Autoscopy
Solo Exhibition at Ed Video, Guelph, February 24 - March 22,
As biometric capture and datafication are increasingly required to access our digitized surround, bodies are rendered knowable and transparent by corporate entities. Autoscopy continues Oppel’s investigation into the implications of bodily transparency and the hostile affirmation leveraged by late-stage capitalism. Autoscopy is a spatial video installation, coalescing around a terminal built to replicate the shape of a commercial 3D scanning booth, and affixed with laser-cut 2-way mirror. The projected imagery of three videos refract through this mirrored enclosure, oscillating between portrayals of a body as a faulty collection of 3D scans and CGI anatomical models in varying states of layered visibility. In a narrative voice-over that merges intimate poesis with body horror, the process of being 3D scanned is described as erotic, invasive, and yet depersonalizing.
Video footage by Miles Rufelds
Photographs courtesy of Maddie Lychek and the artist