Subconscious Society (2014)

• 66%
• 2014
• Rosa Barba

Subconscious Society is about the end of the industrial era and the transition to the digital age, in which computer code and the clone or copy are in the process of replacing material objects and analogue technology. In the film, this paradigm shift is represented in the form of a social community, whose protagonists make a final attempt at assigning and archiving objects from the past. The project takes inspiration from the urban environment of Manchester (UK) and the landscapes of Kent (UK), with additional scenes shot in Texas (US). The first two locations played paradigmatic roles in the industrial revolution: Manchester as the first industrial metropolis and Margate catering to the related rise of a new leisure culture for the masses. The Manchester scenes represent the "inside", the Kent and Texas sequences, by contrast, represent the "outside". The film shows repeating architectural structures and topographies populated by abandoned ships, collapsing piers and rotting sea forts rising from the water on stilts like an alien life form. Subconscious Society considers the possibility of archiving something whose value cannot be recognized or measured anymore, yet ultimately it is not about nostalgia but rather the question of how we can understand the present.