Emma Gioia Enzi

Many of us know that feeling of numbness and despair when everything seems so far beyond our control that it becomes hard to believe our individual actions could make a difference. When assuming that the future is already decided, we begin to become passive bystanders. Yet, oftentimes, the very structures that contribute to the sensation of societal fragmentation, isolation, and self-doubt were consciously shaped by systems and their protagonists – history has shown that a hopeless society is easier to control and far less likely to threaten the ruling elite. The thesis and collective video work (Learn)ed (Hope)lessness relates the sensation of numbness with central contemporary questions around political action and agency: how to find our way back to our ability to imagine and shape a different present and future? How to get from "It won't change anything anyway" to "Let's just begin"? In doing so, the short film demonstrates how narrative can help us move from paralysis to participation, allowing us to begin narrating a different world into being.