“Prophesying catastrophe is incredibly banal. The more original move is to assume that it has already occurred.” Jean Baudrillard
Set in the future, fragments of every day life are constructed, each portraying an event in which something has gone ‘wrong’! These can be interpreted as: an unfortunate incident (the man ‘jumping’ from the building) - a ‘bad’ day at the office (a man being demoted, sacked or retired) - a malfunction (the replicant setting fire to the petrol station) - the unpredictability of technology (the clones killing their father - or the sheep growing unnaturally large) or in a more philosophical sense, these ‘mishappenings’ can be seen as an allegory; a reference to Jean Baudrillard’s point that we are moving towards a world where the basic axioms of each system are pushed to the point where they begin to turn upon themselves, to produce the opposite effects from those intended.
A man is falling. Is it suicide or murder? Or within all powerful global technostructure, the distinction between the two has now become blurred. A metaphorical murder then; having to function within the world of uncertainty, where the logic is maximising profit at any cost - technology dictates - and concepts such as ‘over-worked’, ‘security’, or ‘future’ have no meanings.
A era of ‘ageism’. The young are fetishised, the not so young are doomed. The youth vision, as ‘new’ is promoted. So the young are set to lead, while the rest are kept down, or subjected to early retirement - all in the name of progress! But as Christopher Horrocks states, “progress today is just the routine production of consumer society that requires a constant and unchanging version of the ‘new’ to ensure the system’s survival....this ever ‘new’ is instead what allows the world to stay the same.”
The age of assimilation. The art of persuasion. The absolute commodity. Public relations is the name of the game. Success depends not on what you know, but who you know. The secret of ‘selling’ is no longer the idea, but what image to project. Art is reduced to nothing but an aesthetic harassment!
The police are privatised, with the replicants in charge. To be most cost effective; one model is applied. There seems to be a malfunction. One figure is contemplating over a lit lighter. The other replicants seem indifferent to the incident. Could it be that they are programmed not to question the police action - since the police always act on behalf of the law?! Or do their ‘solidarities’ lie in the unpredictability of technology; they have developed an uncanny sense of over-identification, since they all look the same.
On the subject of the ‘same look’, emerges the idea of cloning, where this time technology attempts to control the unpredictability of ‘nature’, to conceive perfect children, to suppress difference - but as the image predicts here the children may after all turn out not that ‘perfect’, even if we learn to live with the same face everywhere.
Nature aims at perfection. The man is preoccupied with the work, the woman with the man. No communication between the two, in the age of communication. The sun shining in the foreground - a dramatic sky in the background - the flowers, lush - the apples, shinny - the sheep, ‘natural’. Everything seems in its place, except for a sheep in the distance which seems out of proportion, out of control! A sign of imperfection in this flawless version of reality? A reminder that this in fact is an artificial landscape? Or, to follow Baudrillard’s more subtle observation, these signs of imperfections are our ‘signatures’ in the simulated world. They are clues, which ensure that we still exist.
A culture of anxiety. Depression is the norm. ‘Happiness’ is available on prescription. Violence is the reality of everyday life, whether domestic or public; directed towards others, or oneself! Survival is no longer a necessity, but a luxury.
So moments in the future; each unfolding a mise-en-scene of disaster, in which things have been pushed to the limit. But perhaps it is beyond the limit, where collapse is inevitable that we begin to see the working of the ‘progress’ in its entirety.
text by Mitra Tabrizian
