Virus Meadow

HD video, 16:55, 2022

 

In Virus Meadow, we follow the turbulent evolution of a shapeshifting entity or organism as it suddenly emerges from the depths of a frozen lake. Born in a burst of light beneath the ice—like a pathogen caught for millennia in the permafrost, or a viral strain spontaneously spawning at a wet market—it grows through indiscriminate absorption, feeding on everything it encounters—plants, objects, memories—changing its form after each meal, sprouting new limbs and organs. It begins as something resembling a flickering Will-o-the-Wisp, but after consuming the forest mulch quickly morphs into a sort of Green Man of rot, lichen and root, before merging with the left-over paraphernalia of an abandoned campsite, shaping itself into a automata-like golem.

This creature is neither "good" nor "evil"—it simply exists, adapting to and consuming its surroundings, mirroring a world where myt, nature and capital collide. Its transformations echo folk horror and ecological dread, as it moves through a desolate terrain shaped by forgotten rituals and humanity's leftovers. Eventually, it re-emerges in quasi-human form, part flesh, part machine, like a mindless Pinocchio conjured without purpose.

In the film’s final act, guided by a similarly mutating and morphing soundscape—a hummadruz in the air that never quite resolves—the creature stumbles into a rural rave, a modern ritual pulsing with gabber trance and dread. It is here that its cycle completes. The rave, together with all its euphoria and abandon, is consumed and folded into the same mysterious energy that birthed it, not destruction, but transformation. Flesh becomes flame, and then something else entirely—something unknowable and viral.

 

Direction, Animation, Story, Editing

Rustan Söderling

 

Music and Sound Design
Alban Schelbert