by Josefine Hübler
Linn Phyllis Seeger’s series “Facescapes 01, 02” resembles an odyssey into one’s own existential woods.
We venture deeper into a terrain that seems like a never-ending process of exploration. It establishes an understanding of our own vulnerability and fragmented reality by representing hers. In the form of overlapping 3D models, Seeger displays how she identifies herself as well as her social and cultural environment as a data-generated microcosm. Picture yourself existing in infinite variations as data in a virtual space.
Does it frighten you? — Does it unsettle you? — Do you fear the lack of control? — What is happening to our personal data? — To what extent is your identity embedded in this data material?
The exemplary landscapes, composed of fragmented and reassembled facial parts of the artist, decontextualize her physical presence and turn it into an ongoing process of disintegration without beginning or end.
The basic idea of the series focuses primarily on the tensions between possession and freedom, repetition and singularity. Through the extreme fragmentation of her body, Seeger consciously plays with the notion of collectability. The buyer can now acquire a terrain or fragment of the artist and thus, own her. The material and immaterial identity is crushed, distributed and circulated until it develops a life of its own. Through the use of Blockchain, the owner also becomes a part of Seeger’s terrain. It is about the sale and trade of and with data, generated by Seeger and further developed through other points of encounters.
In doing so, Linn Phyllis Seeger negotiates in an exciting way how art can serve as a projection screen for lived experiences. Through the exaggerated option of “collecting” her, it becomes clear that in the art world it is not merely the detached artwork that is turned into the object of desire, but rather the brand/identity of the artist/producer him/herself, resulting in a fetishization of the actual Artist as such. People tend to wonder where Seeger comes from, what she majored in, what she looks like, where she grew up, how she started producing art and which personal experiences feed into her work. But her artistic DNA resides in the very nature of the internet, cyberspace and how it commodifies and monetizes our lives and identities.
Seeger attempts to turn personal experiences and her identity into the apparent “possession” of the other.
In order to create democratic access and transparency of knowledge, Seeger produces her work exclusively on her iPhone. It enables a direct, immediate exchange and production process. As a result, Seeger becomes entangled in a process while she is still creating. For her, this series serves as an ironic reflection of her personal experience during the creative process, finding its expression in numerous elements of the artwork. Humorous accounts, but also accessible techniques provide the impact of “Facescapes 01, 02”.
In her 3D modelling application, all elements created are first saved as .obj (objects) files. They are consequently all being reduced to a single function — being an object. Whether human features, natural elements or data structures. Everything ends up in several .obj files. Seeger experiments with this issue by showing the simultaneity of irrelevance and relevance. In this work, the objectification of people as a method of maintaining power structures is being questioned through denying and degrading the underlying qualities of the subject and reducing them to absurdity. The same phenomenon can be observed in the virtual space. The anonymization and ‘avatarization’ of identities generate forces that develop an unbelievable impetus of its own.
Linn Phyllis Seeger designates herself as a Cloud-based Artist. Her work navigates between digital photography, 3D animation and screen-based video art. As a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art, she currently resides in London.
To watch “Facescape_02“ and discover our other artist vistit https://www.prtl.art/artists/linn-phyllis-seeger
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