Asymbolia
2026 - in production
Asymbolia is my BA thesis short film about a grieving consciousness struggling
against being decentralised by a posthuman network, only to return to thestructures it resents yet cannot function without.
Film Stills
Statement
We are empiricists, that is, pluralists...To arrive at the magic formula we all seek—PLURALISM = MONISM—we must pass t hrough all the dualisms, which are the enemy, but an entirely necessary enemy…
-- Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F, A Thousand Plateau
This film traces the shift from human-centred grief to a recognition that consciousness is not the centre of the world, but only one transient relation within a wider network of matter, a space where the human figure gradually loses its visual and spatial dominance. Humanist subjectivity in grief: a conscious individual holding tightly to identity, memory, fear, and the need to remain singular and meaningful. This subjectivity is simply human. Consciousness clings to individuality because it is frightened of disappearance.
The film initially centres the human body as the organising force of the frame. Gradually, this subjectivity is destabilised through exposure to broader systems of relation. Llandscapes and material surfaces that exist independently of t he performer. Non-human agencies begin to assert presence as parallel forces that do not recognise human centrality. Matter, l andscape, organisms, and digital systems continue to operate according to their own logics. The environment reveals itself as equally active and indifferent to the human need for coherence and individuality. What f ractures is the assumption that consciousness is central. The world gradually gives way to environments that no longer respond to the body. The environment slowly becomes the primary agent.
The film presents a shift in scale, from individual consciousness to relational existence, from human fear to systemic continuation, as an acknowledgement of its limits within a l arger field of material and technological relation.
Process