Three video examples of ontological blues - a man on his chair, a philosophy teacher causing scandal, consumerism gone crazy
“We don’t need a political discussion, we need an ontological discussion”, said one of our colleagues this week. By which they meant that part of our politics these days is about who wins the battle to define collective reality - and how aware are we of the various strategies deployed to do so. Here’s three videos which address exactly that problem.
Embedded above is Jeong Dahee’s Man on the Chair. Blurb from Psyche:
For some, the existential heebie-jeebies creep in only during small, idle moments – perhaps when you’re awake in bed, or prompted by a mind-bending book or film. Or maybe you find the mysteries of the Universe an endless source of wonder and even joy. But for others, the strangeness of existence, and the reality it rests upon, can be a haunting prospect. Where did I – and everything else – come from? Am I really here? How can I know that I even exist? For those with ruminative and anxious minds, these most fundamental questions are more than just philosophy-class curiosities – they have the capacity to reverberate, linger and overwhelm.
At once meditative and unsettling, Man on the Chair by the Korean animator Jeong Dahee mines enigmatic art from the unknowable. With very few words from an unseen narrator and a stunning series of visuals, she sketches out the tale of a man who, unable to move, spirals deep into the ontological quandaries that have troubled him since childhood. The story unfolds like a haunting dream, drifting further into the surreal with each passing moment.
Aided by a sparse and realistic sound design, Dahee builds a meticulous world, rich with detail at every turn. Lines on the man’s body are echoed in ripples of water, and later as birds in flight. When a table begins to move of its own volition and a glass atop it begins to spill, the creaks, drips and swirls unfold with a convincing physical realism. When a clock on the wall ticks, its second hand jerks into place in a lifelike manner. It’s these small touches, accumulating throughout and tethering the uncanny scenes to reality, that make the work so oddly enchanting.
Although Dahee builds a full story arc, she resists trying to moralise or rationalise away the experience of existential dread. Ultimately, Man on the Chair is a contemplative work, not a message. However, by eventually breaking the fourth wall and revealing herself as the film’s creator, Dahee perhaps hints at her own chosen way to channel anxious feelings about the big, unresolvable questions.
In Therefore Socrates Is Mortal, a school philosophy teacher causes a scandal when she teaches her pupils to identify sophistry in modern social media, like modern-day Socrates. Interview below with film-maker Alexandre Isabelle, from Vimeo’s Staff Picks:
On inspiration: For the creation of this film, I was inspired by my years of teaching philosophy, marked by the beauty of the profession and its limits. I wanted to show the joys of the profession while exteriorizing a feeling of revolt that I sometimes feel when I experience a certain powerlessness to change things from the inside. This frustration is notably related to the rise of clientelism in our schools
On challenges: My first challenge was to bring to life the dilemma "teach or live philosophy" Although specific to the career of a philosophy teacher in the film, it is a dilemma that we all face between words and the call for concrete actions, especially in the current context of climate change. The second challenge was during the shooting, particularly because of the extremely windy weather. Although the script mentioned wind in some scenes, we had not imagined shooting in the middle of a windstorm. Which made our first day of shooting (out of 3) very perilous. but somehow consistent with the subject of the film.
On surprising audience interpretations: The main interpretative surprise was that some consider the film to be the pamphleteer. I find that surprising because I had always seen this film as a tragedy of language, precisely as the end of speeches and pamphlets. It got me thinking: Maybe Socrates was not mortal enough in the movie.
On our search for the latest startling work by the filmmaker Cyriak - it’s here, but goes a bit horror-movie at the end for our tastes - we found this 2013 work for the dance-masters Bonobo, titled Cirrus. Amazing digital work, riffing off a 50s promo clip for consumerism. But it shows what can be done with clear human intent, as opposed to seeing what an algorithm may generate (as in Generative AI).