Tozak Filming

If artists really wanted to, we could bring about a collective creative revolution – a modern renaissance – that completely flips the state of art and media upside down and creates a culture where art thrives and transcends beyond the foggy, brainrotten, noisy mold it’s currently trapped in.

Right now the state of the online world – social media – that hosts an overwhelming majority of the art and media we consume is at an all time low in terms of being a healthy environment for creative communication. At times it feels like a self regurgitating system that’s eating up its own throw up and spitting it back in our faces as we surf the internet endlessly. Especially with the exponential rise of AI content/slop that’s becoming a bigger role in how content is manufactured, this stale system is feeling more spiritually exhausted with each passing day. This is a dead mold that calls for a revolution.

I speak on this not as someone who’s heavily studied up on history and can analyze certain movements and waves within societies that predict specific uprisings and historical events (at least not yet – this is something I am very interested in reading up on because there’s always lessons to learn in history especially for something like a possible creative renaissance in the modern age) but I speak from the heart. I speak on my intuitive feelings about how I’m seeing the world right now and what feels like would naturally occur due to the state of things.

What I do know is that revolutions and uprisings happen for a reason. There’s a mold that traps the human spirit in a confined state, but this suffocation can only happen for so long until the spirit needs to fight back and survive. In the talks of a modern creative revolution, that spirit is the art, and the suffocation is the foggy, noisy state of the internet and profit driven algorithms (art’s major platform).

In order for things to change, creators and artists would need to change the ways in which they approach their art and how we use the systems around us to deliver our work to the world. To be blunt – we have to make it happen.

We have to decide for ourselves what we want to make, how we want to make it, and how we want to deliver it.

A revival of art happens from artists creating from a different place than the one that’s producing this current sea of slop. We cannot simply take what the world is giving us. If we continue to create under the principles and behaviors of modern online culture, then we will simply continue to create the same type of content that’s making up this stale, soulless culture. We have to do something differently. Nothing changes if nothing changes. It’s just physics.

We have to say “No” to Industry, Algorithms, Noise, Obsessing on Views

We have to say “Yes” to Truth, Inspiration, Beauty, Clarity, Spiritual Alignment 

I believe the level of depth at which an artist connects with themselves and their inner creative spirit is the level of depth that will be baked into the work itself. It doesn’t necessarily mean everyone will connect with that work equally, or even at all, but the spirit has been planted in the work and those who are meant to emotionally resonate with it will. However, if art is made from a superficial, transactional, or soulless place in the creator, then that work won’t have the same possibility to reach emotional depths with viewers and consumers. Just look at ads, commercials, or anything else that tries to fight for our attention to exploit us. These aren’t things we seek out for ourselves. These are things that try to force themselves into our eyesight to seek us. This is why we skip youtube ads and get bored during commercial breaks.

And so because the place from which the creator creates from has a foundational role to whether or not that work can spiritually reach people, I think the reason we feel so disconnected when we consume streams of content online is that all of this media is being manufactured from a place of transactional desire. It’s not a culture that’s trying to make art and meaningfully connect with others. It’s a culture that’s spewing out media to grab our eyes and exploit our time, attention, and money.

This culture being the environment, host, and platform for most of our art to be consumed has a huge effect on the art itself and how it’s experienced by viewers. And we’re really starting to see, especially in the past couple of years, how this is killing our ability to connect – to connect with the art, with each other, with ourselves, with our emotions.

And so this is the mold – this is the spiritual suffocation of our art and ourselves. And it’s the mold that must be broken out of.

So how does the breakthrough happen?

Once again, it really comes down to artists and creators collectively deciding to take our destiny into our own hands and create in a way that’ s different than our modern digital culture encourages us to produce. 

If I’m repeating myself throughout this writing, it’s only because I want these points to be very clear – the state of art and media is largely because of the type of media that’s being produced in the first place, which depends upon the intention from the creators. And so if we want the state of art to change, then we have to change the place that we create from.

Now, before I go into what I feel creating from an authentic place with your work looks like, I want to briefly explore another integral part of this current system/state of art – which is the platform itself.

Social media as a platform for art, again, is inherently intoxicating. Neither do our relationship with social media nor the intentions behind the massive onslaughts of content serve the higher good of art. And so it’s already like climbing an uphill battle when it comes to creating art online and trying to get that art consumed in a healthy way by others.

However even this part can be, and should be, reimagined by artists as part of a collective creative revolution. Allow me to dive into a specific example – cinema. The art being movies, and the platform being the thing that hosts/distributes the movies (theater, streaming, social media, etc.)

I’m a screenwriter and filmmaker, and so I have many aspirations to create films and get them in front of audiences, specifically on the big screen. And when it comes to being a filmmaker in the modern age, there’s many factors that come to mind when figuring out how to navigate one’s path. We think about film festivals, making connections, networking, finding a producer, working for studios, getting movies on streaming, and other things that are largely connected to the movie industry that exists today. But the truth is, and I think I can speak for most filmmakers who want to succeed in their film journeys today, we are tired of the system (like I’m sure so many other people are with their own respective fields). Not only is this ladder filmmakers are being shown they have to climb in order to succeed an unexciting ladder that implies years of jaded navigation, making relationships in transactional manners, and working under projects that don’t excite the soul but rather we hope would “advance our career”, but this ladder leads to something we question is even worth climbing. 

Why climb up through an industry that’s not even serving movies in a rightful way?

One of the big factors of the current movie industry that’s doing cinema injustice is streaming. The rise of streaming movies at home over the past few years speaks to a way in which modern transactional culture will optimize a form of art for profit but kill the art itself. Streaming services make it easier for people to watch tons and tons of movies without leaving the house, but now you lose the experience of going to a theater to watch a movie. More is less. You get more movies, but you get less experience. 

A platform has been manufactured for transactional purposes, but it doesn’t serve the art, it serves profit. And so if filmmakers want to change the state of the platform for movies, then we have to change something about the way in which we engage with movies, making movies, and participating in the system. We have to change something if we want to see change. An example of this today would be the buzz around the films Obsession and Backrooms – two horror films that came out this year which were made by young filmmakers who started off making films online. Curry Barker’s Obsession and Kane Parson’s Backrooms have both been doing insane numbers at the box office, bringing Gen Z out to the theaters. This sparks more hope into the scene of cinema – showing that people, YOUNG PEOPLE, will come out to see movies at theaters. But the thing is, we need a reason to come out. These two films are original stories, not the type of movies that studios would usually take risks on producing. But the truth is, people are spiritually starving for this type of cinema – fresh original visions, new stories told by filmmakers who are willing to create new films. 

It took for these filmmakers to step outside of the dominant Hollywood system of producing slop, sequels, and franchises, and instead make something original which in turn has brought about a spark and passion to the scene of cinema. These movies didn’t just go straight to streaming. They brought out young audiences to come to theaters to watch movies on the big screen – where movies belong and deserve to be seen. 

The platform that serves the higher good for movies is the theater experience. And I’m sure I can also speak for most filmmakers today when I say I don’t want to just settle for my films to be on streaming services. I want my films to be experienced the way they should be, by audiences together in theaters. This platform doesn’t have to continue to die like it has been the past few years. It can be revitalized like what we’re seeing with Obsession and Backrooms, but only if artists are willing to do something different.

And so I bring up all of this with movies to communicate the point that artists should think about the platform when it comes to creating your art and releasing it out into the world. Social media is the main thing that connects us when it comes to exchanging art, but art doesn’t have to stay there. We can take it offline. And if the art does stay in the digital world, then we can still reimagine ways in which we host our art online. It doesn’t need to look like the same noisy system that exists today.

If you’re a musical artist, don’t feel like you just need to pump out songs on streaming platforms. Explore how you can bring your music out into the physical world. If you feel that the digital culture doesn’t serve your art in the ways you feel it should be served, then imagine differently. The world needs us artists and visionaries to imagine something different – that’s the only way things will change. 

Alright, with that explored, let’s come back to the idea of creating from a place that’s real…

We’re being brought up and living in this digital technological age where everything’s fast, noisy, and spiritually murky. So how do we create something real? How do we create art that prioritizes depth in a culture that produces so much width?

I believe it comes down to creating space between you and the culture that seeks to force you into its grasp.

At this point, maybe decreasing screen time and unplugging has become a taboo or a cliche, but even if that’s the case, it still remains integral to maintaining some connection with your soul and with reality itself.

You need to find a way to connect with your creative craft in a manner that makes you feel alive. The process of creating your art should feel joyful and fulfilling. That doesn’t mean it won’t be hard, because difficulty will always be a part of the journey and of growing as a creator, but the creation itself should satisfy your soul. Again, creating from a soulless place will make soulless work. So you ought to create art from a place that feels energetic, alive, and natural.

I like to think about it this way – what is my nature? What is the thing that naturally wants to arise out of me right now? What am I being called to create? Imagine watching a river flow, or a cloud roll by, or a hawk flying in the sky, or anything in the world that seems natural. Now imagine that in yourself. Imagine what it would look like if you were to follow your nature. The thing that wants to come out of you – the story, the song, the film, the idea, the piece – it may not be something you can readily validate according to external references or sources. If it’s new, then it’s not out there for you to see… at least not yet. You must bring it into this world. This may be a hard thing to do because our modern digital culture encourages us to constantly reference it – to check it, to keep up, to look, to be attached. But we don’t need the pixels it sends our way. All we have to do is get in touch with ourselves, with our hearts, and sense which way this inner river wants to naturally flow. Don’t allow it to be suffocated by modern culture. 

Do not obsess over current trends, algorithms, or industry standards, because these are the things modern culture wants you to feed – itself. If we want culture to change, we have to change it. We have to set the culture, not merely reflect it without conscious participation and will. Instead of feeding the system, we must feed our souls. 

This is what artists must do if we want to birth a new age of art that speaks for truth and represents what we’re all actually feeling about the world. Not just bundled up content that’s trying to get some views online, but real art that strives to do something deeper and more genuine.

The final note I want to leave on is this – Artists, we must reimagine our paths.

Let’s not just settle for the way things are. They don’t need to stay this way. We have the power to change it. We must wonder how we can consciously and spiritually set the culture, not just take it and give the same back. 

In some ways, it feels like we need a hard reset. And right now maybe it’s mostly just an idea we’re all grappling with in our heads, but we have the power to also step up and put it into action. There’s a reason we’re feeling this misalignment with modern online culture. We should do something about that feeling.

Art doesn’t have to die. Art has so much more to give and become. It can blossom into the very thing the world needs right now. The tide can shift, we can make it shift. An extreme mold and soulless state of culture can propel us into an artistic revolution that launches artists and art to the other side of the spectrum, where creative expression grows to levels beyond what we could imagine. But it’s on the other side of stepping outside of the system and forging something different. Let’s do our part to reimagine what all of this could look like. Let’s pave the way for a new Renaissance.