Anathema

Directed by The Otolith Group

Anathema is a contemporary Fantasia on the notion of the network and its inherent instability, where the organic networks of human relations and the crystalline lattices of silicon-based technologies intertwine, and often tangle. From the artists’ statement: Anathema re-imagines the microscopic behavior of liquid crystals undergoing turbulence as a sentient entity that possesses the fingertips and the eyes enthralled by the LCD touch-screens of communicative capitalism. Anathema can be understood as an object-oriented video that isolates and recombines the magical gestures of dream factory capitalism. By bringing the telecommunicating couplings of mother-father-daughter-son-machines and boyfriend-girlfriend-units into contact with the conductive imagery of liquid crystallization, Anathema proposes itself as a prototype for a counter-spell assembled from the possible worlds of capitalist sorcery.