Monster
5000,00
€
Thomas Markusson: Monster is from 2017 and is featuring the G20 leaders at the time, but it still feels relevant today, showing an ever-changing coalition of rulers forming a distorted face. The 24h newscycle has just gotten more intense since then and even if we hit the reset button we're soon faced with similar speeches and promises that then get distorted by global political dynamics. Most of the leaders displayed from 7 years ago are naturally no longer in power, albeit some still are, very much so.
When I first thought about this work I was exploring Dada, the art movement that was prolific in the 1920’s that often put nonsense and irrationality in the centre of their work as a way to poke fun at the political upper class at the time. There was something curious about how they let themselves be guided in a haphazard way, mixing different mediums and generating outcomes that come by chance.
I wanted to see if I could take this approach into our age a century later. I first played around with an online interface that let users recompose the faces of world leaders, combining them into facial amalgamations. Basically an interactive digital scrapbook consisting of noses, ears, mouths and so on. The result was curious and playful. Later I made the decision to take that work into a physical space, creating screens that each held a part of a face. I also simplified the interaction - by having one large button visitors could recompose a face with one simple push. There was also something powerful about a large red button - often analogous to launching a missile. It could also be seen as a reset button. By adding a spinning motion to the way the world leaders are randomly allocated to each screen the notion of revolution also comes in - albeit the result always turns out to be similar.
Why the title Monster? Is it to say that the political leadership is always destined to be a monstrous entity? Or is it simply a reference to Frankenstein’s monster? A hotchpotch of power? Much like the works from Dada, there is a fair bit of irreverence and childishness at play. Each viewer has to decide for themselves what it means… or doesn’t mean.
With 4 screens choosing from 20 leaders there are 160,000 possible permutations of Monster, each press of the button likely to yield a new result. The circuitry is all visible as to say that there’s nothing to hide; the machine from Wizard of Oz turned inside out.
When I first thought about this work I was exploring Dada, the art movement that was prolific in the 1920’s that often put nonsense and irrationality in the centre of their work as a way to poke fun at the political upper class at the time. There was something curious about how they let themselves be guided in a haphazard way, mixing different mediums and generating outcomes that come by chance.
I wanted to see if I could take this approach into our age a century later. I first played around with an online interface that let users recompose the faces of world leaders, combining them into facial amalgamations. Basically an interactive digital scrapbook consisting of noses, ears, mouths and so on. The result was curious and playful. Later I made the decision to take that work into a physical space, creating screens that each held a part of a face. I also simplified the interaction - by having one large button visitors could recompose a face with one simple push. There was also something powerful about a large red button - often analogous to launching a missile. It could also be seen as a reset button. By adding a spinning motion to the way the world leaders are randomly allocated to each screen the notion of revolution also comes in - albeit the result always turns out to be similar.
Why the title Monster? Is it to say that the political leadership is always destined to be a monstrous entity? Or is it simply a reference to Frankenstein’s monster? A hotchpotch of power? Much like the works from Dada, there is a fair bit of irreverence and childishness at play. Each viewer has to decide for themselves what it means… or doesn’t mean.
With 4 screens choosing from 20 leaders there are 160,000 possible permutations of Monster, each press of the button likely to yield a new result. The circuitry is all visible as to say that there’s nothing to hide; the machine from Wizard of Oz turned inside out.
lwh: 730x820x210 mm
Weight: 5400 g
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