2014 | Color | HD video | 19:00

The age of photography corresponds precisely to the explosion of the private into the public, or rather into the creation of a new social value, which is the publicity of the private. — Roland Barthes, 1980

Oneiric illustrates the wireless world we inhabited in the early 2010s, when we’d learned to live so much of our lives through the screens of our ever-evolving devices. In that pre-pandemic era, we sought private refuge and escape in public space—an ironic contrast to the era of Covid-19, when those who are able to have adapted to living alone or in small, isolated groups, reaching out solely to virtual space as the public square.

It’s instructive to examine our previous selves: comfortably anonymous in public, alone, private and secure. This was a global moment in which personal information was willingly over-shared, at the very moment omnivorous corporate entities and states surreptitiously extracted data about us for their own purposes, which in many cases were nefarious.

Collectively, the long takes of the film seek to lay bare the effects of technologically mediated intimacy and chronic distraction. Was this neuroplasticity at work, a rewiring taking place in real time through our willing relationship to interactive media and the largely invisible online surveillance we were constantly subjected to? Then, as now, the focus is attention: where were/are we directing it, and what were/are the perils of disinformation and distraction? What becomes of social interaction in an increasingly digital world that guides our emotions through algorithms, and what aspects of human agency are in danger of being replaced as a consequence? The irony is that the societal changes brought on by the bungled pandemic response have at least in some respects slapped us awake, sending so many out into the streets to demand justice and equality, and then to vote to make our actual voices heard.