Wednesday, 5 March 2025, 7.30 pm, diffrakt | centre for theoretical periphery
Film screening and conversation with
Soda Jerk
Hello Dankness (2022, 70′) is a political fable that bears witness to the psychotropic spectacle of American politics from 2016 to 2021, and the mythologies and lore that took root around it. Taking form as a suburban stoner musical, the film follows a neighborhood through these years as consensus reality disintegrates into conspiracy and other contagions. What unfolds is a rogue retelling of history in which hotdogs debate the culture wars, trashcans preach QAnon, zombies rally for revolution, and real events are refashioned as Broadway bangers. There are songs and dancing, moments of menace and melancholy, shitposting and deep sincerity. Hello Dankness is entirely composed of sampled media and has been grafted together from almost one thousand film, television and audio sources. Begun in 2016 and labored on throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Hello Dankness is a record of the time, written from the time.
The screening will be followed by a conversation with Soda Jerk on the legacies of their film work, the short half-life (or prophecy?) of Hello Dankness‘s visual commentary in the age of Trumpism, and politics as spectacle after Germany’s snap election.
