We are EARTHLINGS
“Tonight on Earthlings News Daily, the world is burning.”
A familiar sentence from a familiar authority landing like fact, presented as a familiar feeling. The device that sells catastrophe sells comfort in the same breath. The one undeniable truth in a post-truth society, the voice that narrates collapse narrates belonging.
Truth for sale
What is true when format, channel, and delivery have become faith? The broadcast of purpose is appropriated as a consumer engagement mechanism, no different than the hollow promise of a toll-free hotline or the “As Seen on TV” infomercials of the ’90s. The rhetoric of a “limited release” acts to deliver logical appeal through the value sermon of economic scarcity. The system is designed to be intentionally simple and stands on the shoulders of Edward Bernays work on Propoganda: the media tells us who we are through messaging distributed at muzzle velocity. The everywhere, all the time, all at once repetition of rhetorical devices across an omnichannel flood the zone strategy manufactures an undeniable cultural ethos. Action is replaced by waiting and receiving, commerce offers the emotional appeal, “transformation,” where our identity becomes a dictation of the mechanisms we consent to engage with.
Short Film - Single-channel video
After buying into a global self-actualization scheme, four Earthlings pursue a hidden hotline that promises awakening but risks exposing their new belief system as a scam.
In a near-present world where self-actualization is marketed through infomercials and toll-free hotlines. A global movement known as We Are Earthlings sells membership uniforms and access to a members-only hotline that claims to guide participants toward personal awakening. Membership requires participation and compliance with automated customer service systems that force members to question their identity and, potentially, the system's validity.
DIRECTOR
River Davis
SCREENWRITER
River Davis
PRODUCERS
River Davis, Christine Shin, S.Ryan O’Connor
STARRING
Silvia Maria Schwarz, Jonas Kirsch, Blue Moon (Christine Shin), Mikey Woodbridge, S.Ryan O’Connor
GENRE
Dark Comedy, Sci-Fi
COUNTRIES OR PRODUCTION
Germany
LANGUAGE
English (Subtitles Available)
RUNTIME
3 Minutes, 47 Seconds
SHOOT FORMAT
Color · 16:9
FRAME RATE
25 FPS
Directors Statement
Growing up during peak consumerism, I always questioned why we choose to inhabit a system of infinite growth within a world of finite resources. Drawing on Edward Bernays and Noam Chomsky’s concept of Manufactured Consent, I began to see reality as veiled in consumer agendas designed solely to engage individuals as customers, making it difficult to understand why we make the decisions we do. To explore this, I wanted to tell a story of “awakening” in a world controlled by consumer narratives where purpose is promised for a price. Inspired by the infomercials, tabloids, 1-800 hotlines, televangelists, and Home Shopping Networks of the 1990s, We Are Earthlings subverts current marketing tactics by using strategy itself as a medium. This integrated conceptual art piece spans film, social media, advertising, web, and print to build a world of dark humor and satire, confronting the reality of consumer capitalism and questioning whether consumption can ever truly bring purpose to the individual.
selected credits
DIRECTOR
River Davis
DOP
Justinas Milius
COMPOSER & SOUND DESIGN
Mári Mákó
SCREENWRITER
River Davis
CASTING DIRECTOR
Christine Shin
KEY MAKEUP ARTIST & HAIR STYLIST
Caterina Veronesi
PRODUCERS
River Davis, Christine Shin, S.Ryan O’Connor
EDITOR, COLORIST, SFX
River Davis
Experiential Art
Project
We Are Earthlings
Artist / Director
River Davis
Year
2025-2026
Format
Transmedia Installation
Medium
Single-channel video, serigraphs, editioned garments, offset newsprint, analog and digital ephemera, and performative e-commerce platform.
Synopsis
We Are Earthlings interrogates the commodification of identity by staging a corporate-spiritual movement that markets self-actualization. By mimicking the mechanisms of consumer propaganda, the project questions the ontological price of belonging in a post-truth media landscape.
TRUTH FOR SALE: PART 2
We Are Earthlings simulates the contemporary consumer experience, treating media not as a container for reality, but as the machine that manufactures it. The project stages a world in which self-actualization is marketed through the news, infomercials, and toll-free hotlines. Where membership requires a one-time payment in exchange for meaning, a promise close at hand but always just out of reach.
A hotline hidden in plain sight exists between destinations, between who you were and who you should become. Each member's journey acts as a metaphor for the moment of awakening, a subversion of the long-forgotten coming-of-age ritual framed now as another moment of consumption.
MEDIUMS
Single-Channel Video
e-commerce Platform
Editioned Garments
Serigraphs
Analog & Digital Ephemera
Archival Publications
TRUTH FOR SALE: Part 3
What happens when corporate capitalism clutches the means of self-actualization? In a world where everything is based on consumer engagement, the We Are Earthlings movement does not grant the answers sought by those seeking self-fulfillment; it sells questions in an overly enthusiastic tone: “Is Earth the only luxury?”, “Do Earthlings protect all Earth beings?”, “Are Earthlings worthy?”, leaving one to question the validity of the reality around them and the reality they desire to be surrounded by. The questions become nothing more than slogans wrapped in a consumer framework, without the comfort of certainty, printed and embroidered onto garments used to sell individual identity. Echoing a wider system of cultural signals, the visual language of advertising, the social logic of participation, and the seduction of merchandise as proof of one's belief system and validation of it against all other possibilities becomes the only truth. What is real and what is not becomes so distorted that our world becomes unrecognizable, devoid of clarity. The individual's journey of self-actualization becomes a blur of experiences indecipherable as fact or fiction.
The defining gesture of WE ARE EARTHLINGS is not to declare truth, but to reveal how easily it can be staged. Its structure is a diagnosis of the system we consent to: the media tells us who we are, and commerce offers us the means of transformation, while waiting replaces action. What does it cost to outsource meaning to the systems that profit from our desire to have purpose? Can our experience exist without a checkout flow?
Our global culture exists on a stage where everything is a product, offering itself as the newest self-actualization scheme where belonging is sold as “awakening” and membership arrives as a uniform, for a small one-time fee. What you see is a world built through consumerism and told through the various engagement mechanisms used to manufacture our consent. What began as a parody and critique of culture, Postmodernism, has become a mirror of culture, an existence of satire and actionless reflection as we are siphoned for our time, experience, and purpose in hope of a promise fulfilled. And as we spiral deeper into consumer capitalism, these global movements deliver headlines devoid of answers, leaving us in a state of paralyzed disenchantment, seeking purpose and truth without a compass.
Fear not, as this time it will be different. We Are Earthlings is for real; the promise of self-actualization through self-realization is actually true. It is easy to believe; you’ve seen it on TV, web, social, broadcast, print media, fashion, and through word of mouth. The movement is undeniable; everyone is doing it. For one small membership fee of $79.98, you can find the Earthlings Hotline, where you will be prompted through a journey of enlightenment. No money-back guarantee; all sales are final and self-actualization is dependent on factors beyond our control. But we can promise that after your experience, you will never be who you were before you were an Earthling.
