CHEAP TACTICS
After my bachelor show in 2017 someone wrote an article, calling my collection ”tacky cool” which was absolutely true, but I hadn’t really thought about it like that. Then it dawned on me - I secretly love over the top tacky things. So when we had to make a visual book of interest, for the first semester of the masters program, I decided to explore this fascination. The book was a small collection of things that are in the space between amazing and really ugly. Includes a conversation abut the all things tacky and photos from my personal library.
- Tacky The characteristic of something/someone trying to grab someone’s attention with cheap tactics to overplay their value. - urbandictionary.com I continued collecting visuals of tacky aesthetics, and I realized that the tackiness is a reflection of mass culture and overproduction. All the shiny things we don’t need is tacky. I find it deeply interesting how we produce things without function that no-one really needs but still has value.
The concept of overplaying value by using cheap tactics, is something we see all the time. Fake bodies, fake faces made with plastic surgery, makeup, shapewear and so on. We are also starting to see attempt on faking plastic surgery, as its highly expensive and considered a luxury that, only famous and rich people can afford. technologies as Facetune and facefilters, can change your whole body and face, which are used to create online personas. If the face filters on Intagram isn’t enough, youtube will give you hundreds and hundreds of tutorials on how you fake having lip fillers. Newest addition; Glue your upper lip back!
Plastic is one of the easiest and cheapest material to produce, and that’s why we use it for everything, when I think of the word fake I think of plastic. It seems like there is a plastic version of everything natural. Faux fur, artificial food, synthetic hair, fake snow, fake grass and the list goes on.
