Step 4. PROFIT

PROFIT is a film made through an experimental collaborative process; thirteen artists, including two duos, contributed snippets of still image, moving image, and text, which was subsequently parsed through various latent diffusion models, large language models, TTS models, and edited together. The result is an exquisite corpse of short segments connected to one another in their experimental origin and their meditation on the theme of profit.

Amanda was driving a 2009 Honda Civic. The XL-SR model, with the 160 watt 4-speaker stereo system and a sunroof. Gasoline Alley on-repeat in the CD player, because she was enthralled, a word I don’t use lightly—and which, to be frankly honest with you, I’m only using after I looked up ‘beguile’ in my thesaurus, wanting to avoid sounding like an absolute twat—by his coconut hair. When asked about the actual music, she’d shrug vacantly, which bothered me to extremes, since the cd jacket depicted some distant vagabond lying on the ground, half-perched up against a light pole in a mews not far from Gloucester Road station. The day before she left, she’d bought this god-god-awful Italian t-shirt with a brand name all-over the front and two little cherubs floating above it. On Amanda it looked cute, but honestly, anything looked cute on Amanda, who through her weathered and leathery skin—evident of years of sunbathing on yachts in the Mediterranean, and highlighting her “lapsed expiry,” as she’d surely say—still gleamed with the kind of deeply solipsistic yet shallowly physique-focused self-adoration onset by years of male-gazing and camera flashing that only a luxury fashion model would experience. Now I was sitting in the back of her car, with my hands grasping the driver’s seat, seatbelt fully extended and balancing on the edge of the cushion, my neck craned up to get the best look possible out that sunroof that was too-damn far in the front—hardly comfortable, but obviously this whole contortion pavlova doesn’t bother a child one bit. Blue sky is what I’d hope for, and that day blue sky’s what I got—absolute peak blue, dotted with clouds. When we got out of the city, this Simpsons-esque visual was frequently disrupted by the Spring canopies, light flashing aggressively in my eyes, now elegantly protected by Amanda’s Whistle 130s—the very same model Brad Pitt wore in Ocean’s Eleven, albeit a different colour-finish—which she had somehow managed to mount on my face whilst simultaneously speeding across countryside roads as if she were racing to find a speedtrap or a deadly accident—whichever came first. In true Amanda spirit, barely a word was being said. She ejected the Rod Stewart malcreation and swapped it with “something faster,” firmly believing it would shift the Honda into a new fantastical gear, levelling up her already maxed-out overtaking game. There was in the air a sense of annoyance, for Amanda had truly hoped to be driving her ex-husband’s candy-red sports car—like the tee, also of Italian make—but as she invariably misplaced it on others’ rear bumpers, it was once again in the garage. The Civic, being rather civil, didn’t quite have the means required to get someone like Amanda around the way someone like Amanda intends to get around. Nevertheless, without adopting my mother’s honk-happy driving style, she still found a plethora of tricks to make her presence on the tarmac unforgettable for all involved, bouncing between the hedges and trees and whatnot, in what was absolutely not an armoured zorb.

My sky obsession had me unfazed by the danger she posed. Besides, my wellbeing was the last thing on my mind—I was glad enough to be out of the city and now the damned fast-CD had also finally spun out and the radio blasted generic pop-radio over the 160 watt 4-speaker stereo system, I was in my damn-damn-damn element. 2010 was a damn-peak year for generic pop-radio-listening and I was damn-good at listening to it too. We crossed over into Germany just after leaving the Vosges du Nord, and I shrieked like-a-jee-seex in an unbearable Walonian-American accent as we finally pulled into the Erbprinz. Today ‘twas a good sky: near-clear blue. Damn-near-clear, damn-nice-blue. Amanda nodded. What a damn-good sky.