Zeena Schreck (born Zeena LaVey) glitched TV interview on tuning the other cheek
This is a submission to the Glitch Artists Collective group on facebook which I hold dear. The subject for the contest was / is “occult imagery”. So here I contribute Zeena Schreck, daughter to Anton LaVey (self declared founder of the Church of Satan). The Church is (in the US) an officially recognized institution which seems to be getting a bit dusty these days. But saying that I might conjure revange and terror from some of their members. Then again, satanists pride themselves on their sense of humour. So let’s test the devi hehe :p
Btw. I believe Zeena herself is not part of the church any more I believe, she dwells in tantric / typhonian traditions beyond classical Satanism.
There is a distinct look expected of women in pornography. It is a devoted, slightly suffering and always pointed upward to the man. In this particular instance, the featured look is slightly to serene, too self sufficient to be acceptable to the macho man that is the porn stallion. It was the first image of my glitch art porn series “her_face” and inspired the whole thing.
This is part two of “how low can you go”, a series of animated GIF art that ask two questions. How low can you go in resolution & morals.
“how low can you go 04” GIF animation, 300x176px, 2014
We are programmed, hard wired (by our neural network) to react to those colours and patterns of motion and shape, especially when it comes to primitive ‘content’. I have always been interested in exactly that question: how low can you go and degrade a signal, an information, picture, sound, so it is still percievable as such – as structured information. Yet it is that border, the lowest visual/informational signal to noise ratio – that is what facinates me if you will.
“how low can you go 04” GIF animation, 300x184px, 2014
“how low can you go 06” GIF animation, 122x250px, 2014
“how low can you go” is a series of animated GIF art that ask two questions. How low can you go in resolution & morals.
“how low can you go 01” GIF animation, 294x176px, 2014
That is to still connect to the human aspect of the depiction / image. Do we recognize the male or female body within the pixels? What does the movement induce, is it enough to orientate us as to what we are watching? Or is it the flesh tones? What are we watching anyway? Is it porn, is it art and who cares anyway?
“how low can you go 02” GIF animation, 294x176px, 2014
“how low can you go 03” GIF animation, 294x176px, 2014
The mass-media-magnifying-glass this week focusses on Kobane. A small town in northern Syria that is only relevant to it because it is visible from a safe distance / border (with Turkey).
Hundreds of cities have been ravaged by fundamentalism in Syria and Iraq in these last months, no camera was present, newspapers & TV where slow to realize the tragedy that was going on. It was such a nice summer. But that’s how modern day mass media work. The need an iconic subject, a small world to exemplify and explain the big world to us…
Glitch art has been around for some time now, just think about Cage, Paik or even before that Dada in a sense. But with the advent of digital media, the glitch aesthetic has changed, absorbing new errors, failures and bugs. Now a distinct term in either electronic music, digital art, video art and even poetry, the glitch has arrived in main stream media for better or worse. There is a growing community sharing source materiel, techniques and know how, a new art form is emerging and it is vibrant.
Many cultural complexes have been altered permanently with the advent of digital technology but nothing parallels the rise of everyday pornography. Ubiquitous, it now is accessible to everyone at any time any place. The pornographic content that is shared has a tendency to radicalize, videos and pictures getting more and more hard core, the depicted practices often disturbing and bewildering. Finally the gender specifics seem to demand / imply a demeaning and degrading picture of “the female”, not speaking of their more or less consensual participation in these productions. This is what the series “her_face” is about.
The web 2.0 is so sexophobic it always makes me laugh so hard…
“digital_origine” glitch 3rd°, 1024x846px, 2014
based on “L’Origine du monde” by Gustave Coubet, oil on canvas, 46×55cm, 1866
I once founded a facebook group and used a miniature of Gustave Courbets’s “L’Origine du monde” as a picture for it. It took fb just a day or two before they censored the image. Now being part of the beautiful “Glitch Porn” group, there is a discussion going on, if we should post the source materiel which is NSFW by definition… This spawned my interest: could I do it again, this way and it would pass… well, we will see. Keep you updated.
But this picture has always been politically and socially explosive. Painted for a private cabinet, it was later acquired by the famous psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan who was it’s latest owner and kept it hidden behind a second painting. This cover-up painting was especially designed to represent the basic shapes and forms of the depicted ancestral womb but well disguised by a innocent landscape. It now can be found in Paris, in the Musée d’Orsay. I have never seen it myself…
Heaven… I’m in heaven, And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek, When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.
“my_dear_heaven” is a part of my post privacy glitch porn art series “her_face”. Her face deals with the depiction of the female face or its omission for that matter in modern day web pornography. In this instance, the source material was actually a transvestite / transsexual / transgender male in beautiful agony. While seeing it, it reminded me about that song “cheek to cheek” and it still does every time I see it.
“53D1468B” is a part of my post privacy glitch art series “her_face”. Her face deals with the depiction of the female face or its omission for that matter in modern day web pornography. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condemn either the participants nor the producers of the original material. It is a wide spread cliché that all (at least) female actresses are bound to or forced into porn against their will and suffer pain and degradation without consent. Truth of the matter is I cannot judge what happened here because I don’t know the circumstances under which it was filmed. But that is missing the point anyway.
I did know I could not hold this up! But the main goal stays untouched: remastering and republishing my catalogue as you should being a digital artist. Codecs change, resolutions too and it is a good occasion the reassert the content and packaging of the stuff I have been producing for the last 15 years or so…
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At height of the Afghan war (post 9/11) this video tried to bridge the historic gap between the Vietnam war & Nixon’s administration and the current events with George W. Bush in power. I don’t need to elaborate on the (military) history of Afghanistan and all its potential conquistadores starting with Alexander the Great… Afghanistan has always been an “object of desire” last not least for its opium production. But foremost it is the last gate between the Occident and the Orient geographically, culturally and politically. Now, more than 10 years later, nothing has really changed to my eyes. Afghanistan was not democratized, on the contrary, other countries like Syria, Iraq, Libya and so on have been Afghanized. And like Vietnam, Afghanistan has 40 years or more of instability and chaos waiting for…
“Space – Nixon Remix” also deals with the almost erotic relationship between high tech (i.e. space exploration during Nixon admin / bio tech during Bush admin), war (Afghanistan / Vietnam), politics (the politics of fear both parties used) and paranoia (self explanatory). The film was almost entirely live mixed to the music for 2003 was also the high time of my VJing activities and it is a testimony to that early, mainly clip based period of VJing when that art form was in its infancy.
