Early on, people would ask me, at Bennington or in New York, if Angelicism is a girl, and I would say no, it isn’t- Not exactly. I’m not Angelicism. Angelicism is not a zoomer and not a girl. Angelicism is perhaps an it/its or, possibly, one of the few men who get it. I showed a boy one of Angelicism’s blog posts once, and he threw my phone across the room and pronounced, “This shit is for girls.” I don’t know how to explain Film01 better than “It’s for the girls.” I recommend watching Barbie and Film01 back to back. What is more Film01 than 6 hours in the cinema watching Girls, Girls, Girls? I know this explanation is retarded, as the best explanations are. No need to go theory mode. I’m not talking about literal girls or even Young-Girls in the Tiqqun sense. In fact, I don’t know what I’m talking about.
On the Film01 official instagram, Angelicism posted a clip from Julia Ducournau’s Raw overlaid with audio about climate change statistics. In the scene, Justine dances in front of a mirror, applying red lipstick, while a French rap song plays with lyrics “Acide citrique et féromones/
Faire grimper le métronome” and “J’pratique le sexe après la mort.” She kisses herself. What does this have to do with extinction? Everything.
What happens when a real girl makes cold contact with her two-dimensional reflection? Well, a sort of portal opens- a vacuum into which all of existence gets sucked. That’s Le sexe après la mort. When she kisses herself, that’s when the beginning of the end begins. That’s Film01. It’s an encapsulation of the post-manic climax before the collapse, the speeding up of the metronome. As psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster said, our world is increasingly “frigid and erotomanic.” Film01’s quick succession of Girls, Girls, Girls- girls dancing/crying/walking- generates a frigid erotomania. Although some of these girls are physically in the theater- myself included- they are viewed at an icy distance. These girls belong to the internet. The eroticism they inspire is abstracted and inaccessible. How does that Ciara Horan quote go? “You will never touch me, you will never hold me, and you will never hold my hand.” Is that what zoomer sexuality is? What sextinction is? Never touching? A sapiosexual moving-beyond-the-corporeal? Not touching doesn’t mean the desire isn’t there. If you can’t obtain an object of desire, it’s natural to want it to not exist. That’s why many obsessive stalkers will kill their object of obsession. As the metronome speeds up and our erotomania is heightened, it is natural to progress towards total eradication. It’s this petulant logic of, if I cannot have it, it should not exist. Nothing will inspire sexual anger like watching Ciara Horan on film and knowing that you will never hold her hand.
I have never been in a movie before, but, like all girls, I desired to be in one. Seeing myself on screen was different than I thought it would be. I didn’t expect it to feel so… violent. I could literally feel my image being ripped away from my body. Any time my face came on screen or I heard the sound of my own voice, I would dig my nails into the arms of my cinema seat. When I heard a clip of an authentic voice message I sent Angelcism, begging him to put me back in the movie, I felt slightly nauseous. I heard myself say “I know you’re not a monster” and then I tuned myself out. At the post-premiere dinner at Lucien, I told people that that voice message was real, perhaps, too real, and the response was “Oh, I thought that was scripted. That was one of the best parts.” Later on, the question of Angelicism being some sort of Charlotte Fang-esque cult leader came up. And after a few photos were snapped of the long-haired Film01 stars walking arm-in-arm, Manson Girl comparisons were inevitably drawn. In response to the accusations, I said, “Angelcism isn’t evil, he’s just insane.”
Much of my footage was shot by cinematography prodigy, Spiraljette. When left unedited, it is simply a documentation of our friendship- of two artistically ambitious girls traipsing around New York City. Though much of it was left unedited, the footage transformed under the eyes of Angelcisim01. There's an additional layer of desire, and suddenly, the footage is no longer about two girls hanging out, but about two girls filming each other for a third party. Now there’s evidence that something is watching them. Its gaze is one of distant adoration, of angelic tenderness in response to our vulnerability. That being said, sometimes it was violent, too. There is a violence to being in the cut; One that feels like being cut-up. Nobody knows how to cut-up Girls, Girls, Girls better than a film director who’s low-key insane (and a genius.) There is a violence to kissing oneself; There is a violence to viewing oneself in a cinema; These are the violences that herald extinction.
These girls are filming themselves for Angelicism01 to watch, for the world to watch. I act supremely awkward in all of my footage because I already felt hyper-seen. Angelicism itself, in contrast to the girls of Film01, is invisible. Absent from his own film premiere, Angelcisim’s anti-presence hovered over us at Anthology Archives, at Lucien. It felt both frigidly erotomanic and infinitely tender and warm. During dinner I thought, but didn’t say; Isn’t it insane how the thing that brought us together is the only thing that’s missing? Isn’t it kinda beautiful tho?
Insane
training myself not to find this peak everything