GMU:Thinking in tanks II/punkartoffel

Stella Noeme Effenberger

Medienkunst / Mediengestaltung



BACKGROUND:

• grew up in and with nature (lonely house on a hill in the forest, granparents are farmers)
• raised by a very religious single mother who is an artist
  • childhood was shaped by Christianity but I hated god so much for it that I stopped believing in him very early
  • youth was shaped by mother believing in all kinds of weird stuff, especially conspiracies
  • always was told "politics is something very boring and thinking about it will just make you sick, nothing can be changed anyway" - so I was highly apolitical and wanted to know nothing

• coming of age, I met some very sympathetical punks and discovered rock festival culture
  • I learned that I was wrong about politics

• my grandfather wants me to be a politician instead of an artist

• I want to save the world (literally, the environmental destruction everywhere is killing the planet!)

PROJECT IDEAS:

What if Corona was just the beginning

and the worst plagues of history had their comeback in superior mutated versions, wiping half of humanity from the planet?

• making a dystopian short film (somehow Black-Mirror-like)
• apocalyptic scenario (environmental destruction themed or nature-gains-back-what-we-left -style)
  • origins: melting permafrost, military laboratories, animals
  • impact: economy changes to mail order business only, homeoffice is standard, cultural events all online, drones (delivery) and robots do jobs that require presence, public transport goes extinct, emergency doctors are trained; stores, concert halls, theatres etc. get converted into storehouses and shipping factories run by AI; everyone is kept in their homes; the world seems empty
  • society: struggling, riots form and have to be dispersed by the military, permanent quarantine for everyone, lonelyness, suicide rate increasing severely, emotional numbness is all that's left, birth rate drops
  • future: dropouts leave society, take over abandoned places oder storehouses and try to live together like in the pre2020s but they all die of diesease, others do the same but in protection suits (gas mask, Overall etc) and that compromise somehow works
• story: protagonist is stuck with her parents in a small flat and hates it, gets to know a group of dropouts online and slips out at night in a protective suit to join them, experiences their every-day-life, is disappointed by the fact that there's no direct contact and noone is allowed to take the suit off (except for changing it) and that those who break the rules get abandoned, falls in love, breaks the rules and spends the night with someone (but they don't get catched), is happy then gets sick and dies of pest, her bottom line: it was worth it

Alter Ego

• protagonist of the story
• longs for skin-to-skin-contact and affection (as almost everyone)
• 20 years old, studying economics or something like that online
• is highly annoyed by her parents and more and more by her friends to because the don't want to secretly meet her in the outside world
• brave, spontanious, inquisitive, reckless, daredevil, foolish, romantic

The perfect role model

• moral question: is it the right thing to give yourself up for your ideals and purpose?
  • reality vs. popularity, privacy vs. public attention

Alter Ego'

• self control, pushing aside personal needs for greater goods
• not perfect as a person because mistakes are natural
• has a strong position and agenda
• manipulative, sympathetic, seemingly authentic, goal: maximum influence

RECOMMENDATIONS:

• "The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club. [...]"
• "Ding Dong. Es klingelt. Ich gehe zur Tür, öffne und stehe einem Känguru gegenüber. [...]"
• "Black Mirror (Netflix Series)"