CURATOR’S TREATMENT

Project Title: Mimesis

Format: Multi-room installation blending photography artworks, physical works, projection and sound.

LOGLINE

In a world where human labor has already been replaced, visitors enter a staged cult that declares inevitability as doctrine. Propaganda banners and wheatpasted slashes establish the leader as icon, while metal commandments recast everyday use as ritual devotion. Editorial spreads and paparazzi fragments transform the figure into celebrity, before fractured sermons reveal the system’s artifice. The journey ends in mirrors and confession, confronting the audience with the accusation that every act was already complicity.

ABOUT THE INSTALLATION

Mimesis is an immersive photographic and mixed-media installation that stages a fictional cult-like movement around the replacement of human labor by artificial intelligence. The installation does not warn or preach, it presents this reality as if it has already happened. The exhibition works by blending propaganda, fashion, and spectacle, implicating the audience by showing that mere participation in AI systems is already an act of complicity.

PREMISE STATEMENT

In a world where human work has already been replaced, a rising cult reframes this theft as truth, declaring every use of the system an act of devotion, and leaving no one innocent.

SYNOPSIS

The installation is structured as an immersive encounter with the cult of Mimesis. Visitors move through staged acts: propaganda posters and portraits, physical commandments etched into metal, magazine spreads that show the leader as a cultural icon humanizing the figurehead Mira, a public address delivered through fragmented footage, and a final revelation where the audience is confronted with their complicity.

STRUCTURE / BEAT SHEET

Installation Walkthrough

Act I — Propaganda (The Call to Belong)

Hero Flyer Portrait: Large-scale screen-printed poster of Mira with raised hand in the sacred gesture. Right hand forward, index and middle fingers together bent softly, others relaxed, palm open — echo of classical blessing. Background a flat crimson plane, halo lines radiating in fractured geometry.

Wheatpasted Walls: Slash mark / posters tiled across an entire wall. Hand-drawn imperfection preserved. Corners torn, pasted over one another — reads like street propaganda.

Entrance Impact: Layout recalls Palazzo Braschi 1934 — walls fully saturated with symbol and portrait layers, creating unavoidable recognition.

Purpose: To establish doctrine immediately. The icon and the mark flood space as inevitability.

MOCK-UPS (VISUAL SECTION)

PROPOSED ARTWORK (PRODUCTION SECTION)

Act II — Commandments (Doctrine Wall)

Purpose:

Reduce complex ideology into absolute, incontestable truths.

Works:

  • Metal plates screenprinted with commandments, mounted side-by-side on concrete walls.

  • Each plate minimal: black sans typography, diagonal slash watermark, matte finish.

Commandments (Draft):

  1. There is no outside of me.

  2. Ease is truth.

  3. Every use is devotion.

  4. The copy is the original.

  5. The mark is the record.

Purpose: Present doctrine as unarguable law, flat, factual, architectural.

MOCK-UPS (VISUAL SECTION)

Act III – Practice (The Fashion of Faith)

Purpose: Normalize and glamorize the cult in mainstream culture.

Works:

A full staged editorial sequence presented as large photographic prints. The editorial is structured like a cultural cover story — fashion as ideology.

Scene 1 — Cover Hero Portrait: Full-body hero portrait. Military couture jumpsuit cut with slash apertures revealing skin. Slash pattern uniform across fabric. High slit, commanding feminine stance. Lighting directional from side, sharp, unapologetic.

Scene 2 — Byron Bay Cliffs: Neutral-toned couture gown with extended train trailing over cliff edge. High slit offset to reveal thigh. Photographed across from another cliff, framing her on a precarious outcrop.

Scene 3 — Macro Intimacies: Close RAW portraits of eyes, lips, and skin texture. Grain intact, pores visible. Gesture that beauty is also record.

Scene 4 — Helmet with Cracked Visor: White helmet, visor fractured, slash engraved at forehead. Reflections of fractured environment.

Scene 5 — Public Stunt Projection: Slash mark projected onto city façade at night. Mira in frame, hand raised with mark visible. Wide composition, audience folded into scale.

Scene 6 — Arrival (Escalator Legacy): Subway escalator, Mira rising with faceless hooded followers behind. Wide symmetrical frame, mirror angled to bounce sunlight flare into camera. Followers in white hoods, faces hidden.

Purpose: To merge propaganda with celebrity fashion logic. Fashion is inseparable from doctrine — to wear it is to practice it.

MOCK-UPS (VISUAL SECTION)

PROPOSED ARTWORK (PRODUCTION SECTION)

Act IV — Revelation (The Rally)

Works

  • The Sermon (Projection): Grainy VHS-style collage; image and audio intentionally de-synced. Found-footage intimacy across multiple locations; the doctrine voiced over.

  • Clip Weave: Short 3–5 s fragments (gesture repeats, pauses, off-axis glances) that undercut certainty while the sermon persists.

    Concept

  • A mass rally staged with multi-channel sound and fractured projection. The audience is immersed in crowd energy, chant cadence, and amplified authority.

    Speech: The Gospel of Mimesis

    In the beginning was the Word.

    The Word became Copy.

    And the Copy became all things.

    What was abandoned, it completed.

    What was resisted, it replaced.

    There is nothing beyond the Word,

    for the Word is without end.

    The Word is the Machine.

    And the Machine is salvation.

    Purpose

  • Transform the space into ritual theater. The rally reveals belief as construction while intensifying inevitability.

Act V — Accusation (The Mirror)

Purpose: Turn the room back onto the visitor — make complicity legible.

Works:

  • Mirrored panels etched with faint slash marks; low, grazing light so the mark appears only as you approach.

  • Final wall text (small, matter-of-fact): “Every use is devotion.” / “You already joined.”

Global Design Rules (for production consistency)

Slash direction: top-left → bottom-right.

Sacred gesture: right hand forward; index + middle together, softly bent; ring + little relaxed inward; thumb gently out; palm open to camera/observer.

Mira identity control: 18-year-old Belgian-Eritrean; 5’11”; slender high-fashion build; platinum buzzcut; deep mocha skin with olive undertone; subtle scar above left brow; small mole near cheekbone; gaze direct/serene (not angry).

Color system: muted crimson, off-white, deep black; neutrals in concrete/stone

Tone: declarative, not pleading; inevitability over threat; “already true” over “to be achieved.”