All art is theft. It’s how you disguise the crime that makes it your personal own and how it rests on the political scale. From tactile artifacts to even phrases you use, there’s some coalesced, malleable composition to it all, like a hot mould of glass ready to be shaped. In a cultural arena, this idea is even greater in its capacity. Cover songs, porn parodies, remakes, remixes. Directors of films stealing shots from other films where shots are stolen from other films, and now, in the Internet Age, it’s basically an industry of its own. From nascent days of videos like The Fartrix to our frightening new fatally dystopian love of DeepFakes, It’s always been an endless bread-fold of ideas that never seem to be unanchored from someone elses. Anti-Banality Union’s new film, Earth II, is a newer (r)evolution of this cultural economy of repurposing: a climate crisis mixtape of familiarity and fear.
Earth II collages and recontextualizes actors, characters, scenes and films that we know to turn them into a narrative equating to a 90-Minute Warning. Keanu Reeves is splaced in from films like The Matrix and Johnny Mnemonic to become awoken to the impending doom of capitalism preservation over nature. Will Smith shown from films like I,Robot and Independence Day is recruited as a tool of the bourgeoisie. The editing of these new storylines out of old material creates new narratives. Incantations of the past now rendered anew as real life consequence as real life newsreel footage is edited onto TV screens and in radio. It’s tonally funny and ominous as films like They Live, A Perfect Storm, The Purge, Elysium and others are inserted. Creating chaotic, falsified feelings of bigger budget intention, like a true facsimile of creation. It’s a jarring piece of cyberpunk art that feels like a socio-political comment on our consumption of fear. As if the only for modern audiences to metabolize our world is to infantilize ourselves in nostalgia. These memories of warnings and visual echoes are our only grasp on looking to the future. Getting news stories from SNL or stock trading tips from TikTok while furiously refusing to look up. Earth II is invading our looking down too.
Structured in three loose parts, we have scared warnings to begin with. TV slots, boardroom meetings, external shots of a world as now. Skyscrapers from Lethal Weapon loom across a world surviving, to the fire, floods, storms disasters, and panic (added from things like the scariest part of Jumanji), then into a new Great Reset colony where utopia is just a word. Wealth gaps are even more catastrophic, worker lives reflect our own doom as Amazon Warehouse flesh-droids and the only way to end the obscenity is to blow it all up. If the natural world doesn’t come for us, please blow it up for us, Matt Damon.
“If the world does go on, it will not go on for everyone.”
It’s a true essence of punk ideology in this medium and a politically entertaining piece of near-nihilism that feels less of a warning light on the dashboard but a million car alarms in the night, harmonizing into the Jaws theme. The torrid Earth without us will sing on, but that means you’ll never get to watch First Blood again.
The Reptile House
Earth II closes Weird Weekend III, 21:30 on Sunday 30.10.22, part of the Squint: Cinema From Cinema strand. Anti-Banality Union join us for the Squint: Cinema From Cinema panel, 17:00 on Sunday 30.10.22. Tickets here.
The Reptile House is the alias of Findlay, which is the nickname of the author himself. A banner under which all collective writing, art, submissions and soon-to-be-screenings is nestled. Reflected in the dark terraces of The Reptile House is cinematic pain and oscillations coming from old Adidas brochures. Always open to collaboration. @antibloom
