From opioids to the Anthropocene: a video project on addiction as the substantial mode of our existence
A trilogy, 2017-2021
Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann’s video practice reveals the complex web of interrelations that underpin individual addiction, situating it the context of overlapping systems—political, material, industrial. In doing so, they draw parallels between conditions of substance dependencies, such as the contemporary US opioid crisis, and our wider planetary condition. The three lectures that comprise the trilogy are included below, followed by a “process sketch,” in which the artists describe the methodology they employed to create the work.
This project is called Hopium Economy because economic growth is an assumption central to our political and economic systems. It is the mechanism relied upon for improving life on Earth for humans based on the belief that there is an escape from the finitude of resources. The “hopium economy” is the endless, unstoppable, and inexhaustible dream of becoming, of winning.
The work focuses on substance dependency and/or addiction and all three lectures of the trilogy consist of conducted interviews with farmers, addicts, meth cooks, scientists, historians, dealers and distributors, SWAT team members, law enforcement agents such as those from the DEA, and police men and women from undercover cover operations, to name just a few. The project challenges the meaning of the term “addiction” in order to conceive it beyond the conventional definition of traditional drugs and consider substance abuse as the possible site of our disastrous and abusive relationship to the planet.
We suggest that substance dependency and/or addiction is not only a metaphor, but the very engine constituting our failure to respond to the demands for changes in our time. Climate change is not simply an unintended byproduct of colonial history, but an ongoing act of imperial violence. A violence set off by the rabid desire of Western societies for goods, things, objects, next to mind-altering substances.