>> Catalog 2021

Entropy

Entropia

---

POLAND / 2021 / No Dialogue / B&W / Digital File / 10 min

Director: Chang Yu-sung
Photography: Oskar Jan Król
Editing: Michał Buczek
Music, Sound Mixing: Maciej Tobera
Visual Effects: Chang Yu-sung, Oskar Jan Król, Michał Buczek
Source: Chang Yu-sung

A coal mine in the city of Konin, Poland that looks like another planet, or the Earth in the distant future. Rough and massive, the heavy iron machinery that painstakingly excavates the mountains keeps moving systematically, much like the ruler of the world, giving off an eerie impression. The hands of their operators are similarly rough. Eventually, the machine and the operator’s body morph into disorder. As with entropy, efforts once expended towards demise are irreversible, only continuing to increase. The director, who comes from Taiwan, uses experimental methods to document this dying coal mine.

---

[Director’s Statement] Entropy is an experimental, memorial (as in memory) documentation of one of the remaining coal mines in Konin, Poland. Entropy—the measuring unit of disorder, randomness. A coal mine is a place in constant motion, it works 24 hours, 365 days; machines with unfathomable scale split the earth open, a huge pit that goes deep into the black coal, which is being devoured, processed, and transported on a train that embarks a journey that leads to its final purpose—energy. A coal mine is also a dying place, a concept whose days are numbered. According to a coal miner in Konin, the place will probably be shut down permanently in four to five years. According to the second law of thermodynamics, the total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time. Isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium, the state with maximum entropy. Entropy is not only conveying a message about chaos, it is also a reminder that all things will, just as the wind eroding a sand castle on the beach, eventually perish, as destined as the fate of the mechanical leviathans of Konin.