HD | color/B&W | sound | 11' 52" | South Korea | 2017
Director/Producer/Editor Yeonu Ju
Executive Producer Michael A. Unger
Sound Track "BBB" by Tyler Friedman
SWARM CIRCULATION looks at the relationship between human being and technology. This film is a question about the reality of the existing epistemology, order and system, reality, and so on. The question is about the facts that we have overlooked. Using archival footage, the work consists of documentaries on manufacturing process of electronics, advertisements for electronics, and images of incinerating the ‘e-waste’ in the Third World. These scenes are identified with a structure in which low-resolution digital images are dispersed and fragmented on the Internet in flexible temporalities. The work explores meaning and methodology of filmmaking in the digital environment using digital production tools and digital archival images.
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Swarm Circulation is a montage of diverse footage of electronics and a visual and auditory essay using a montage of music and images without subtitles or voice over. The footage was created between the 1940s and the 2010s to depict the life cycle of electronics: production, sale, consumption, and disposal. It is a film about the process, but the logic of the montage does not have a linear structure. The flash-like cross-cutting of images is more of a condensation than a juxtaposition or contrast,kind of cinematic photo-montage. The short intervals between images of production and consumption, and the images of disposal and incineration, or the cyclical movement that dashes the long distance between developped and developing countries present introspective questions on and an analysis of today’s technology. - JeonJu IFF
