Strandweaver @strandweaver - Tumblr Blog

mysharona1987

Monica Byrne

#monica byrne #ai #sci fi #ex machina #blade runner

carpethedamndiem

re-0000

Gennady Mironov

strandweaver

cf. Jeff Vandermeer Acceptance

#gennady mironov #painting #shimmer

ozu-teapot

Last and First Men | Jóhann Jóhannsson | 2017

#johann johannsson #last and first men #cinema #spomenik #architecture

abstracteddistractions

Danila Tkachenko “Monuments”

#danila tkachenko #monuments #photography #architecture

disorienteddreams

Anne W. Brigman - L'âme d'un arbre foudroyé (1907)

strandweaver

Humanoid trees, Annihilation, dir. Alex Garland

(les arbres d’âmes foudroyées)

#photography #anne w. brigman #arbre #tree #black and white #1900s #Alex Garland #annihilation #stills #cinema

abstrakshun

[1] James Turrell (American, b.1943)

Aquarius, Medium Circle Glass - 2019

[2] Alan Friedman

high resolution photograph of the Sun - 2020

#james turrell #light #sun #art #photography

catonhottinroof-deactivated2023

Pierre Ino (1909 - 1989)

Migration des âmes, 1941

#pierre ino #peinture #painting #migration des âmes #flowers #night

Hideo Kojima’s latest video game is a mindful hiking simulator set in a post-disaster America.

“Tarkovsky, adapting Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s 1972 novel Roadside Picnic, created a Zone in which possibilities literally expanded, and slippery ideas of faith, guilt, and desire could be contemplated. Its opening poses two origins for the elusive region: a meteorite or aliens of the “cosmic abyss.” Not that it really matters; the Zone is a vessel for the fears, anxieties, and hopes of those who visit. Other Zone-like constructions with similarly obscure origins have emerged, like the pristine Area X in Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reachtrilogy and Alex Garland’s subsequent adaptation, 2018’s Annihilation. In those works, ecological beauty and horror coexist while time and space take on their own psychedelic properties, posing fundamental questions about the nature of life itself to its own group of travellers.”

“The collective spirit Kojima fosters reminds me of the writer and artist group known as the Dark Mountain project. Its 2009 manifesto Uncivilization writes of the need for figurative ‘bearers, sherpas, guides, fellow adventurers’ in a time of ecocide.”

“Ironically, ecological crisis and its rising death toll has imparted the Zone a new, twenty-first century lease of life. While Stalker and the Chernobyl disaster emerged during the throes of Soviet crisis and the regime’s declining power in the 1970s and ‘80s, the Southern Reach trilogy and Death Stranding function as spaces to reflect on nature’s death, humanity’s destructive potential, and, crucially, our resolve for survival. Crisis generates new questions where old knowledge fails; the Zone offers us a space to work through the tumult.”

“Sam develops a fondness for the incubated infant strapped to his abdomen, which helps him detect BTs in the wild. However bleak, scary, celestial, or downright mundane Death Stranding’s eco-horror becomes, the game is anchored by their connection. At first glance, Sam and BB symbolize the rule-breaking weirdness of Kojima’s Zone where grown-ups rely on strange, bottled babies for survival. But at their core, the duo represent intergenerational responsibility and Sam’s own earthly duty to his dependent. Death Stranding’s most fundamental, surprisingly heartfelt question asks us what we want to pass on: a world of life and possibility, or a darker future entirely.”

#death stranding #annihilation #stalker #hideo kojima #video game #sci fi #dark mountain #the outline #video game criticism #lewis gordon

ozu-teapot

Stalker | Andrei Tarkovsky | 1979

#stalker #andrei tarkovsky #cinema #sci fi #film

woventhought

Several movies can help us make sense of our current moment, but Alex Garland’s “Annihilation” is one of the few to point the way forward.

“Even as essential workers continue to hold us together, the pandemic has cast an ominous spotlight on our natural porousness, and not even the most solipsistic of people can step outside their home without being confronted by the truth that everything is a part of everything else. But with most of us holed up inside, it can seem as if the only choices we have are to silo ourselves away or disintegrate completely. Either way presents its own kind of annihilation.”

“Lena, however, comes to appreciate that the only way out of the Shimmer is to push through to the other side. Watching the particles of her being swirl together with those of her colleagues and the world around them, she realizes that nothing is immutable. Change is inevitable — it’s disintegration that’s a choice.”

““Annihilation” is so illuminating because it finds a measure of comfort and/or catharsis in that without having to suggest that “we are the disease and the world is healing itself” or whatever. It provides a lens through which to see this pandemic as a true cataclysmic tragedy, and real life, not some momentary pause. Devastation is inevitable, but disintegration is a choice, and a frantic race to restore the world to its previous shape will only end with us dying in the ruins of the world we have now.”

“Self-destruction may be programmed into our cells, but annihilation doesn’t have to be.”

See also : https://newrepublic.com/article/147201/annihilation-brilliant-splicing-woolf-cronenberg

https://www.vulture.com/2018/03/annihilation-movie-depression.html

#annihilation #Alex Garland #film #cinema #film criticism