by Aurola Győrfy // Nov. 10, 2023
Soda Jerk is an Australian artist duo currently based in New York. Their films ‘Terror Nullius’ (2018) and ‘Hello Dankness’ (2022) are due to feature at the upcoming Interfilm Festival in Berlin. ‘Terror Nullius’ is a contemporary attempt to collage a satirical politics and Australian national mythology in an eco-horror atmosphere, while ‘Hello Dankness’ is an assemblage about the changes in American society since Trump. Both films channel the uncertainty of the current media environment and the collective cultural malaise of the moment.
We spoke to Soda Jerk about the challenges of political satire in a hyperbolic reality and the role of contemporary documentary methodologies today. We also discussed how their work and method relate to the circulation and dynamics of postmodern image representation. Berlin Art Link is also offering our readers a chance to win two tickets to see ‘Hello Dankness’ on November 17th at 8pm in the Kino in der Kulturbrauerei. Follow the instructions below to enter.
Soda Jerk: ‘Hello Dankness,’ 2022, film still // Courtesy of Soda Jerk
Laura Győrfy: ‘Hello Dankness’ is a political satire exploring the American political milieu from 2016 to 2021, while ‘Terror Nullius’ is a “political revenge tale” about Australian national mythologies. What was the main difference for you in making a satire about the contemporary politics of Australia and the United States? Which did you find more challenging?
Soda Jerk: The most difficult thing about making ‘Hello Dankness’ was that we were trying to document events as they were happening. Navigating the relentless psychodrama of those years was already a scramble, but when history got sucked into a pandemic sinkhole in 2020 we had to scrap over half our edit to make room for the monumental changes unfolding around us. It was also just a ridiculously tough time. Immense grief and devastation punctured by acute solidarity, and escalating weirdness mixed with suffocating banality.
But perhaps what we struggled with most for both films was the question of satire itself. We do wonder whether satire is even possible in an era where reality already feels so unhinged and hyperbolic. Part of what you can feel in our films is a distrust of satire, and a restless struggle to intercept it by shifting between different registers and modalities—ironic distance imploding into the ambiguity of trolling, and lampooning toppling over into deep sincerity.
Soda Jerk: ‘Terror Nullius,’ 2018, film still // Courtesy of Soda Jerk
Soda Jerk: ‘Terror Nullius,’ 2018, film still // Courtesy of Soda Jerk
LG: Both ‘Terror Nullius’ and ‘Hello Dankness’ deal with popular culture, remixing hundreds of film and media samples. Can you talk about the process of appropriating existing footage and re-contextualizing it as your material?
SJ: Genesis Breyer P.Orridge speaks about sampling as a kind of holographic magic, and we really feel that. There is something occult about tapping into the latent properties and powers of an image. For us, images are not just representations, they are vectors for the accumulation and circulation of memories, affects and knowledge systems. So when we sample a film, we’re always trying to decrypt these encoded dimensions and understand how they can be recombined in a productive friction with other images and contexts. Because our films take the form of classical narratives our methodology is also bound by more pragmatic considerations to do with continuity and the edit. Our process may be rogue and experimental in many ways, but we play nice with cinematic convention. ‘Hello Dankness’ is a cut-up film, but it’s also a suburban stoner musical full of Broadway bangers.
LG: ‘Hello Dankness’ explores meme culture and its impact on society and politics. How do you see the role of memes and online culture shaping our collective consciousness and why did you choose to explore this in your work?
SJ: Memes are a trip. They get a bad wrap for being puerile or basic, when actually they’re this sophisticated linguistic ecology that also acts as a stealth means of recruitment and hyperstition. Although there are certainly some meme shoutouts in ‘Hello Dankness,’ our main concern in the film is with the memetic dynamics that are reshaping the contours of our shared experience. We think of that period around 2016 as a kind of historical vibe shift, where we collectively came to realize that a deep sense of unreality had seeped into everyday life.
LG: You describe your work as an intersection of documentary and speculative fiction. This strategy reflects the failure of a single objective reality and presents the idea of schizoid narratives that coexist. How do you think this affects the role of documentarism and documentary filmmaking today?
SJ: We’ve always been deeply invested in the potential for strategic fictions to destabilize official orthodoxies, but you have to be careful what you wish for. When we imagined the upending of establishment narratives we never envisaged that the emerging counter-myths would take the form of climate change denial, Democrats eating babies and pedophiles communicating in pizza messages. We don’t have the answers, but our feels are that these are distinct and urgent times that demand a radically new arsenal. If the Left are losing the image-wars to conspiracy grifters and teenage trolls, then perhaps it’s time we got our shit together.
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Artist Info
Festival Info
Interfilm
39th International Short Film Festival Berlin
Festival: Nov. 14–19, 2023
interfilm.de
Screening Info
Interfilm
Soda Jerk: ‘Terror Nullius’
Screening: Nov. 16; 9pm
interfilm.de/terror-nullius
Unterfilm Clubkino, Saarbrücker Str. 23, 10405 Berlin, click here for map
Interfilm
Soda Jerk: ‘Hello Dankness’
Screening: Nov. 17; 8pm
interfilm.de/hello-darkness
Cinestar Kino in der Kulturbrauerei, Schönhauser Allee 36, 10435 Berlin, click here for map
