“XXXSPACE” [2025]

A film by THE-ICONOMIST
20m25s, color, sound

XXXSpace is an essay film that emerges from the sensory and symbolic collapse of our time. Set in a dystopian—yet real—context where three simultaneous wars shape the global imaginary, the film presents an iconographic collection of images gathered since 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. Since then, missiles, explosions, and ballistic diagrams have become part of the global visual landscape, composing a new grammar of war spectacle. The title, XXXSpace, alludes both to the world of pornography and to the aerospace ambitions of lunatic billionaires, colliding the phallic imaginary of war with that of space conquest. The images are accompanied by a technical, almost clinical voiceover that obsessively details the functioning of each missile, rocket, and propulsion system—their ranges, weights, and velocities. This neutral, impersonal narration stands in stark contrast to the explicit violence of the images, making the banalization of weaponry as visual spectacle even more disturbing. [watch]

“THE WORLD AS A STAGE” [2024]

A film by THE-ICONOMIST
11m06s, color, sound

This film is based on images from public security cameras. Evoking William Shakespeare‘s famous phrase, the title suggests that everyday life is constantly under observation, turning us all into actors who play our parts in front of an invisible audience. Just as in the poem “All the World’s a Stage”, where each person plays their part in the great play of life, modern surveillance puts us on a global stage, where our every move is recorded and monitored. This film explores this dynamic, revealing how the constant presence of cameras alters our perception of privacy and behavior. This film is an extension of #issue5 of THE ICONOMIST released in July conceived as a multi-channel digital installation, in which four cameras in different locations are observed simultaneously, with the commentary coming from this control room. “The World as a Stage” also features voiceover fragments of Shakespeare’s poem, the text that opens the magazine issue and a collection of headlines from news websites forming a poem about digital everyday life. [watch]