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My Pineal Biography of COVID’s Trepanation

Hashim Effendi

2021

My Pineal Biography of COVID’s Trepanation is a film and illustration series that depicts the stress and changes experienced during isolation. Before the pandemic began, it was common for us to dream up our ideal lifestyles, with media as a primary influence. Effendi compares the media to sentinels in The Matrix, watching and punishing humans. But as the gravity of COVID-19 began to bear down on the world, so too did we begin to recoil from our manicured, self-indulgent, and media-fueled fantasies. Socio-political events have become most people’s primary focus, and the stresses that stem from these events are affecting us to various extents based on our privilege. Fortunately, these situations have broken us out of a cycle of submission. We have evolved into a more progressive population, eager to understand the machinations of this tangled economic and political web.

Artist Bio

I am a senior who is majoring in psychology and mathematics. I have an interest in simulation based technologies and I look forward to the future of games where narratives are replaced to satiate a desire for idleness. One of my favorite artists Anne Mie Van Kerchoven has a made alot of pieces with the idea that our digital presence, while being self obsessed; is causing a silent revolution where people are expressing their ineffability. The economy is diversifying through peer to peer economic mediums like blockchain and allowing people to market their own unique comparative advantages instead of being worker bees. This change in our economic structure will affect media too. People no longer want to be directed, they want their experiences to be uniquely ambient to their presence.

IG: @16heffendi