Reflective Encounters

“The CG entities drifting around ostensibly live-action environments is reminiscent of the music video to Le1f’s Koi, though the poppy fantasmagoria is replaced with a haunting emptiness. Subtitles without a voice emphasise a feeling of loneliness akin to joining an abandoned server in a video game. In fact, the empty environments, and the eerie calm of isolation bring to mind the 1993 game Myst. The interaction between computerised images and live-action locations draws attention between two realms we tend to see as entirely distinct: the virtual and the real.

The lack of any human presence serves as an anxiety-inducing reminder that for all our technological trickery, the tools and toys we produce will likely outlive us. Imagery of the ongoing climate catastrophe tends to be unambiguously apocalyptic. Blood-red skies and gargantuan tsunamis are among the first things that spring to mind. However, in the vision set forth by What Will Survive of Us is Love, a post-human world may look more akin to Charles O’Rear’s dreamy photograph of a California hill that became the default Windows XP background, itself an image captured in the aftermath of man-made ecological disaster.”

— Cathy Brennan