ecologics
2023 · 10m · USA
Directed by Lauren Koo
Genres: essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A young narrator fixates on abandoned office buildings and obsolete ways of working, nostalgic for lives she never lived. Empty desks tangled in overgrowth become a meditation on labor, progress, and the natural world's quiet reclamation.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Nostalgia for a cubicle life you never had — finally, the correct emotion for our age. Liminal-space TikTok dressed up as cinema, and somehow it works.
A video poem about ghost offices — Koo renders anti-capitalist mourning as liminal-space ASMR, Akerman's News from Home finding a LinkedIn profile in the ruins. Exactly the kind of formal mourning I keep watching for.
A video poem about ghost offices as anti-capitalist mourning rendered as liminal-space ASMR — nostalgia for lives never lived as the affective engine. Empty desks tangled in overgrowth is exactly the right image to build around.