Cloning the Ghost – A Groan of Vegetable Lust

Installation in collaboration with Toon Fibbe, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, 2017, variable dimension, (Antique Wheelchair, tube lights, Hologram, projection)

In the work Cloning the Ghost – upon entering we see a bold old man sleeping in a wheelchair surrounded by large hypnotic pulsating digital orchids. The flowers appear as slowly distorting faces morphing into genitals and back to flowers again in the moist, dark space of ’t Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen.

The man wakes up amid this flurry and confusion and blinks, seemingly to get accustomed to the space and starts to speak “Everything rots around these flowers, withers away, is sucked dry, except me. I need the heat, their presence. In here it’s only me and the orchids that bloom.” His monologue unfolds like a fever dream about sexual deception and exploitation as somewhat of an orchid specialty. Through meticulously imitating smell and visual appearance the orchid tricks insects into having sex with it – Becoming essentially a sex doll simulacrum. The only party benefiting? The orchid itself.

We draw parallels between the seduction and manipulation of current screen technologies, the attention economy, a culture of hypervisibility and sex without orgasms.

The exhibition what accompanied by the webpage “Cloning the Ghost”

image from the webpage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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