DIVINE CONFLICT, 2025, APPROPRIATED FOOTAGE, ASMR-TRAINED AI VOICE, 4K VIDEO, 13:23
divine conflict is an appropriated footage film constructed from YouTube footage, fetish videos, and online spiritual ramblings. Appropriated footage is used in constructing a paranoid atmosphere that probes the crossover between desire and repulsion. With dialogue taken from various occult and spiritual communities (most notably 4chan’s /x/ board) the film uses the gnostic belief of an imprisoning, corrupt material world and places it in the perspective of a free and liberated virtual world.
‘Divine conflict’ can refer to the battling of two opposing gods, two powerful forces stuck in a perpetual war, existing in this is a cosmic struggle against one of the forces – a need to ‘rid the world of evil’ or ‘gain a sense of enlightenment’. A need to alert others of the truth, to get people to ‘wake up’, be it the new world order, a technological conspiracy theory or the belief in a flat earth, a divine conflict is a state of constant paranoia against something out of one’s control.