This short split-screen video has been sourced entirely from stock photography. As visible in the watermark present on the footage. Under the mirroring visuals in composition and framing, a text appears as if we are watching the news as if supplying constant real-time reports on a disastrous event. About 30 seconds in, we immediately 'wake up' as a profile of a smiling man fully devourers the toes of a female foot. It is not a shock in itself as it is to know that it came from Shutterstock made for advertisement- Why is this even in there? The text appearing underneath is laced with familiar ideas on mother and child relationship attempt to challenge what counts as female nudity resulting in us being forever incomplete searching to be whole again. 

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In addition to this simple introduction to breast obsession via teleprompter like banner, we are being seduced with a well-known pick-up line while we “travel” ‘the world’. 

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Using theories of Freud and Lacan and connecting them to Kristeva in a text that addresses the viewer directly largely trying to illustrate the nexus of Consumerism, Tourism, Censorship, and Pornography. Photo-illustration is shown as a twin of Memorialization. It affects us with the same one-sided visual coercion. The elevated eye view and a supposedly objective point of view are revealed as utterly perverted. The separation and efforts to represent Alternative and Ordinary /Vanilla are seen as identical. Why so?

It is the white gaze, bleached out, the world is gentrified. Women are ornaments and Men are the owners of nature, culture, and knowledge. Colonial riddles of ancient civilizations and an unreachable source.

 

Locations in order of appearance:

 

Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Lisbon)

Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism (Berlin)

Valley-unnamed (Iran)

The Old City (Jerusalem) / The General Beauregard Equestrian Statue (New Orleans)

Rujm el-Hiri /Fish Farming Pools

Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem)

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This text was written by Tal Gilad  for “Always and Forever” a group exhibition commissioned by CSU  at the Gallery of Contemporary Art, Celje, Slovenia.  

10 September-14 November 2020

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2020

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