work in progress (2024)
The video installation Hard Feelings deals with the status of love, connection and desire in a media saturated global culture, touching on hypervisuality, dating culture and consumerism, gender relations, and commodification of the body. Reflecting on the topic of romantic love and capitalism in the realm of modern society the work is stating a fragile status of modern relationships. Over the course of its experimental narration, the work aims to create a counter narrative by opening up space for contemplating on possibilities for love as a transformational force, nurturing empathy and community in modern society.
Love is a compelling subject because it is at the same time individual, personal and universal. It is shaped by collective changes and especially by capitalism, which make it an important subject to understand modernity, individualism, modern democracy, intimacy, contemporary society, gender roles and relationships.
Modern culture is obsessed with the utopia of romantic love. While society is competitive and the future seems uncertain, finding economic security as an individual becomes increasingly difficult. By forming a unit, the couple relationship becomes an ideal of a stable emotional basis, for validation of the self and financial status. At the same time, this ideal is constantly undermined by individualism, a desire for freedom, variety and autonomy – forced onto us by an emotionalized consumer market. A challenge, which seems to create a new fragility of modern relationships.
Following Sociologist Eva Illouz’ observations heterosexual relationships have become commercialized - women and men meet like on a marketplace that is regulated by supply and demand. Dating Shows (e.g. The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Love Island, ... ) recreate this market through the competitive and staged setting of the show. Praising the couple relationship as the ultimate goal romanticizes partnerships, while the absence of a couple relationship is presented as a deficiency. With the current rise of TV Dating Shows this becomes an indicator for the changing connections between emotion, desire, culture, technology and economy in modern society.
This rise of Dating Reality TV in the last years can be seen to be similar to the looming presence of social media. In a digital age where it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate between fantasy and reality, reality shows create a fantastical space where all elements within it interact with one another in seemingly relatable and authentic ways.
An Australian study shows, 54 % of audience respondents turn to reality dating shows for relationship advice, to better understand what to do and what not to do while trying to establish a romantic relationship. In that sense, TV Shows become a form of mass therapy, despite taking place in a somewhat staged reality show realm. Anticipation, imagination and projection have become a new form of encountering the world, as we constantly have to compare between the image of something we had and reality (dating, tourism, apartment).
The project aims to promote a critical debate on the effects of capitalism on love, looking at the great influence and market of entertainment media culture and how these shape and shift the reception of self and togetherness in society. By dismantling the over romanticized take on love and partnership the work opens up new ways of looking at love and its importance and relevance on modern society.
work in progress (2024)
The video installation Hard Feelings deals with the status of love, connection and desire in a media saturated global culture, touching on hypervisuality, dating culture and consumerism, gender relations, and commodification of the body. Reflecting on the topic of romantic love and capitalism in the realm of modern society the work is stating a fragile status of modern relationships. Over the course of its experimental narration, the work aims to create a counter narrative by opening up space for contemplating on possibilities for love as a transformational force, nurturing empathy and community in modern society.
Love is a compelling subject because it is at the same time individual, personal and universal. It is shaped by collective changes and especially by capitalism, which make it an important subject to understand modernity, individualism, modern democracy, intimacy, contemporary society, gender roles and relationships.
Modern culture is obsessed with the utopia of romantic love. While society is competitive and the future seems uncertain, finding economic security as an individual becomes increasingly difficult. By forming a unit, the couple relationship becomes an ideal of a stable emotional basis, for validation of the self and financial status. At the same time, this ideal is constantly undermined by individualism, a desire for freedom, variety and autonomy – forced onto us by an emotionalized consumer market. A challenge, which seems to create a new fragility of modern relationships.
Following Sociologist Eva Illouz’ observations heterosexual relationships have become commercialized - women and men meet like on a marketplace that is regulated by supply and demand. Dating Shows (e.g. The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Love Island, ... ) recreate this market through the competitive and staged setting of the show. Praising the couple relationship as the ultimate goal romanticizes partnerships, while the absence of a couple relationship is presented as a deficiency. With the current rise of TV Dating Shows this becomes an indicator for the changing connections between emotion, desire, culture, technology and economy in modern society.