Kakotopia 2/3

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• published: 15 Jul 2009
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KAKOTOPIA: from the greek 'kakos' (bad, vile, ugly, unhappy) and 'topos' (place). Dystopia, Anti-utopia. "The elite can enslave the masses. A worse scenario: the masses can get so used to slavery that they end up making of it, their lifestyle. And even worse, both things can happen at the same time" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER :The present work was made with didactic intentions, aiming to create an assemblage of still, photographic images, according to different principles, techniques and methods of cinematographic montage. The editor and producer of this piece (me) in no way claims authorship or ownership of any of the audiovisual material used. Most of them are on the public domain or under copyleft, while other may be screenshots used for educational purposes and others are free for use or used under permission. ************************************************************************************************************ The following work is conceptualized as a creation of The Adsert Movimiento. It presents a series of images of different themes, assembled to recreate a story. The juxtaposition of images gives space to a wide range of interpretations and knowing what each image presented comes from helps getting a bigger picture. However, the same is highly metaphorical. While it presents images of wars, genocide and Nazism among others, these are used as a metaphor and in no means is this another critic of the horrors of wars, if any, it's a critic of the horrors of peace. It depicts certain atrocities perpetrated by mankind throughout the centuries but the aim is to arise in the observer certain reflections, about the current state of humanity and illnesses of our culture of idiocracy. We all can agree that this society is in crisis, and that the system suffers from severe flaws. But we don't seem to realize that WE are that society, and that its problems are the consequence of the lifestyle that we have constructed and perpetuate everyday, with every moment and every goal that stems from that machinery. The leaders have failed, they don't really care, do we? If we don't educate ourselves but continue just following and fooling around, this whole planet is doomed. This film is dedicated to an age where the human being is actually concerned about knowing himself and the world he is in; and don't being just another cog in the machine, manipulated like pawns by the interests of politicians, organized religion, the media and corporations. Through the years, many warned us about the degeneration and (self)destruction that we were marching towards. Meanwhile, every day, we watched the world fall apart, and when something made us 'reflect' about it, we just nodded and said something had to be done, just to go on living under the same old paradigms and lies of always, without the tiniest interest to think outside the box, turning our backs on the fundamental problems of our era, closing our eyes to reality, and to our own inner worlds. We lived into the lie, and there, we were comfortable, and if any motherfuckers came about to complicate our existences, we crucified them. We were good citizens, we had our minimum wage, and we were happy with having food in our bellies, money in our pockets, and sex in our beds. To Hell with everything else! Burn every book! at least they'd have some use that way. Stay calm, you idiot, Haven't you realized? The end of the world, was a long time ago. Life doesn't exist anymore. We are the dead. ADSERT-6 in memory of ADSERT-0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I am deeply sad, I am sad for my generation, who is emptied of any human substance. I hate my time - with all my forces - there, the man dies of thirst. I hate this time, - universal totalitarianism - where the man becomes soft, polite and quiet cattle... it is absolutely necessary to speak to man. We cannot be satisfied only by refrigerators or politics, or sports, one cannot any more. one cannot live without poetry, color, or love. The robot man, the termite man, the castrated man from his creative capacity, who, in his remote village, cannot create one dance even any more nor a song, the man who is fed by a standardized culture, as an oxen fed by hay, this is the modern man. There's only one problem, one there, all over the world to return to the man's spiritual concerns... a spiritual significance. Adapted from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Letter to General X (Oujda, Algeria, June 1943).