THE WORLD IS MINE

Talented fans constantly re-create her, that's why she never dies. She is a creative instigator. A collective fantasy. A social glue. Hatsune Miku is the future.

 

Hiro San In cosplay of the Japanese cyber diva Hatsune Miku, the director moves to Tokyo, seeking an identity in the world of Miku fanatics, where she is drawn into a love affair with one of the fans. Miku is a Vocaloid, a vocal synthesizer software personified by a cute animated character. Her entire persona: lyrics, music and animation – is fan created, and that's her charm. She even performs sold out concerts as a hologram.

 

By transforming herself into a Miku character through cosplay, Oren enters a world of real hardcore fans where fantasy is more real than reality and the differentiation between the two becomes obsolete.The film examines the performative nature of cosplaying – dressing up and playing the role of fictional characters – as a hybrid space where reality blurs into fetishistic fantasies and pop culture clichés.

 

Combining fan-made lyrics and songs, Oren's trials and tribulations in the fictional Miku world unfolds through vague erotic episodes and encounters with characters whose ontological status remains mysterious, bringing to mind the adventures of a modern Alice in a virtual Wonderland.

 

I sleep inside the display that depicts the end. And in that end, I will sing a song that only you wanted to hear.

ANN OREN

 

A visual artist and filmmaker. She was born in Tel-Aviv, received a BFA in Film and an MFA in Fine Arts, both from The School of Visual Arts, NY. Solo exhibitions and screenings at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Cindy Rucker Gallery, NY, Anthology Film Archives, NY, Apexart, NY, The Tel-Aviv Cinematheque and MediaLab Prado, Madrid.

 

Group exhibitions at The Hammer Museum, Moscow Biennale for young art, The Tel Aviv Museum, Rochester Contemporary Art Center, WRO Art center's Media Art Biennale, PS122, NY, Ann Arbor Film Festival, The Carnegie Mellon Film Festival and The Social Media Film Festival (special jury award). Oren received awards from The Jerome Foundation, The School of Visual Arts, The National Board of Reviews, NY, Ostrovsky Family Fund, Rabinovich Foundation, The NY State Council on the Arts and a New Artist award from Seoul international new media festival.

• New Horizons Film Festival, Poland 2017

• DokLeipzig, Germany 2017

• The Parders with Locarno Film Festival, Switzerland 2017

• New Orleans Film festival, USA 2017

• Docs Against Gravity Film Festival, Poland 2018

The phenomenon of Hatsune Miku is a timely subject, making its way into mainstream society with the increasing blur between the role of producers and consumers, as we can also see on Instagram, YouTube etc.

 

Participatory fan culture empowers the creativity of regular people, but on the other hand provides free marketing for brands. One’s own fantasies are resold to them. They literally create Hatsune Miku through music and video content while spending money on Miku merchandise, enslaved by their own creation. The same can be said for all of us since on social media, we all create content and consume it. Most internet tech companies are built on a model that involves making a profit from user-generated content. Miku fans spend long hours by themselves at the computer. This becomes a vicious cycle: it’s usually socially awkward youths who become interested in fantasy in the first place; the more they get into it, the less they interact with others in real life. Today teens are becoming less and less comfortable with certain aspects of socializing IRL (in real life). The adverse effects of communication technology on interpersonal relationships prove that the challenges faced by Miku fans are universal.

 

The phenomenon of Cosplay, as performed by M, the film’s protagonist, has become a global hot topic. Cosplay has surfaced in surprising areas, from a Louis Vuitton runway collection to a public gathering in Tahrir Square during Comicon. The unabashed pleasure of taking on fictional identities is definitely part of the zeitgeist. "Putting on the costume enables me to become who I really am, I don't have to hide" as a girl interviewed in the film confesses.In the west, we may not yet be attending concerts where the performer is a hologram, but we have conversations with customer service computers and Siri all the time. We play virtual tennis on the Wii platform and rock out with Guitar Hero. Even games of chance like Spin-the-bottle or the I-Ching have been transformed into phone shaking apps.

 

The World Is Mine explores these issues by asking several questions: is living one’s life deeply immersed in fiction all that different from how we are on social media already, performing our best selves? maybe a hybrid fantasy/reality world can make us happier? Is this phenomenon a tremendous loss or is it simply where things are headed in the future and we might as well embrace it? These are the questions driving the film.

DOKer 2018 — Let IT dok!