spaceman
I see space as the Great Frontier of the modern era, further separating humans from our home, further entertaining the idea of continual conquest and expansion. I chose images of muscular, white, stereotypically attractive men - images that inundate our cultural and economic milieux - and bathed them in pictures of nature, technology, and most importantly, space.
These images of men are the byproduct of a capitalist consumer culture that prioritizes and rewards arbitrarily determined masculine features and qualities. A complacent cog in the capitalist machine, the "straight man" becomes not just an idea, but a reification of masculinity - favoring economic, political, and social obedience in lieu of challenging systems which reward it. By marrying images of modern masculinity with images of space, I want to question commonly held ideas of identity and purpose, and disrupt our compliance in current systems wielding power.
Muscle, power, control, domination - all are attributed to masculinity, all are rewarded in modern culture. Such dogmatic conceptions of masculinity hurt everyone by accelerating the commodification and colonization of natural and human capital. Space exploration merely presents the newest brand of masculinity sold as a leap forward in human "progress", pulling us even further down the road of separation and ensuring that even when pain, death, and destruction shout from every corner of our only home, our eyes are fixed, unhesitating, toward space.
08/08/16
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