I work with moving image to consider the relationship between popular culture and politics, fiction and reality, and past, present and future. I explore the extent to which fictional characters and narratives bleed into the world’s socio-political reality.
Extract from Q&A with Chloe Austin
Reality and fiction is so muddled in The Ecstasy of Communications that the real is made to feel strange. The smartphone footage of the Grenfell Tower fire is surreal. How is this real, how could it happen? Scenes from the The War Games felt more likely. I wondered which conflict they came from, only later discovering it was a fictional film. Has moving image made reality and fiction indistinguishable?
I often find that lack of context – in addition to readiness – of the images we consume creates a fertile ground for the muddling of fiction and reality. Decontextualised images are very often the spark of viral fake news stories, causing mass misinformation. The Ecstasy of Communications takes decontextualisation further, so that image consumers begin to question where these images come from, have been manipulated, or even how they have been obtained. Indeed, the online readiness of moving images and the accessibility of smartphone recordings have been key towards their repurposing for this new jarring anti-context.
