Art Box #12: Community Guidelines by Maren Dagny Juell

She has seen things you people wouldn’t believe — and unlike tears in rain, those images don’t disappear.

She is a content cleaner. Her job is to filter the world’s suffering on the internet: she can’t stop the horrors, of course, but she should absorb them so the rest of us don’t have to. But how much violence can pass through one psyche before it leaves a mark? And what are the strange, shapeshifting forms now following her from dreams into reality?

Meet Eidol, the protagonist of Community Guidelines, a short film by Maren Dagny Juell. Set in a disturbingly familiar near future, the film takes the form of a talk-show interview. Eidol is the guest; the host is all smiles — despite having spent the minutes before going live curled up in a fetal position, questioning his life choices. Now the cameras are rolling, and he’s ready for all the juicy details.

Maren Dagny Juell is an artist working with moving image, installation, and VR/AR. Maren uses a visual language that references recognisable narratives from online information culture, media and literature. With humour, vulnerability, and doubt, she examines the impact of technology on individual autonomy.

She received her MA from Chelsea College of Arts in 2004, and in 2024, she won the Lumen Prize (Nordic Award).