RE-EVALUATING MATERIALS CHANGE BODILY PERFORMANCE POLITICS PASSION PSYCHOANALYSIS PLASTIC LOVE PORNOGRAPHY ABSURDIST HUMOUR
OCTOBER 2014-MARCH 2015
The objectification of a female body, became absurd when made in blow up plastic, but when it was a lifelike 'Real Doll' in soft silicone it became more uncanny and somehow threatening. Dolls for adults were, for some, as much about companionship as masturbation. I joined a forum of doll owners who gave their dolls names, personalities and back stories, who took them out and shared images of scenarios caring for and communicating with the dolls. Pornography has led the development of the internet and I was finding design and technology are developing to create much more interactive robot dolls that could be a Stepford Wife for those that were uncomfortable with human relationships.
The internet has provided an opportunity for anyone with a fetish or fantasy to find a like minded other. The shame that was associated with as Freud would call them, perverse behaviours, was no longer necessary.
The focus of my research was about the relationship between human and object, about the projections that go on to create another.
Exhibitions at the Wellcome Museum of Sexology and the Silent Partners exhibition about arists mannequins, acknowledging the relationship between human and object, artist and doll and how this was viewed. Ydessa Hendeles curated collection of wooden mannequins at the ICA, watched by security guards made an uncanny presence.Who was being guarded from whom?
This film was made to show a woman's relationship with her blow up companion. Some viewers thought I was saving her and another wanted to be the doll and be cared for.It was about secrecy, privacy, intimacy.
Slavoj Zizek described the subject’s fundamental fantasy, when disclosed publicly it
“… entails an unbearable shame that leads to the subject’s aphanisis, self-obliteration.”
READING WATCHING LOOKING LEARNING
