Future Mourning is a video piece that follows a loose narrative about a queer cowboy dancing and partying throughout a cityscape. The cowboy describes her preparation for the end of the world, and her thoughts about the future. Many voices chime in to describe their encounters with the cowboy, and explain their perceptions of the future as well Scenes switch quickly and randomly, leaving the audience to observe this bizarre sequence of events. Colours, sounds, and images are continuously distorted throughout the video. There is a clear sense of disjointed space and time throughout each scene. Yet moments of sameness bring them together, creating a tone of humour, uncertainty and nihilism. The cowboy can be seen partying in a dance club environment, making eye contact with the camera. This video is filmed as though it is a documentary, yet as it continues it becomes clear that it is filled with sardonic humour. As viewers watch Future Mourning they follow the main the character who is a combination of a stereotypical headstrong cowboy mixed with a kinky queer club kid. As the video progresses, viewers can watch her party and gallop around all while listening to her describe her satirical and unorthodox doomsday preparations. The documentary format becomes more skewed a the video goes on, and turns into a fast paced, distorted but precise mess of footage. An impending sense of doom and dyschronia is something that many younger generations feel a strong sense of in modernity. Mark Fisher states that “the 21st century is oppressed by a crushing sense of finitude and exhaustion” (Fisher, 19-20) with which I tend to agree. Due to the uncertainty and instability of the future, it makes sense that there would be a longing to move backwards in time to the past, creating a present that is at a stand still. This is not to say that society has not progressed in the past 20 years, but this phenomenon is most apparent in our culture: our music, clothes, trends and films. This stasis is apparent in Future Mourning, as the cowboy dances to 80’s music in order t cope with anxiety about the future. To further highlight this “collapse of both space and time” (31) visuals of outer space can be seen entangled intermittently throughout the video. Within the mourning of the future comes the voiding of the present. The present no longer has agency, it is only the past and the future which have agency. The imagery of stars becomes symbolic of this void or lack of presence, due to the nature of stars being so far away from Earth that we can not see them in real time. Future Mourning becomes a humorous articulation of the anxious feelings of younger generations and it was made for an audience who feels the same way. As it navigates these very scary ideas in a bizarre and comedic way, it in itself becomes a coping mechanism to deal with the impending doom in the world.

Starring:
Alexa Bunnell
Patrick Piegza
Trey Madsen
Victoria McInnis

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Works Cited

Fisher, Mark. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Zero Books, 2014, pp. 17-30.