Despina Rangou
MA work
MA work
Jouissance
‘The Future Will be Fantastic. Are your emotions helping or hurting you? You can choose who you want to be’. These are some examples of messages that overflow mass communication in our times, let this be on or off line.Â
Nowadays we seem to have the choice of identity, sexual
orientation, religion, our own bodies, and gender. From small, everyday things
to fundamentals we are highly individualised, or at least we think we are. The
way we make choices is ultimately linked to the way we form relationships with
others and how we think others see us. There is an apparent paradoxical new
self-made individual human who is on one hand free to create an identity from
scratch, and on the other to follow an arbitrary popular model of who to be,
deriving from celebrity culture accessible through our online virtual realities
associated with social media, blogging sites and constant communication through
our portable devices. We have reached a point where we complain about numerous
emails, as if these notes are burdens we can’t cope with. We refer to our
phones as if they are human beings claiming that they’re ‘dying’ when they run
out of battery and we adorn them with decorating ‘skins’.
Do these choices offer us jouissance?
Jouissance is sometimes translated as
‘enjoyment’ but is not to be mistaken with the term ‘pleasure’, as it
transcends beyond it, into an unbearable level of excitation. A triangular methodology
translates an imaginary symbol into a signifier of the real. An installation
situated in the Stevens building, allegedly called the Gabb Lounge, aims to
explore this ecstatic notion of our modern society, through workshops,
artifacts and video installations.
Info
Info
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MA Degree
School
School of Communication
Programme
MA Visual Communication, 2014
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Contact
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Inspired by the way public spaces, our social constructions on and off-line, shape human behaviour in our day and age, my practice deploys physical, ephemeral interventions to playfully engage with audiences and challenge their current perceptions. My work takes the form of sculptural installations and video, often combined with educational workshops, which actively engage audiences in dialogues about our current identities and pre-fabricated individual choices.Â
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Degrees
- BA Graphic Design, Camberwell College of Arts, 2011
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Exhibitions
- Synthetic Aesthetics, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2014; Third Space, Royal College of Art, 2013; Mapping Futures, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2013