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PROFORMA The work “proforma” deals with the origin of beauty ideals in the context of media. Beauty is a political term, “survival of the prettiest” a worrisome catchphrase. The dictates of youth, slimness and (sexual) desirability still produce an obsession with diets, a spiralling increase in cosmetic surgery and widespread depression, for the dream of achieving a universal ideal of beauty is beyond us. One reason is that the image presented us in the media as beauty, is a construct. The very act of transforming a three-dimensional body into the two-dimensionality of a picture, screen or canvas turns what we depict into a depiction, changing its nature at the moment of mediatization. In this context, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard mentions “chains of freefloating signifiers.” In terms of beauty, this means that the depicted bears no reference to the original subject – that the image of the model bears no reference to the woman who has been filmed or photographed. The body is trimmed, adjusted, adapted to new imagery. Reshaped and interfused by the images of many different cultural bodies and by new, sometimes contradictory, identities, it is transformed from a dwelling-place into an instrument that is constantly being sharpened and polished, trained and toned. Through radical physical asceticism, hormonal and surgical interventions, the body is adapted to comply with the latest requirements and to project a self-image fashioned by changing cultural perceptions, labels and brands. Shifting identities generate shifting bodies. The line between enhancement and mutilation, between adaptation and destruction is a very fine one; the boundary to derangement and self-effacement is easily crossed. DIASEC, 90 X 72 CM UND 190 X 120 CM, 2009 |
