“The closer one gets to the perfection of the simulacrum, the more evident it becomes how everything escapes representation, escapes its own double and its resemblance.
— Jean Baudrillard
“Images are meant for people to orient themselves in the world, but when they become very strong, people use their experience in the world to orient themselves in the image. The image becomes the concrete reality and the world is only a pretext.“
— Vilém Flusser
Maybe Fake’s What I Like explores how we formulate our identities individually and communally. We experience many versions of ourselves over the course of a lifetime, changing so gradually that we don’t even notice. Sometimes you look back and can’t even recognize a past self; born-again Christians and recovered addicts often talk about feeling like their old self was an entirely different person. How do we reconcile past and future selves, people we might have been, or the multitude of people we currently are online and irl?
This opens up questions about integrity, authenticity, and organic/synthetic self-cultivation. We are each a different person with everyone in our lives, not necessarily because we lie about who we are, but because of the dynamic nature of relationships. It gets complicated when we attempt to synthesize those “selves” into a cohesive online representation. Is the goal of a social media or dating profile to create an accurate representation of who you are, or is it something more aspirational? Contradicting or omitting parts of yourself is inevitable — when exporting anything to a platform, information is bound to get compressed and corrupted — but what if that “you” isn’t you?
How does the cultivation of public persona, alter-ego, secret identity or anonymity influence how we come to understand ourselves? To believe in a “true”, “pure”, or “authentic” self disregards the creative and inherently performative nature of self presentation. Whether we log on to see friends or their personas or go to movies to see the films or the actors, at the end of the day, maybe we’re all just members of each other’s cults of personality.
Details: We’re looking for video works and sets by artists exploring preconceptions, anxieties, revelations, convictions, lies, or curiosities in relation to the idea of the “self”.
Submitted videos can be any medium (digital, analogue, 3D animated, AI generated, GIFs, stop motion, sound, silent etc…) and up to 45 minutes in length. Music and DJ sets can be any length so long as we can embed the audio file or link on the site.
Embassy: The embassy will be a live screening at film/bar venue in Brooklyn, New York and will feature music by local experimental musicians. Venue details are still being confirmed and will be updated on this page when finalized.
Submission deadline: November 1st, 2023
