• For those of you who stayed this long, who gave money to this disembodied voice on the internet…I would like to thank you. Every penny give gave me something I didn’t have in my old life…time. You gave me time to write, to edit, to practice and perform. I have no formal school or training, but you allowed me to take droplets of your time and do the best I can with what I could get. Thank you for seeing the potential in me. Now, here we go:

//It’s been a long road. 11 years ago I stepped into my first acting class ever; all because I had a stuttering problem.//
.
Now…well, read for yourself:
.
” I hope all is well at your end.

Em Assumes Death is having its last days up at Kunsthal Charlottenborg and I wanted to share the private web version of film with you – a film in which, without me fully understanding it, your character and voice probably became the actual main character.

The response to the film has been really overwhelming, in the positive sense, and it’s been amazing to see the reactions and reflections that the film’s been generating. Mostly from younger people, with a strong sense of identification and fascination, but also from the older audience (some times in a despair of what they’ve left us in 🙂 ).

Right now, I’m looking to finish up the last bits of editing and post-production before sending the film to film festivals beginning late summer, in parallel with trying to find a producer for the last steps and a distributor for festivals. Again, I might contact you if it turns out that we have to re-record something.”
.
//See you this summer, World. It’s a pleasure to meet you…finally.//

DESCRIPTION (from exhibition catalogue): 

Jacob Schill’s Em Assumes Death is an experimental short film about a near-death experience and the Law of Assumption (LoA), a popular belief amongst online communities that everything one assumes to be true must ultimately manifest into reality. LoA is a kind of spirituality of the dispossessed, lost in the noise of hyper-connectivity and late modern capitalism. 

The film, which sees the 18-year-old Em drowning in a river after a failed attempt to confront his fear of water, assumes the form of an unusual near-death experience. Em does not see deceased relatives or his life flash back in review. Instead, he meets manifestation coach TammyTransforms and the content and creators of his own internet history who for months had advised him on how to level up in life, align with his desires, and assume his higher self. 

Schill actualizes, through a swirling montage of found footage, 3D animation, sequences of live action and a draw to overwhelm, the mounting pressures on young adults to self-realize in a world that has become increasingly disenchanted. Schill’s film arrives as symptoms of depression are skyrocketing, life is atomized, and planet-wide destruction spirals according to market interest, extractivism and inequality. An impending sense of catastrophe and collapse looms strong over us. And yet, ideals of discovering one’s hidden potential are flourishing. Feelings of self-sufficiency and limitlessness promulgate at will. Desires have never before been so smoothly delivered as with smartphones and social media. Contemporary life has become a walking addiction to a waking nightmare whose only escape might be, in the end, to assume death.