Process:
I knew going into this I wanted to attempt to adapt whatever piece I received into a short film script. I was hoping to get something a little weird with some darkness under the hood to play around with and ‘Under the Knife’ floored me. It read like the bones of a metamodern horror film. I really dug it’s zombie-like thirst for any kind of transcendence--and tbh, I can easily relate to that rn 🤷‍♀️

I’ve always been obsessed with horror films, especially body horror, and social media is one of my favorite sub-genres. The structure of the poem was fragmented in a way that reminded me of scrolling through an endless feed of curated yet detached content, commentary and megaphoned soul searching. I took that vibe and instead of using Final Draft or a Google Doc to write my adaptation, I used Instagram.

In the spirit of this exercise and social media in general, I authored some of the art/words contained in ‘Cellar Dweller’ without any delineation as to what is original or lifted. Long live the new flesh.
—Ian Sherman

Ian Sherman is a video artist from Burlington, VT.