Blurred real­i­ties at CPH:DOX 2017

Intro­duc­ing their 14^th edi­tion, CPH:DOX pro­claimed that the fes­ti­val would offer ​“a reflec­tion, a come­back and a counter-attack on behalf of art, our com­mon real­i­ty and truth.” In the NEW:VISION com­pe­ti­tion strand, where nar­ra­tive and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing inter­sects, three vision­ary works sought to blur our under­stand­ing of ​‘real­i­ty’ and ​‘truth’.

James N Kienitz Wilkins’ Com­mon Car­ri­er opens with the crack­le of radio sta­t­ic, set­ting off a chain of inter­rupt­ed snip­pets of over­heard audio that spon­ta­neous­ly sound­track the film. Mak­ing rapid changes along­side a equal­ly fre­net­ic, hyper-sat­u­rat­ed image col­lage that is per­ma­nent­ly dou­ble or triple exposed, Wilkins cycles through pop songs, com­mer­cials and talk-radio. He inter­cuts this with filmed inter­views which fade the par­tic­i­pants out at will, neu­ter­ing their voice mid-sen­tence but allow­ing the train of thought to con­tin­ue through over­laid sub­ti­tles that extend past the cut.

As these lev­els of dis­con­nect­ed, abra­sive audio blend togeth­er with ele­ments of direct sound, the equal­ly mul­ti-lay­ered, reflec­tive cin­e­matog­ra­phy cuts and snaps in some­what dis­cor­dant con­cert. Dou­bled images show two dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives upon the same scene, or two con­trast­ing or con­nect­ed sce­nar­ios at once, with the lay­ered sound adding fur­ther sen­so­ry cacophony.

It’s a nov­el, dis­tinct­ly mod­ern style (facil­i­tat­ed by dig­i­tal film­mak­ing tech­nolo­gies, and maybe some­what indebt­ed to Isi­ah Med­i­na) that looks to repli­cate the infor­ma­tion over­load which defines mod­ern liv­ing. Slam­ming some ideas into abra­sive oppo­si­tion and aban­don­ing oth­ers before they’ve formed, Wilkins exer­cis­es the affec­tive qual­i­ty of the unex­pect­ed uni­ty of con­flict­ing sounds, objects and ideas – with vary­ing degrees of success.

At the end of the film one char­ac­ter states that ​“every movie needs res­o­lu­tion, I’m start­ing to feel like this one is a lost cause.” Yet, one clear thread does emerge. When anoth­er sub­ject states that her the­sis sur­rounds whether artists are a ​“clin­i­cal­ly dis­tinct pop­u­la­tion”, every­thing fits togeth­er more. Fail­ing tech­nolo­gies, lost DCPs, stream­ing plat­form black­holes, the end­less search for WiFi, and a seem­ing inabil­i­ty to actu­al­ly pro­duce any work. Wilkins looks – through his method as much as his par­tic­i­pants – at what it might mean to be an artist in the dig­i­tal age, where you can find a ​“whole uni­verse in a USB stick”.

Coin­ci­dent­ly, Wilkins stars in anoth­er com­pe­ti­tion title, Chris­t­ian von Bor­ries’ Desert of the Real, a sim­i­lar­ly reflex­ive, digres­sive and dis­cur­sive attempt at por­tray­ing the real­i­ty of moder­ni­ty. Wilkins appears near the end of the film, clad in plas­tic orange cow­boy boots, ram­bling in the dis­tinc­tive drawl heard in his pre­vi­ous film Indef­i­nite Pitch. Described rather grandil­o­quent­ly by Bor­ries as an ​“essay­is­tic doc­u­men­tary film as post­mod­ern west­ern”, his ver­bose, brash film lay­ers read­ings from Jean Bau­drillard, Wal­ter Ben­jamin and Kanye West with all man­ner of uncan­ny imagery and found sound.

Set­ting actors uneasi­ly against green screen sets, the per­formed snip­pets from these texts are placed against images show­ing var­i­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tions of ​‘The Desert’ and of the city of Venice. Run­ning through these sce­nar­ios are two types of con­flict, lit­er­al war­fare and the inter­nal bat­tles of self­hood and iden­ti­ty that are deemed part and par­cel of mod­ern forms of net­worked existence.

With these two are­nas, the dis­tinct­ly uneasy (un)reality of var­i­ous shop­ping mall recre­ations of the Venice canals, and the rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al dis­con­nect of medi­at­ed war­fare, Bor­ries aims per­haps to explore the increas­ing blur­ring of per­cep­tion that is com­pli­cat­ed by the tech­nolo­gies he employs (CGI, VFX) and those he cen­tres (VR, mobiles, drones and social media plat­forms). The out­come is mud­dled, the lev­el of the satire invoked is fre­quent­ly coarse and obvi­ous, giv­ing the sense that the film­mak­er is try­ing to cri­tique these tech­nolo­gies and their var­i­ous com­pli­ca­tions with­out entire­ly under­stand­ing them.

At one point a recur­ring char­ac­ter, a YouTube beau­ty blog­ger, has an inter­net melt­down, decry­ing that, online, every­one is ​“just as scared and mis­er­able and lone­ly and lost” as she is. This, as with many of the con­clu­sions drawn in the film, feels reductive.

A more nuanced rep­re­sen­ta­tion of dig­i­tal real­i­ties arrives in Zhou Chen’s com­pe­ti­tion win­ner, Life Imi­ta­tion. His film opens with the increas­ing­ly com­mon tech­nique of observ­ing text con­ver­sa­tions on a filmed mobile dis­play. On WeChat, an extreme­ly inti­mate, con­fes­sion­al exchange about the com­pli­ca­tions of sex­u­al iden­ti­ty plays out, and inter­est­ing­ly this dia­logue is revealed to be observed, rather than writ­ten. ​“I’m shoot­ing, please con­tin­ue,” types the filmmaker.

Anoth­er non-nar­ra­tive doc-col­lage, from here Chen switch­es between record­ings of his artist friends in Shang­hai; footage of the depop­u­lat­ed Los Ange­les land­scapes of ​‘Grand Theft Auto V’; and var­i­ous vir­tu­al dia­logues – paint­ing a sen­si­tive pic­ture of a spe­cif­ic psy­cho­log­i­cal ter­rain, the detached mind­set of a dig­i­tal melan­cholic, and all the anx­i­ety, depres­sion and solip­sism therein.

Where­as both Com­mon Car­ri­er and Desert of the Real are defined by their vis­cer­al rapid­i­ty, Life Imitation’s pace is dis­tinct­ly slow­er and its aes­thet­ic cool­er – a wash of com­put­er blues and neon greens, down­beat elec­tron­ic music and rumi­na­tive chat­ter. Ground­ed in the real, but dis­tinct­ly dream­like, Life Imi­ta­tion has a sense of pro­found, sedat­ed eeri­ness that spreads across the scenes, whether in a girl seen obses­sive­ly air­brush­ing a new­ly tak­en self­ie; in a game char­ac­ter walk­ing silent­ly along a vir­tu­al beach, clad in a miniskirt and assault rifle com­bo; or in the xanaxed, slowed down and burnt out club scenes.

Across Life Imitation’s var­i­ous sce­nar­ios, Chen pre­sent­ed the most ​‘real’ rep­re­sen­ta­tion of mod­ern dig­i­tal life in NEW:VISION. His film offers the deep­est insight into online dynam­ics, as well as chang­ing means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ways of think­ing. His is a world where con­ver­sa­tions span actu­al and vir­tu­al plat­forms, iden­ti­ty is expe­ri­enced through the direct self as much as through elec­tron­ic avatars and dig­i­tal per­sonas, and peo­ple drift between real­i­ty both tan­gi­ble and perceived.