This is belted over the title card, so we are ready for a phenomenological pretzel. THINKING scrolls across the frame several times during the video, always a frustrating reminder of how nerve-wracking it can be. Later, participating in a guided meditation precludes watching CLOSE YOUR EYES become DOSE YOUR FACE on screen. Do we have to choose? Do we have a choice? All the cues are aimed at a viewer, but coming from corporate aesthetics and psychoanalysis they can perpetuate themselves without reality. There are Powerpoints (and drugs, which you go on to make the Powerpoints) whose codes slip from perfunctory to impertinent to nonsensical as they grow more poetic. That says something about the perseverance of the human spirit! The movie within a movie is a Chow Chow drama. Freud’s Chow Chow grew disgusted by her master’s face as it rotted from cigars. “Lack of security defines our lives” is said once, then again with the Pavlovian plinking of the American Beauty theme, and somewhere a millennial’s dreams died.

~ Kevin McGarry