Laura Shill: Separation Perfected | Project Room

Separation Perfected constructs a contemporary altarpiece to the omniscient presence in the lives of contemporary humans—the smart phone. In the face of corrupt systems and uncertain times, the masses find solace in a curated and virtual reality. Named for the first chapter in Guy Debord’s prescient 1967 text The Society of the Spectacle, Separation Perfected revisits the idea that “life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.”

 

As we increasingly experience our lives as documentation of experience, are we creating a new definition of experience that reflects our discomfort with the present conditions of our existence? This installation creates an altar to the selfie, mirroring our desires and underlying anxieties. We are both together and alone in our filtered feed of images in which we exist to each other as image-objects. As our relationships with our devices becomes ever more intimate, it becomes clear that they have become extensions of our own bodies. And as we gaze into the mirror window of the smart phone, it simultaneously connects and isolates.

 

This work is not meant to serve as an indictment of our increasingly visual culture, but

seeks to understand better how the constant act of looking and being looked at is changing our species and altering human experience in ways we don’t yet fully understand. Asking what it means to be present in multiple places at once, begs the additional question of what it means to be present at all. And if we are so truly connected to each other, then why are we so lonely?