The project began with an exercise of searching and presenting an archive found on the web. The one I discovered was a collection of stills from black-and-white 1920 Hollywood films. I wanted to highlight the jarringly repetitive, contrived nature of the bodily gestures in the portrayed scenes of romance. As such, I selected a set of texts that discuss the perhaps duplicitous nature of representation in art as framing device for this archive.
In order to make this critique more relevant to the contemporary era, however, my archive and texts evolved to making a commentary on the current culture of plastic surgery (in Korea, in particular) and of the obsession with actors' personal lives. Both cultures, I aim to argue, stem from the relentless faith that art imitates life truthfully, and from us, readers and/or viewers, consuming these materials too literally.
Ultimately, this project became an ode to literature and art, while offering a critical view on how our relationship to these works, as precarious as it may be, manifest in our culture and society.
Excerpted texts ranged from critical essays like Plato's Republic, to literary works like Madame Bovary, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and to journalistic articles like the New Yorker's "Factory Girls," all cited in each component of the project accordingly.
