Keeping Up With The Apocalypse
«Keeping Up With The Apocalypse» looks at the paradox between a self-obsessed society trying harder than ever to reach unreachable levels of physical perfection, eternal youth and immortality and the accelerated decaying of life on Earth. In this somber context of a possible planetary extinction, outrageous amounts of money are being constantly invested in industries like beauty, anti-ageing and immortality – desperately looking for life extension on a planet soon without life.
This connection between lust for eternal life in the realm of fiction, myth and religion and the annihilation of all life is no more in evidence than in the immortality industry- a thriving business in the Silicon Valley with the Bank of America predicting that this market will be worth 600 billion by 2025 - (Podcast Teresa Heffernan: AI, the Immortality Industry, and the Ethics of Death).
Taking on the story of Hebe, the Greek goddess of youth, the video also explores the ever-growing digital market of anti-ageing and beauty treatments through self-improvement apps and beauty filters, looking to examine a self-centred culture through the shades of a constant obsession with our transience in the «mortal world». Digital means of living imply a quest to leave traces of ourselves behind. The human chase for immortality positions the Internet as a space to perform «strategies of immortality».
Last but not least, it’s also a satirical take on the superficial ways that the environmental crisis is often being approached on social media by playing the awareness and responsibility card just for the sake of a good image or simply by comfortably rejecting (even if as a way of grieving) the idea of a natural collapse through different forms of narcissism.
«I lay awake … and masturbate because … why not just have an orgasm if the whole world is falling apart (patient quote, Bodnar).»
