"DISPOSED" is sequence of 9 videos of movement art on topic of consumerism. Consumerism culture affects not only how we treat nature, things and buildings (amount of abandoned buildings in Germany is catastrophical), but also our relationships with animals and even other people. These videos draw parallels between material items and a living (human) being, as everything is used for pleasure, short-term satisfaction, broken and abandoned, left to rot for many years.
All videos self-shot by Nik Maksimyuk. It was made on request from Imagofeminae zine (but the topic was chosen by the author).
1. Support
Change is an inevitable part of life. Sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it’s slow, sometimes it’s immediate. Sometimes it’s because something (or someone) is broken, sometimes it or they can be repaired but it is just easier to get something new to replace, sometimes it’s just because people are not satisfied with what they have. What happens to something or someone that is no longer needed or wanted? If they just are left there, where they broke, will they be forever there? Will anyone take care of them even if they don’t function anymore like they were supposed to? Does recycling/repurposing work? Is it possible to give new life to something/someone, or it just wastes more resources than to leave it all where it is? People are like furniture - kept close as long as convenient, gotten rid of easily even if they were for a long time our support.
Lyrics by Luís de Camões (Translated by Austin Hyde).
2. Dirge
We are all part of nature. We come from it, we will come back to it. Is nature everything we need? Does nature need us? What is unnatural? Nature has always changed, but does it change the same way with the impact of humanity as it did without it? Do we change nature by changing ourselves? What does it mean to be close to nature?
Lyrics by Luís de Camões (Translated by A.Z. Foreman).
3. Trash
Some things are meant to be disposed of very quickly. Packages from fastfood. One-time use items, like plastic or paper cups. Non-reusable hygiene products. What else? Pets people got during lockdown because they were lonely? Maybe, people from dating apps? What makes us feel it is acceptable to treat living beings as disposable? What kind of culture? Is it possible to reduce the production of one-time-use things? Is it true that all the packaging, that is used only to deliver the food to us, is productively recycled? What excuse does it have, to leave waste after you in the place where you spent good time? And to leave scars on the souls of people you had a good time with?
4. Imlovingit
What does it mean to love? Is love overrated? Or is this word just thrown around too much? Is loving the same as enjoying? The most popular fast food company in the world exploits this word in their commercial slogan. And all over the world packages, empty or partly empty, with this slogan, are thrown around - on the streets and in nature, in forests and in lakes. Is this the way love always ends? As well with people? Do we love them only when there is something to consume in them? Is loving a choice, and is this choice conscious?
5. Door
Popular pseudo-psychological trends focused on “personal growth” shout from every corner, that we don’t have to be upset when we are rejected, because “when one door closes, another one opens”. But does it really work this way? We get more time to try to open other doors, but they do not open automatically. And the locks on next doors we bump into the further our life goes are very likely to be harder and harder to pick. For many of us, doors that are open by default simply do not exist, or do not have anything good behind them. The more privilege one has, the more doors are open for them, but it’s not a reason to assume they are also open for others, who don’t have your level of privilege.
6. Time
All our lives we hunt this most powerful serial killer in the world, and though all of us manage to kill parts of, it never was caught fully. Maybe it is a big gang of serial killers? It destroys both living and unliving things. It destroys everything that we abandon. Can it ever be on your side? It is also said to be the greatest doctor in the world. But does it really heal, or does it just dumpen the pain to continue killing us without having us fight back? What would happen if we could finally catch it and take control of it?
7. Center
Philosophy of “killing your ego” became another mass trend in our times. People meditate, and this practice became so socially acceptable, that it became socially unacceptable if you don’t meditate. It is said all the problems can be solved with meditation, and all the diseases cured. But is it just another commercial trick? When you kill your ego, what comes to take its place? Your shadow does. The dark version of you. Paranoia, evil voices and monstrous images. This is what psychosis is. Death of ego is death of you. Ego is the center of our personality.
8. Going?
They say, you must live only in the present, and then you will be happy. But is your present really ever not a result of your past? Does “past” exist at all? Don’t we keep all the experiences we ever had in life always with us? When we “move on” do we really go far, or do we always return to the same spot? Is life just a staircase we climb up and down over and over again? Or is it a building of many staircases? Are they connected to one another?
9. Fall
When the autumn of our life comes, does anything we left behind matter? Does our labor bring fruit? Are we truly alone when we die, or do the connections we built affect how we and our close and less close people feel? Should we produce new and new people, or are there already too many and new people will only multiply abandoned trash and ruins that the earth soon will not be able to carry?