The legendary filmmaker’s latest project is a minute-long study in mortality, available to buy as an NFT.
Are you a fan of buying things that don’t really exist? If so, you might be interested in the auction for the NFT of the new short art project The Death of David Cronenberg.
NFTs are – depending on your point of view – either a new way of defining our ideas of ownership and what that means or simply a glorious scam by digital snake oil salesmen, but either way, they are the exciting new way for people with more money than sense to speculate to accumulate – and I guess if you can turn your investment around and resell before everyone realises that the King is, in fact, naked, then good luck to you. If NFTs encourage the creation of new art that remains available to all while still allowing single ownership, then I guess we’re all for it and if you are a creative, then by all means climb onto this particular bandwagon while you can. It’s increasingly hard for many non-celebrity artists, writers and other creatives to make money these days, so every hole’s a goal in that sense.
If you are an NFT buyer, then you might be interested in The Death of David Cronenberg, a new minute-long film from the legendary director and his daughter Caitlin. If we strip away the artifice of the NFT world and look at this on its own merits, this is a powerful and haunting meditation on death by a 78-year-old filmmaker bravely confronting his own mortality. It’s also, you’ll be glad to hear, very Cronenberg.
You can watch the whole film at the SuperRare auction site, at least until the auction is completed – and the more cynical amongst you might well be able to figure out a way of being able to carry on doing so afterwards if you know what I mean.
You can watch the film and place your bids here.
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A thrill that there’s some new dave – I’m still not clear what an NFT is though. It’s nice enough – I watched it through three times without realising (a minute flies by when you’re watching one of your favourite directors hug his own corpse), thinking something different was going to happen and the repetition was part of it. It’s a bit like the end of 2OO1 A Space Odyssey (ironic – since Cronenberg reportedly held Kubrick’s films in disdain). I will buy you a pint, in person, and I hope you will humour me / allow me to expound upon my theory that this souped-up home movie fragment (and filmmaker-legacy franchise building first step), and 2OO1’s galactic climax belong to the same genre as Shelley’s Frankenstein – of an onanistic, narcissistic auto-reproduction, male reproduction without women. Those freaks for order want to take all the fun out of everything. Well, I think I’ve stretched my luck enough – the Reprobate is Tops!