A Looming Apocalypse Throws Images Into Disorder, Studying the Subconscious Mind in the Internet Age

Why It Matters

The monologue captures how digital-age anxieties manifest as apocalyptic symbols, shaping cultural narratives and influencing collective mental health.

Key Takeaways

• The narrator equates football with modern religion, highlighting cultural rituals.
• A looming black asteroid symbolizes existential dread in the digital age.
• The monologue explores how fear amplifies imagined threats, feeding chaos.
• Language shifts illustrate fragmented consciousness and the search for meaning.
• Acceptance of emptiness is presented as a path to inner light.

Summary

The video, titled “A looming apocalypse throws images into disorder, studying the subconscious mind in the internet age,” is a surreal, multilingual monologue that blends philosophy, pop culture, and apocalyptic imagery to probe how modern humans process existential anxiety. It juxtaposes familiar rituals—like football, described as the world’s biggest religion—with a looming black asteroid, using the celestial threat as a metaphor for the subconscious dread amplified by constant online exposure.

Key insights emerge around the construction of belief systems: the speaker declares that God is a product of ignorance, while football serves as a secular faith that never ends in death. The black stone in the sky grows when feared, illustrating how attention fuels perceived threats. The narrative also highlights the fragmented nature of contemporary consciousness, shifting between French, English, and Danish to mirror the disordered flow of digital information.

Notable lines such as “There is no God, because God is a construction born of ignorance” and “The stone grows when you think of it” underscore the theme that imagined catastrophes gain power through collective focus. The speaker’s journey—from attempting to destroy the stone to surrendering to its light—embodies the tension between rational control and emotional surrender.

The piece suggests that in an internet-saturated era, the search for meaning becomes both defining and imprisoning. Accepting emptiness as a source of inner light offers a potential resolution, urging viewers to recognize that the apocalypse they fear may be a projection of internal chaos rather than an external inevitability.

Original Description

For the experimental short EUGENE, Norwegian director Kristian Engelsen imagines the build up to the apocalypse as a black asteroid hoovers around Earth. Loosely inspired by Norse mythology, through the lens of scrolling culture, the film pieces together fragmented images intended to mirror the subconscious mind – entering a heightened state of chaos as the atmosphere is disrupted.

Shooting between VHS, iPhone, 16mm, 35mm, and 35mm 4-perf, Engelsen worked with cinematographer Andreas Johannessen to create a disorienting environment that shifts across formats, textures, and languages. As a comment on how images we see online affects us, and our stream of consciousness, EUGENE positions the internet as an extension of the nervous system and the mind, examining surveillance and data access in the post-privacy era, by inviting viewers to fill in the gaps... read more at nowness.com

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