probably. But I didn't want to go back there. 

I started thinking about a new chapter. A pseudo-fictional documentary part about a person who thinks he is from another planet. Who is here to let everyone know that there is hope for a better place. Some sort of prophet or holy fool. 

I started reading a lot about both the clown tradition and about the religious phenomenon of the holy fool: a popular figure in eastern orthodox tradition and Andreij Tarkovskij movies: someone who voluntarily or involuntarily enters insanity in order to reveal a perceived hypocricy in society.  

The result was a strange mix between a clown and a priest. I worked on a script where performative elements, improvisation and more scripted scenes would take place. 

We filmed at different locations around Stockholm. And also made a 3d-scan of the character. Which will be used for when the clownpriest enters the digital dimension. 

AESTHETICS OF RESISTANCE 

 

As a part of the course called Aesthetics of Resistance: Film as artistic research we explored the geneology of political engaged film from the early 1900 to today. 

Since I believe the policial dimension is an important one in my own work I made a short videographic essay where I used material from the old movies and mixed with parts of my own raw material together with (at the time) major political events.

This was an attempt relate my own process to historical filmmakers and and a  policial and aesthetical context, as well as trying to figure out the next step in the process...