The camera shutter clicks. Click click. Could you please tilt your head a bit more? Yeah, that’s great. Perfect. just like this. Click click. Okay, done! Thanks so much. Brenda, bring in look 12, please. The modern clothing rack made out of silver polished industrial-core pipes carries an obsidian black arrangement of garments. Each one a slightly different hue but in its conglomeration they all merge into one big pile of bitumen. A lush, ominous synth-heavy ambient song sampling various windy field recordings of soothing seashore white noise and chopped up tonal shifted vocals is irregularly interrupted by rapid rattles of the shutter opening and closing. Now also closed, my eyes visualize murky navy tinted waves which glister and crash as they gently dissipate into bubbly foam. Sticky, gooey heaps of algae and plankton. The sublime is to be exposed from reduction to the aesthetic that undermines its ideological power. Our gaze must instead be concentrated on the gaps and inconsistencies it tries so hard to cover up with all its might. The photographers face reminds me of Hunter Schafer. As pale as a specter. The yellow eyeliner really suits her, I think. Also, I was really impressed to see that someone is still using the Contax G2 which is pretty conservative in my opinion, kinda playing it safe but a nice choice nevertheless and I really love the way the onboard flash gives the images a sparkling golden shimmer. Like light refracting through the pendants of a crystalline chandelier in a ballroom.
I’ve always loved luxurious things. Maybe that’s why I got into the most luxurious fields of them all. I wonder at which point you just stop pretending to be something separate and become the thing itself. An obsession ultimately draws on the full identification of the subject to its object.
I’ve always loved pretending to be the fraud. I know my ways and most importantly I know the scene, the people. How they work. How they perceive you and how one needs to act in order to fit in. How to dress, how to talk the talk. Inauthenticity to me seems more real than being authentic. I am a proud fake, a true counterfeit. I mean... what does being true to yourself even mean? Which self? The one that tried not to get their cover blown when being asked about this band you didn’t know about but acted like you did? Ummm yeah sure I know them; they remind me of -----. You don’t know them? Ohhh, then forget about it. You need to check them out though. Coming back to the self: I feel like I am constituted of parts that do not belong to me. Stitched together from foreign matter through reality’s patchwork. Neither my body nor my organs nor what makes me the person I am are my property, you know, the way I act, when people say“that’s just like you”, “that’s just the way you are” “I thought you’d enjoy this” or on the other hand when people say “that’s not like you”, all of this is accumulated by the Other like a currency to be viciously exploited.
Baudrillard describes the murder of reality as the perfect crime. No traces, no victim, no culprit, no witness, no motive, no blood, no murder weapon, nobody even there to notice that anything has happened at all. There is nothing to be missed cause nothing was missing in the first place. Illusion is not to be confused as the opposite of reality, it rather precisely illustrates its disappearance. Think of the silent moment before a photographic image slowly appears on a light sensitive material such as silver gelatin paper. The negative interrupts reality, as it exists before the object eventually gets exiled to disappear into the realm of the image.
Camera shutters clicking again, this time a whole orchestra of them. The outraged multitude resembles a riot. Black bloc anarchism mingling with the grace of haute couture. Lights flashing like stun grenades leave afterimages of hovering tiny colored dots in my retina. Circles of Bottega Veneta green surrounding a pulsating, glowing black dot, a total solar eclipse of prisms placed in the middle of my periphery like a viewfinder.
Aesthetics are never entirely neutral.
Big brand job, major magazine editorial. About 20 faux paparazzi are chasing a girl dressed in a full denim look through Terminal 2. Matching jeans jacket and jeans, finished off with black jersey ankle sock heels featuring a pastel blue BIG lighter instead of a regular counter in the back of the shoe. And of course, huge black shades. You might recognize her if you have some specific taste, or you might not. There is definitely something exciting about her. Even though the extras are using DSLRs, the whole thing is shot on an iPhone. Burst mode.Click click click click click click.
As we are skipping through the unedited HEIC-files, a blue mark virtually lands on the good shots. About twenty of them. The rest gets scrapped. Out of these twenty we decide on the photo where one of the extras, dressed up as a paparazzi, tripped and fell to their knees in front of the model. Nice accidental symbolism. We don’t like how there’s someone's hand in the right corner of the image, destroying its composition, so we just edit it out. At last, it’s going to end up next to a generic handbag advertisement in the layout of the magazine.
In times where the image has become the primary prey of obsession and commodification, especially that of the self, the question arises how long one can protect themselves from the occupation of the Other. If it’s even necessary to do so. Maybe one should just let themselves be taken over and submit to it.
I will not refuse the image that is imposed on me but will instead embody my own artificiality to its fullest.
I will not refuse the image that is imposed on me but will instead embody becoming itself, not the object of the Other. I will not refuse the image that is imposed on me.
I re-enter the warehouse themed building through a side door, feeling refreshed from the cold winter night’s air. It’s almost as if reality came to a hold for a second. Slowly soothing, then invasively aggressive, the flashing strobes penetrate my restored senses. Climax building up. The pounding kick drum is drenched in cathedral emulated reverb, which makes it sound like I’m listening from a bishop's bathroom stall through thick concrete walls. You know, like those YouTube videos titled something in the lines of “listening to Protection by Massive Attack but you’re in a bathroom at a party”.
The stage is set. The walls are seamlessly covered with mirrors all the way to the top, making it seem like the room is stretching out to infinity. Think Jeff Walls “Picture for Women”, except they’re not regular mirrors, but ones you would usually find in an amusement park. Kinda curved and distorted through a convex, they contort your figure beyond the horrors of perception. Exposing the medium and its spectator.
Apparently, the House of mirrors attraction got its name from Versailles Hall of mirrors.
There are security cameras placed on the ceiling pointing downwards in all directions. The footage is simultaneously being projected onto the mirrors. So, you’re not only looking at your own twisted reflection in the mirror but also at the whole room's projection through dusty particles from an aerial, and at yourself from a 3rd person POV. Skewed bodies translated through 10 FPS and input delay. Like a wormhole, it connects the physical space of the dramaturgy to the imaginary of its echo. You could enter through each one and end up at the other one. This Dan Graham-Esque installation stems from the fact that the building used to be a detective’s office and they had a bunch of old spy cameras lying around the storage. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told. Makes for a catchy concept, I guess.
Here come the two main actors of the play. My double and me.
“Hey, you seem familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?” my Doppelganger says.
“What did you say? I can’t hear you, it’s too loud.” I shout over the clipping hi-hats, which cause a ringing sensation in my ears.
With matching movements, we continue our choreography in a more reserved spot of the room.
“I think I know you from somewhere.” they exclaim.
“I don’t know... I don’t know you, but I had two shows at ----- recently.One solo and one duo. Maybe you’ve seen them?”
“No. That’s not what I’m talking about.” “Are you sure you’re not famous or something?” they add.
“No. You must be confusing me with someone. I’m sorry.”
Totally frazzled, I rush outside again. The sound of saliva running down my throat, creating a clicking noise, merges with rapidly accelerating rhythmic heart-beats mimicking the BPM inside the mirrored chateau.
I feel like passing out.
Someone, which I only recognize as my friend at a second glance, yells my name and I join them standing out front.
“Who was that person you were just talking to?”
“I don’t know. They said they recognized me from somewhere, but I’ve never seen them.”
“Really? That’s so weird. You guys looked like a parody of each other. Hedi Slimane heroin chic mixed with three tablespoons of pastiche and 12mg of hysteria. Two lean figures wearing black pointy Wyatt boots with slim-cut tailored suit pants tucked into them. Plus, they also had the same Ziggy Stardust tribute type mullet that you got last week.” my friend laughs.
“That’s not funny. I feel sick.” I exhaust.
“Get over it. It was probably just some weirdo. Any clue through which door we can get back in?” my friend asks.