Fabio Deronzier
Vivre sous la menace des volcans

This film comes on the heels of a video made in 2020 entitled "On va tout péter ma vieille" (We're going to blow everything up, granny), which featured a dozen Youtube video extracts of young armed protagonists threatening viewers of their videos without any motive.

The young protagonists seem to deliver vague messages, covered with insinuations of vendetta: they display weapons, ideas, plans of attack in front of their artillery, which gradually becomes real and threatening. Preparations were sketchy and hurried.

The escalation of provocations gradually stains the hands of these small, interconnected militias with blood, as they meet, associate, help and stimulate each other through these appeals to the horror of being the instigator of a common downfall.

From dummy weapons to primary constructions, the digitally reunited team grows stronger, more self-confident and more determined, until it finally acts. Isolated act, totalitarian or revolutionary act against an adult regime, against the sacred authority of grown-ups, against a superior power that oppresses them, that doesn't listen to them because they're children. Children? Children of the nation, elements of the future, guided by those in the know: their parents.

These young children, like the facecam videos of terrorist propaganda, show a face that is intimate and unreasonable, sincere and disarming. Most of the time locked away in their bedrooms, in the garden during their parents' working hours, in the garage, out of sight. There's no sign of an adult disturbing their statements and exchanges. They are alone because they feel abandoned. So they deliver their stories or threats to the world through the giant Youtube, to create together the illusion of a community, a clan. The Bud Club. Buds because they ensure the growth and branching of stems, they are the engine of the plant and without them... no forest! No forest, no society, no future, no continuity, no downfall, without them everything stops. Knowing their future and predefined roles, they are the only ones who can organize the fall and recreate their new forest. The tutorials available on the Internet offer them an infinite catalog of horrors. They can build their weapons, organize their explosions, their fires, their war, their revenge.

As if it were already too late to act, we observe a build-up of hatred, a motivation to act, then the invisible, unnamed, short, suspicious explosion. Then the party. Success soon regretted, redemption through forgiveness and suicide. On the emotional level of children, revolutionary projects move very quickly. The need to satisfy these games that become reality arrives immediately without anyone being able to speak. The fatal reality of youthful error falls squarely on these children's heads. Always in front of their telephone and living-room webcam lenses, these young people kill themselves, after having accomplished together the fight of a short life. Baby gang from Naples, these budding gangs have lived digitally to leave us this assemblage of videos collected on Youtube. Full of sincerity, totally self-sufficient and transparent, they have, in their eyes, won everything after crossing out with a red line the big guys who destroyed their future. There is no future, only IMMEDIATE renewal or NOTHING ELSE.

They had nothing to lose and took the plunge, solidarity among the desperate. The little ones blew it.

Photo by Ira Agasaryan
© Artist and Spas Setun, Moscow