Album art provided for Montreal-based electronic producer Sayveeyun

“We are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it’s much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.” —Slavoj Žižek, Mapping Ideology At best, the film is an emotional salve for those activists and climate scientists experiencing frustration at government inaction on climate change. For others who are already familiar with this inglorious trend, McKay preaches to the choir without offering any viable road to salvation. Though it is said the function of satire is not to offer solutions, I’m doubtful McKay is able to see any from the vantage point of his 70-acre estate.

Longueuil, Québec. Early 2000s. I am standing outside of a Blockbuster store with my immigrant father. I must be around nine or ten years old. We are waiting for my mother who is inside renting a movie. As we stand patiently, a mother and her child walk past, hand in hand. The child catches a glimpse of my father. His eyes widen. He starts tugging at his mother’s sleeves excitedly, pointing straight at my dad. The boy is starstruck. “Mom, look! It’s Jackie Chan!” Of course, the child was enthralled that Hong Kong director, martial artist, and singer Jackie Chan was in Longueuil, waiting with his son outside of a video rental store. He had no clue that my father was actually born in Tibet and couldn’t speak a lick of Cantonese. The child’s mother wasn’t aware of the precise scale of her son’s errors but she knew enough to be sure that my father was not in fact Jackie Chan, and was embarrassed accordingly.

I drive to a car wash near me in little italy. I think the owners are Iranian. None of the garage doors are motorized. They were pulling them open and closed with bare hands on steel chains in the middle of winter.

Photography for The Breach. Canon 6D at the Amazon facility in Lasalle.

Recent polling shows that more than ever, Canadians cite housing affordability as one of their top election issues—especially young Canadians. This should come as no surprise: years of political inaction has led us to a desperate housing emergency in which speculators and developers reap massive profits, while working class Canadians pay record amounts of their income just to have a roof over their heads.

As climate breakdown and the Anthropocene progress into increasingly dire territory, more and more artists and filmmakers are endeavouring to capture the anxiety driven by a warming world. Caught up in this anticipatory energy is a notable rise in pagan practices and pagan-inflected art that could be connected to these growing concerns, reflecting a culture terrified by the biblical climate events of the near-future. This collective malaise can be seen in the horror genre across mediums.

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