Lost A cautionary tale

“it is dangerous to unmask images, since they dissimulate the fact that there is nothing behind them.”

— Jean Baudrillard 1994:5

When I was small, I got lost, in a world saturated by images. Magazines and television, forged, fictional realities which infiltrated my natural world. These 2 dimensional and virtual role models lured me in to a false reality, a reality filled with impossible ideals, places and outcomes. I bought the deception, I allowed it to shape me.

Lost, A Cautionary Tale, is a short animated film that explores the seduction, coercion and power of this false reality. An imageworld constructed out of advertising, media, and visual culture. Using hand-cut collage and stop-frame animation, the film orientates around the narrative of a small girl as she is slowly pulled away from the natural world and into a false reality, resulting in loss of identity and undermining self-worth.

We are overwhelmed by imagery in our daily life. This film intends to reclaim, and recontextualise the commercial archive. Inspired by visual artists such as Hannah Hoch, and Martha Rosler whose work often challenged the portrayal of women within advertising, and engaged with photomontage, to disrupt a manufactured narrative. “we personify objects and objectify persons” (Rosler 2004:5) we live in a state of alienation, from ourselves and our identities.

Using recycled media, embracing sustainable methods, to reclaim this archive of women in media, opens up the discussion to a wider audience. Now more than ever we need to find methods to address our media saturated world. The pressure of conformity pervades our society, and all too often, this moderation is delivered from the imageworld, showing us a performance of how to behave, exist, and what happiness and true beauty look like.

The resulting Frankenstein figures have been reanimated, they are now under my control, and through reanimation the images are now also objectified, isolated from the world they once belonged to, extracted and made to perform in new ways. Scrutinised and unmasked. Playing with photography’s states of being, enables us to explore the static nature of the photograph, alluding to Flusser’s “states of things” (2000:36), and what might be behind it.

This methodology reflects not only a need to acknowledge sustainability, but to expose the endless loop of consumer consumption. Through rupture, repetition, and distortion, I aim to destabilise the imageworld’s power and invite critical reflection.

As the collage world closes in, she loses touch with who she really is. The film asks, what happens when we let images speak louder than experience? What is lost when we define ourselves by curated fictions?

REFERENCES

BAUDRILLIARD, J. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. The University of Michigan Press:Ann Arbor. pp.5.

ROSLER, Martha. 2004. Decoys and Disruptions : Selected Writings, 1975-2001. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press in association with International Center of Photography, New York. pp.5

FLUSSER, Vilém. 2000. Towards a Philosophy of Photography. London: Reaktion. pp.36