About the exhibition

Two screenings daily | 11am and 2pm

Comprised entirely of hundreds of film samples, Hello Dankness is a political fable that bears witness to the psychotropic spectacle of American politics from 2016 to 2021, and the mythologies and lore that took root around it. Taking the of a suburban stoner musical, the film follows a neighbourhood through these years as consensus reality disintegrates into conspiracy and other contagions.

What unfolds is a rogue retelling of history in which hotdogs debate the culture wars, trash cans preach QAnon, zombies rally for revolution, and real events are refashioned as Broadway bangers from Cats, Les Miserables, Annie, and The Phantom of the Opera.

There are songs and dancing, moments of menace and melancholy, shitposting and deep sincerity. Begun in 2019 and laboured on throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Hello Dankness is a record of the time, written from the time.

The cast of characters include Tom Hanks, Annette Bening, Bruce Dern, Ice Cube, Wayne and Garth, Maya and Ana, Rue and Jules, Seth Rogan and Reyn Doi. American politicians play themselves, with Jesse Eisenberg in the role of Mark Zuckerberg, and the Phantom of the Opera as Vladimir Putin.

“Hello Dankness emerged as a response to the profound and profane weirdness of U.S. politics around 2016. Prime-time news channels were reporting on presidential pee-pee tapes, Democrats eating babies, and paedophiles communicating in coded pizza messages. American politics has always had a flair for spectacle, but what felt different was the pervading sense of dankness.”
— Soda Jerk

About the Artists

Soda Jerk is an Australian artist duo who make sample-based films with a rogue documentary impulse. They are fundamentally interested in the politics of images; how they circulate, whom they benefit and how they can be undone.

Hello Dankness premiered at the Berlinale in 2023 and has received numerous cinema awards including Best Feature at the Atlanta Film Festival and Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival. It won the Blackmagic Design Australian Innovation Award and Berwick New Cinema Award, and its theatrical release included an extended run at Film Forum in New York.

Hello Dankness follows Soda Jerk’s controversial political revenge fable Terror Nullius, which was disowned by its commissioning body, who called the film “UnAustralian”. The Guardian named the “dizzyingly ambitious satirical work” one of the best Australian films of the decade, and the Sydney Morning Herald placed it 28th on their list of the Top 50 Australian Movies of All Time.