Simon Boas, Kris Blackmore: No in Disguise
Artist(s):
Title:
- No in Disguise
Collection:
Creation Year:
- 2018
Medium:
- Experimental documentary, multi-media installation
Category:
Artist Statement:
No in Disguise is an experimental documentary and multi-media installation that takes a multi-tiered approach to explore conversations with men about toxic attitudes toward women.
To conduct nuanced conversations on this subject, the artists target dating site users via techniques inspired by online advertising: A computer program searches through the text in users’ profiles to find those who have made statements that show a potentially harmful attitude about sexual consent. The artists then engage in conversation with these users through a fictional female profile named Emily.
These guerrilla interviews effectively promote dialogue by striking a careful balance between anonymity and invested interest that opens people up to complicated concepts. The artists have structured these discussions in a way that encourages non-inflammatory dialogue that prioritizes listening and understanding over winning an argument.
The artists then invite volunteers to read transcripts of the conversations on video. Their features are deconstructed and randomly recombined with every playthrough so that the definitions are read by an endless procession of voices and faces that look like every man and no man in particular. At the end of the reenactments the volunteers are invited to respond to anything they just read, thus creating a new level of conversation.
