EXISTENZ, DAVID CRONENBERG - LIQUID LIFE: A CASE STUDY

David Cronenberg is a Canadian filmmaker whose work most notably includes Videodrome (1982), The Dead Zone (1983), The Fly (1986), Crash (1996) and eXistenZ (1999). His films tend to be science fiction and fantasy – genres that are particularly suited to questioning societal norms and anticipating the problems that lie ahead. eXistenZ did this in 1999 by offering a critique of virtualization and portraying our relationship with the body as an as-yet unshakeable link to the real world.

“ I’m not taking sides. I reason like a scientist conducting an experiment ” David Cronenberg on eXistenZ and the comparison between real and virtual ( Les Inrockuptibles , April 1999).

eXistenZ, film, Canada/United Kingdom, 1999, 96 minutes. The film won several awards.

The film tells the story of Allegra Geller and her unprecedented video game that links the player to a virtual world via a “pod” inserted into the latter’s back and, thus, the central nervous system. But the unveiling of eXistenZ by its designer is disrupted by objectors - guardians of the real world committed to staving off the extreme virtualization and technologization the game proposes. The viewer is gradually drawn into the war between reality and virtuality within the world of the film, in which the two have become confused. This is reflected in particular by the presence of organic devices that resemble foetuses and umbilical cords.

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Fiction pushed to the extreme to consider reality

The film invites us to enter a virtual reality that is so highly developed that, in many scenes, the spectator cannot discern fiction from virtuality or reality. Like many works of art from various disciplines (but unlike scientific literature, which does not allow this), the target audience for these works is mobile and either moves in the environments presented, traveling with the artist or in his or her place, or - as in the case of eXistenZ - between two opposing realities – virtual or otherwise. Going to this extreme of virtuality is also a way for the filmmaker to critique it and to explore our reality from a different standpoint. With this film Cronenberg challenges the ethics of the viewer, user, politician or expert that so interest research on mobility, allowing us unrestricted access to the realities of the issues that concern them, from a fresh and original perspective.

Linking past, present and future

The director offers us numerous points of comparison with the scientific literature, particularly as regards time, as the film takes place in a particular type of near (virtual) future, although the research typically conceives the present and near future based on the past - using memory, changes, former policies and historical events (including personal ones), and the effects of their materialization on spaces and mobilities as they are today. The virtualization of the future world we find in eXistenZ led to a plethora of special effects made for the film, which are likewise representations of imaginaries of virtual mobility and clearly differ not only from the imaginaries of the modes of travel of other artists, but also within the social sciences.

Motility

The concept of motility is also found here in its fullest expression. Physical movement remains in a state of potential, and mobility exists virtually without it, via technology, giving the characters a kind of ubiquity and allowing them to go from one world to another. However, by staying connected, they never leave completely, and thus reside in both.

Virtual media as a means of transport

The medium Cronenberg uses to move his characters - a video game - is rarely addressed in research on mobility: scientific literature rarely, if ever, considers this medium. Moreover, generally speaking, the objects of information and communication technologies that most interest researchers (mobile telephones, computer technology, the Internet, etc.) do not always appear as such — that is, as direct tools of and supports for mobility. In many cases however, they are clear and identifiable, though their role remains marginal. By using a video game as a support for mobility, the film proposes a return to the concept of mobility itself, which in other fields is essentially based on the use of different modes of transportation, thus sometimes isolating this variable too much.

Comparing two worlds: the real world vs. the virtual world

While these two worlds oppose one another, they also intermingle, as demonstrated by the group of participants directly connected to the virtual game. The war that takes place between supporters of this virtuality and those who object to a virtual world defined by technological determinism allows us to glimpse a critique of the important shift our societies are making toward virtualization. This same critique can notably be found when one realizes that eXistenZ participants’ bodies at all times remain connected to physical reality via pods that resemble umbilical cords and foetuses, preventing the former from becoming disconnected from reality.

The transition from heavy modernity to liquid modernity

Other ingredients appear in an original way in this work. One of the most obvious is the reference to a modernity that is no longer heavy (like other forms of art as well as more classic sociology), but rather liquid. In liquid modernity - as conceived by Bauman - borders shift or evaporate altogether, and movement accelerates to the point of annihilating time. Nevertheless, the fact that we often find one conception or the other, depending on the context and the fact that the two conceptions tend to ignore or oppose one another, reflects a gap between so-called post modern scientific literature. This is based on, among other things 1) the advent of information and communication technologies and the weakening of spatial dimensions and 2) territories as they are really experienced, lived and traveled, where we still observe the presence and anchoring of physical and social boundaries. In fact, many artists have begun to reconcile these theoretical approaches by showing that, in many instances, both are relevant simultaneously without being mutually exclusive.

How the work informs research: a growing inability to live in the “real” world?

eXistenZ addresses issues that are dear to mobility research, especially those related to information and communication technology and virtual mobility. By doing so in this unprecedented way, allowing us to immerse ourselves in an environment that compares virtual reality and the physical world, the film proposes an analysis not only of concepts from the social sciences from an original perspective, but even succeeds in introducing ideas that the latter has not yet (or is just now) exploring. For instance, the film suggests the possible inability to live in what we might call the “real” world, thus leading us to question our own relationship to the body when it comes to mobility. This observation could inspire research on motricity, to name only one. 

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