Zeitgeist - FaceControl

Shrinking Face Time

[на български]

18.06.2007 Ventsislav Zankov

It all comes down to control in the end…control comes in many shapes. Plastic surgery, designer babies, you name it. The end result is that face control became the epitome of our time. It’s a real slap in the face: you don’t have the right face….whatever this is about…You don’t have ‘the looks’: the appropriate, desirable features that qualify. And it shows on your face, you are unacceptable, you are turned down one more time, and access is denied. Your face is awkward, you are trouble, and you just don’t fit. You look different; with this face of yours you will never qualify. ‘How come?’  is the wrong question. It’s not about seeking explanations, it’s all about bodyguards and protection.

Clearly, it’s your face that gives the answers, and you can’t get them, the mirror your look into turns them upside down. Chances are that you will have to change your face, it’s a face/off [1] time: be someone else, why not the movie hero? Think of yourself as someone different, for a change. Get a life for yourself, be good-looking, smart, well-off, eligible…be someone important 2. Plastic surgery blew up the territory where face meets identity and equipped us with yet another sensitive reason for identity crisis.  We lost the guarantee that what you see is what you get. Appearances can neither hide nor reveal any more, skin3 is being reduced to an object, indicating the lifestyle and status of its ‘bearer’...these are the beginnings of face control. If you are unable to hide and weed out the awkward and the unacceptable, then guess what…you will not fit in. Feel free to ‘get lost’. Next comes annual statistics on casualties 4. It’s that easy: rejected equals ‘free of’; ‘free of’ equals ‘ready for’. The sophisticated crime of representing imposed values becomes a fact of life. It’s your face that gives you away. If you can’t change it, try some disguise5 and avoid the unavoidable risk of being spotted. Spotting someone and getting to know them are worlds apart…and will be.   

Translation Vania Nedialkova

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[1] Jonh Woo, Face/Off: action drama, 1997 {the characters of John Travolta and Nickolas Cage caught in a gripping identity swap}

2 Alexander Valchev, Reminiscences: photography, 2005 {remake of Renaissance portraits, featuring Vulchev’s contemporaries}

3 Ventsislav Zankov, Levitation: C print, 2002 {the artist pieced together the scanned images of his body parts, each piece presenting a truthful image, except for the end result}

4 Lubomir Armutliev, Boys Don’t Cry Indeed: photography, 2006

5 Boryana Rosa, We Know You Love Us: photography, 2003

"We Know You Love Us"

is a series of 20 portraits of teenage women criminals.
These photographs were made during an art therapy meant to help their socialisation.
As part of the psychodrama class these girls had to create an
"alter ego" make up and explain what it is.
They pose in front of a civil defense agitation poster against nuclear war.
This poster remained in their school from the eighties.
The portraits represent the following characters:

The Angel

The Warrior

The Prisoner

The Witch

Caesar and Cleopatra