Image (4)
Video Work
“… the market produces anxieties about the body at the same time as it offers solutions to those anxieties in the form of commodities.”
I wanted to extend this sentiment to the idea that additionally, popular, commercial digital media also creates fears and insecurity in the viewer about the level of threat in the world around them, yet doesn’t offer many solutions.
My work is inspired by the idea of fears that are produced by and communicated through popular media such as the news, television, advertising, internet videos and memes, etc. Additionally, an important part of my work is the consideration of the relationship we, as individuals, have with media, the part it holds in our lives, our consumption or enjoyment of it, how it impacts or changes our own unique perspectives, and how our outward actions, or externalization of beliefs, change dependent on such fears. My goal was to challenge the viewer to perceive fearful messages, which are so commonplace in media today, in a new light, and to question the relationship we all have with media which feeds us terrifying, and often fantastically fabricated stories of good vs. evil, war, terror, dangers and risks hidden in the everyday, and the sinister “other” at the heart of all fear. I also wanted to introduce absurdity into the process, while at the same time explaining the state of the matter through image and sound.
My work can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and I wanted to leave it open to individual perception, and with potential for personal empathic connection, but more broadly, it is a metaphor for our relationship with fear-mongering and emotional manipulation techniques in popular digital media.
Basel, 2018