Denervation

Denervation is a short animated docu-fiction that imagines how counterfeit beauty products trigger a future where clean air becomes a commodity.
runtime: 5 minutes
Denervation explores how beauty, youth, and bodily desire function as forms of capital within contemporary culture. Set in a fictional town, the film centers on the covert production of counterfeit Botox made from a hazardous toxin, using this process as a lens to examine the pressures and systems that sustain aesthetic economies.
The small-town setting reflects broader social conditions, including the exploitation of vulnerable populations and the limits of regulatory oversight. As these practices unfold, Denervation traces the connections between the built environment, social hierarchies, and everyday life, revealing how these structures quietly shape collective experience.
Scenes set in the town’s central plaza show the effects of these practices on the community, particularly through the degradation of shared resources such as clean air. What begins as an illicit medical operation expands into a wider portrait of social and environmental vulnerability.
Denervation presents a cautionary account of how unregulated systems and extractive practices generate consequences that extend beyond their immediate sites, exposing collective fragility in the absence of effective oversight.
PROCESS DIARY
Denervation began with an old issue of Scientific American. Inside was a striking image of syringes bound together like sticks of dynamite. The article, titled Fake Botox, Real Threat, warned that a growing counterfeit market could place a deadly biological agent in the wrong hands. It immediately read like the premise for a film.
As the article unfolded, the implications became more alarming. Botox is derived from botulinum toxin A, one of the most toxic substances known. A single gram dispersed into the air could be lethal at a massive scale. More disturbing was the discovery that counterfeit Botox is already being produced within the United States, often through unsafe and hazardous methods. The distance between selling fake cosmetic treatments and circulating raw toxin is uncomfortably small.
The project takes the form of a five minute animated docu-fiction that plays out this scenario. Rather than focusing solely on counterfeit products or individual consumers, the film shifts attention to a less visible but more critical resource under threat: the air itself.
As contamination becomes normalized, new informal industries emerge to manage and profit from scarcity. These include canned fresh air sourced from hillsides, air vending stations connected to personal masks, and oxygen bars that double as social spaces. Through these speculative yet plausible systems, Denervation examines how biological risk, weak oversight, and market logic converge, transforming clean air into a commodity.
‘Denervation’ explores the concept of affective capital, examining the extensive commodification of beauty and youth and its impact on social hierarchies. Set in a fictional town, the film centers around the clandestine production of counterfeit Botox from a hazardous toxin, a metaphor for the moral compromises made in pursuit of aesthetic ideals.
The small-town setting underscores broader societal issues such as the exploitation of vulnerable groups and the inadequacies of regulatory frameworks. The narrative weaves together the connections between our built environment, social structures, and these ethical dilemmas, encouraging viewers to question cultural norms.
Key scenes set in the town’s plaza vividly depict the consequences of these unethical practices, particularly on the community’s daily life and the degradation of essential resources like clean air. ‘Denervation’ thus reveals the broader implications of such actions, highlighting our collective vulnerability to societal and environmental neglect.
The film plays out the subtle yet significant effects of these “dirty dealings”, drawing a stark connection to a larger narrative of societal and environmental deterioration, a cautionary tale of the far-reaching consequences of unethical practices under lax regulatory oversight.
While the narrative is influenced by a variety of academic texts and artworks, the project’s primary inspiration comes from the Scientific American article “Fake Botox, Real Threat,” by Ken Coleman and Raymond A. Zilinskas, that details the illegal drug market and its potential threats. Dana Berkowitz’s book, Botox Nation, which examines how norms about bodies, gender, and aging are constructed and reproduced on both cultural and individual levels. Other sources of inspiration for the world of Denervation include: The philosophical writing of Peter Sloterdijk’s spheres series. 

COSTUME DESIGN AND CHARACTER
PREVIZ
crew
Writer/ Director: Joshua Dawson
Cinematographer: Ashton Rae
Producers: Ashton Rae, Ian McClellan
COSTUME DESIGN: sAORI mITOME
Original Score by: M Russell Henson
Sound Design by: Ankur Agrawal

Colorist: Color Space Finishing
World Building/ Animation & VFX: Joshua Dawson
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