gUidE
EnTraNce
Interdependence.
In biology, interdependence, is the act of interaction between two distinct and independent individuals. In philosophy, the Interdependence Theory, declares that existence and consciousness are dependent from one another, and thus that neither of them occurs in the absence of one or the other.
This exhibition explores the the vital and essential relation between two things: the reality and the body.
“There are two shifts […] that have to happen for a genuine concept of interdependence to arise: the first implies going ‘from considering things in isolation to considering things in interaction’; the second, more difficult to accomplish, is ‘from considering things in interaction to considering things as mutually constituted, that is, viewing things as existing at all only due to their dependence on other things’.” (Escobar, 2018)
Mediating Reality: Body Ideals is an exhibition which explores the constant evolution of the “ideal” body and its correlation with the reality we live in. As said by Oscar Wilde before us, the reality is influenced by art, which is influenced by reality. We live in a vicious circle where the perspective we have of our bodies is not our own and this exhibition is exploring the very sentiment of lost thought independence. While analysing the body as our art, as our medium to communicate to the world and as the mirror of our soul, we explore this integral part of us under the lens of media and technology. How do these two things influence our reality and society? How does that reflect in the evolution of body ideals?
From ancient Rome and Greece when the main two media of choice to represent the body were sculpture and paintings to today’s body standards dictated by Instagram “influencers” such as the Kardashian sisters. This exhibition will show how these bodies were and still are a reflection of a society’s ideal, through time and space.
“It is a commonplace to say that each century has had its distinguishing art form, that it was poetry in the eighteenth century, the novel in the nineteenth and cinema in the twentieth. This poses the question as to which art form will be the one for our twenty-first century, and whether or not it will remain cinema, or at least some form of cinema.” (Mullarkey, 2008)
As this exhibition is about evolution, of the body ideals, of society and of the media, we are using the newest and most promising medium to date: Mixed Reality (via Microsoft’s HoloLens). MR is a new technology that not only gives the opportunity of creating new realities in impossible worlds, but also to mix them with our everyday base reality.
“[Mediated bodies] carry in them something of the world itself, something material, and yet something transposed, transformed into another world: the material ghost. Hence both the peculiar closeness to reality and the no less peculiar suspension from reality of the [mediated body].” (Saunders, C. Maude, U. Macnaughton, J. 2009)
This medium is perfect to connect the exhibition theme to the overarching idea of interdependence, since it highlights how reality can be manipulated and thus also influence the change in the way we perceive things. Thanks to MR we are able to not only curate the objects people will see, but also manipulate the way the visitors interact with them, curating the whole experience from start to end. We can manipulate when, how and where people will see the objects and thus make the relativeness of reality cease to exist and make it what us curators want it to be like.
This is an amazing opportunity to mix topics which rarely collide: the tech industry, reality, the body image and female wellbeing. Tech companies are predominantly male, with major tech companies having women occupying only 30% of their companies’ employee force. For this reason, the target audience for this exhibition are mid- to senior level tech professionals, which are mainly males. The purpose of this exhibition is attracting influential, intelligent and open-minded people to show them how powerful and effective this new Mixed Reality technologies are, while using our female bodies and wellbeing as an example. We want to spark a conversation that has already started with the #MeToo movement last year: how females and their bodies should get more recognition and therefore protection.
This overarching theme of interdependence is clear in every aspect of this exhibition: from the mediated reality the spectator enters once he puts on the Microsoft’s HoloLens, to the knowledge acquired by the visitors themselves and the common realisation that there needs to be change in the way female bodies are portraited and influenced by the media.
I hope that this exhibition will help realise what a great potential Mixed Reality has as a creative tool to narrate immersive and captivating stories.
And I hope that after your visit at this exhibition you will leave with a deeper understanding of the pressure females (in particular but not only) feel due to the constant exposure to mediated, sometimes unreachable, body ideals.
Ancient Greece and RoMe
All the statues in this room are from around the 7thto the 2ndcentury BC.
These statues are from Ancient Greece and Rome, they depict the ideal body of the time, as they are representations of either very important and influential people at the time, like Claudia Olympias, or goddesses like Athena Parthenos.
From these statues is easy to notice that the body ideals haven’t changed much in more than five centuries. The ideal feminine body at time was supposed to show wellbeing and was reflected in a well-fed body.
WhaT is bEauTy 2.0 bY aNNa giNsBurG
The animation-style video director Anna Ginsburg presents her new animated short-film What is Beauty: Mediated Reality in which she represents the difference the advent of fast paced mass media has brought to the feminine body ideals.
London native, Anna Ginsburg is filmmaker and director who’s diverse and unique range of talents has brought to fame. Anna is a multifaced artist with knowledge in a spectrum of techniques varying from traditional hand drawn 2d, stop-motion, digital imagery and live-action. Most recently Anna has directed the first version of the “What is Beauty?” short-film under commission of CNN and has now created a sequel for the Mediating Reality: Body Ideals exhibition.
a Sky full of Holograms
This room has a compilation of 15 stories of 15 different women that have changed their body to fit the body ideals of the time. These stories are told by 15 different female artists that have won the #TellAStoryAboutBodyIdeals challenge created by the Serpentine Galleries to give voice to small and up-and-coming storytellers.
pOst MaSS cOmmuNicaTion
All the people and objects represented in the images situated in this room are from the 20thand 21stcentury AC.
These people and objects are some of the most well-known female figures and feminine ideals of this and the last century.
From these images is easy to notice that the body ideals have changed drastically in less than two hundred years. Thanks to the mass communication, the feminine body ideal has changes almost every decade, from Dior’s New Look which presented the women with a nice tight waist, to Marilyn Monroe’s nice shapely figure, to Kim Kardashians big bottom.
FaREwEll
Hopefully, after visiting this exhibition you will leave with a deeper understanding of the pressure females (especially, but not solely) feel due to the constant exposure to mediated, very often unreachable, ideals.