CSM’s Fashion Communication Students Tackle Tech Obsession Through Film

What happens when a generation raised on screens turns the camera back on itself? At Central Saint Martins’ BA Fashion Communication: Image & Promotion mid-year showcase, students dissected the techno-anxieties, digital rituals, and modern obsessions shaping contemporary life—all through film. The result? A screening that was both deeply self-aware and hilariously cutting, with an undercurrent of something even rarer in the digital age: genuine human connection.

The showcase featured films from all years of the course, offering a snapshot of a student body grappling with the world as it is—messy, hyperconnected, and impossible to log off from. The clear theme? Digital reality as both a trap and a coping mechanism.

Conspiracy Blizzard, a film by Vivian Liu, Sum Liu, Selina Tse, Anju Kusamoto Rigby, Vladyslava Kyiak, and Tanvi Hoffmann, perfectly captured the oversaturation of online information and the dizzying speed at which it evolves—interpreted, misinterpreted, and ultimately twisted into the unhinged. Similarly, In Case It’s Important by Gustas Butkus offered a first-person account of our increasingly digital existence, where screens dictate our relationships, perceptions, and even memories. Hilarious, biting, and eerily accurate, these films present a sharp critique of how the internet warps reality in real-time.

The internet's influence on our collective psyche was cleverly mapped out in Shannon Lu’s Antihardcore where harmless online media morphs into fuel for radicalisation. The film begins playfully, with a familiar, almost nostalgic stream of recognisable memes. But as the sequence unfolds, the tone shifts—the humour gives way to something more unsettling, exposing the underlying aggression embedded in these digital spaces. What starts as ironic, absurd, and seemingly harmless becomes a stark examination of extremist rhetoric, and the slow creep of ideology disguised as culture.

And yet, despite the shared sense of digital exhaustion, the films on display also captured our collective yearning for real connection. I Care, by Olivia Oben, drew on her personal relationship with Alona Delaguardia—an 'all-around' (a Filipino term for domestic workers with multiple responsibilities). The film explored themes of labour, hospitality, and empathy, spotlighting the emotional complexities of this often-overlooked work. Still, at the core of the film is the role digital technology plays in enabling connection. Through FaceTime calls and digital exchanges, Oben illustrates how modern technologies bridge geographical and emotional distances.

Other familiar themes that emerged throughout the night were the frustrations and anxieties that pervade the fashion industry. Films like Fashion Anonymous by Harry Lunnon, Thea Levine, Isabelle Martin, Joe Luciano, Italia Minchella, and INTRN by Zacharie Lewertoff, Nimie Li, Shannon Lu, Katie Mayo tackled these concerns head-on, offering sharp critiques of industry standards, fleeting trends, and the performance of identity. But perhaps none captured the deeply unsettling anxiety surrounding beauty quite as strikingly as Dot to Doom by Jessica Liao.

The surreal fashion film delves into the obsession with self-transformation, beauty, and fate. In it, a woman embarks on a bizarre ritual of adding moles to her body, using a mysterious book as her guide. What begins as a quest for self-improvement and a better future soon spirals into chaos, as the act of self-modification becomes a descent into madness. While it riffed on retro imagery, Dot to Doom was an all too recognisable reminder of the dangerous path that self-obsession can take—a haunting allegory for the anxiety-driven culture of beauty in the fashion industry today. A message that feels particularly apt in today's hyper-fixated beauty culture, driven by social media standards.

The night was defined by wit—sharp, ironic, and distinctly Gen Z. This is a generation that has watched the world burn via push notification and knows how to laugh through the existential dread. They understand the absurdity of modern life—how we juggle aspirational aesthetics and apocalyptic headlines, how our screens bombard us with calls to self-improve while the economy crumbles around us.

It’s easy to dismiss tech obsession as inevitable, or worse, aestheticise it into another glossy commercial fantasy. But the students at CSM aren’t buying into that. Instead, they’re holding a mirror up to our collective digital delirium—and reminding us that behind every screen is a human, desperate to connect.