This is Not a Video

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. […] Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.”

— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

An Accumulation of Spectacles

“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”

— Guy Debord

This little demonstration shows how our minds can be fooled. And also… Marilyn Monroe was murdered. #IamNOTaCAT.

Art Must be True

“You construct fake news broadcasts on video camera… And you scramble your fabricated news in with actual news broadcasts… [Y]ou can advertise the fact that you are writing news in advance and trying to make it happen by techniques which anybody can use. And that makes you NEWS. And a TV personality as well, if you play it right .”

— William S. Burroughs

How do we define fake? Something which does not exist? Or something which is other than what it proclaims to be? A fake knife can still draw real blood. What is the potential of the “fake” to have “real” consequences? At what point will “fake news” rule the world? Is there such a thing as fake art? Either all art is fake; or none is.

FakeArtist presents: artist-in-residence

“artist-in-residence” was a 24 hour public performance and the expression of a sustained contemplation on the contemporary social struggle of homelessness through durational performance art, followed by an audio/visual sculptural installation exhibition. “artist-in-residence” was part of FakeArtist’s month-long residency at The Guesthouse in Cork, Ireland.

This work focused on modes of representation in depicting the relationship between the material (sculpture/modified readymades) and the experiential/performative.

The little house made of (fake) Amazon boxes

It sought to create a socially engaged performative space in which to accentuate the potential of performance art to critique or subvert power mechanisms in everyday life.

Plastic on plastic

“But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence… illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”

Ludwig Feuerbach

Plastic on Plastic is a conceptual artwork which situates a novelty “dog poop” in a plexi-glass box. This piece is an an ironic synthesis between the Russian Suprematism movement – typified by Kazimir Malevich’s 1918 White on White – and the exploration of human waste in conceptual art beginning with Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 “readymade” The Fountain.

This meta-pop-artwork transplants this curious readymade polyurethane sculpture from one absurd context to another, posing questions about the nature of sculpture and simulation, as well as physical and environmental waste. Simultaneously, the piece celebrates the playfulness of the human spirit, which for nearly a century, has found equal parts joy and disgust in this ersatz object.