Combining the ‘perfect’ with the ‘real’ – A Re-Think

This idea stems from the DOVE campaign, which looks at how people view themselves. I like the idea of bringing normal, everyday people into my performance.

I have developed my initial idea, the new idea is to take pictures of people I find going about their general day-to-day lives and mix these with the magazine pull-outs I have of celebrities. This is to show how inhuman celebrities are made to be.

I have also thought about possible audience interaction. I will split the performance in half. For the first half I will have the audience creating their idea of perfect on my face and hair. The second half will have them creating the media’s idea of perfect. Each time a ‘face’ is created a picture will be taken and these will be added to the walls showing the differences between the media’s perception of perfect and the real perception of perfect.

For the second half, there will be another laptop which will have www.youtube.com on, so the audience can look at make-up tutorials to aid their creation. This will also show the audience how difficult it is to look like a celebrity.

To see how well they worked, I was able to test them first with the help of a friend. This is a Kim Kardashian look.


Here is the outcome.

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WORKS CITED

GossMakeupArtist (2012) How To: Kim Kardashian Concealer Glow Tutorial 

Dove Beauty Campaign Article

Dove uses FBI Sketch Artist to Show Women How Negatively They See Themselves Compared to Others

Jim Edwards | Apr. 16, 2013, 10:13 AM | 16,712 |

Dove Unilever

Dove / Unilever

Unilever’s “real beauty” campaign for Dove is becoming increasingly clever. This time around, the soap brand and its agency, Ogilvy, employed an FBI sketch artist to draw women as they described themselves.

The artist never actually saw the women who describe themselves — they’re seated behind a curtain.

Then, someone else is asked to describe the same woman, and the sketch artist — Gil Zamora, who works as a forensic artist for the FBI — goes to work again.

Depressingly, the sketches produced from women’s self-descriptions are uglier than those drawn from strangers’ descriptions.

The side-by-side sketches in the video are compelling, but take them with a pinch of salt. Some of Dove’s previous efforts in “real beauty” have been too clever by half. It recently released a Photoshop “action” that allegedly undid airbrushing on models in fashion images — but it turned out not to work.

Prior to that, it allegedly ran a Facebook ad campaign the company claimed would let users “replace” weight-loss ads that make women feel bad about themselves. In fact, Business Insider revealed the ads did no such thing.

Creatively, however, it’s fantastic stuff:

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/dove-uses-fbi-sketch-artist-to-show-women-how-negatively-they-see-themselves-compared-to-others-2013-4#ixzz2RNHwf2XJ

WORKS CITED

Edwards, Jim (2013) Dove uses FBI Sketch Artist to Show women how negatively they see themselves compared to others Online: www.businessinsider.com (accessed: April 24th)

‘Human beings are “social animals” their habits, desires, hopes, fears and beliefs are shaped by various societies into which they are born’

‘Human beings are “social animals” their habits, desires, hopes, fears and beliefs are shaped by various societies into which they are born’

We are surrounded by newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the internet, which are crowded with ‘celebrities’. Basically, people who are the same as everyone else but they have more money and are idolised…by us. The public. Their fans. Today’s society, myself included, are obsessed with appearance and body image. People either want to follow the latest fashion trends, or want to be ‘alternative’ by not following the trends, which is consequently creating their own trend. And these so-called ‘celebrities’ use the media as their main tool to communicate with the public. They thrive on any publicity, good and bad.

As a collective we are happy to moan about the celebrity culture that appears to be taking over, however, we don’t actually do anything to change it. This is something which I want to explore further.

 

 

WORKS CITED

Haeberle, J. Erwin (1983) The Sex Atlas Continuum Publishing Company: New York

 

Influences

Marina Abramovic – As I am writing my dissertation about Marina Abramovic, a performance artist, it is difficult to not be influenced by her work. She has created numerous performances ranging from carving a star into her stomach with a razor blade, to sharing the stage with a python, to sitting for over 700 hours opposite individual audience members. Like Joseph Beuys, Marina has looked at the idea of transformation. Her work consists of the power of the body and mind. Her earlier works and her collaborations focus mainly on the body, which she views as an object. Her later work looks at the mind and different states of consciousness the performer and audience develop together.

Her performance Art Must Be Beautiful features  a typically feminine action which she repeats ‘the artist combs her hair forcefully, without a pause, for more than 50 minutes’ while doing this ‘she repeats the sentence “art must be beautiful, artist must be beautiful” like a mantra’.

Elizabeth Price – Recently won the 2012 Turner Prize for her piece Woolworths Choir of 1979, a video installation, which combined the burning of the Central Manchester branch of Woolworths with church architecture and the 1960’s girl band the Shangr-Las. The element that made this piece as powerful as it was, was the musical element she included. It consisted of a group of delicately placed clicks and claps which featured throughout the piece, showing genre changes and tempo changes. As an audience member the sound that encased the room made the piece more compelling and interesting to watch, the room in which you could either sit or stand was pitch black so all the attention was focused on the screen.


The ‘music’ in this video is what she used in her actual performance and the clicks and claps I have referred to.

WORKS CITED

Re.act Feminism (1975) Marina Abramovic Online: www.reactfeminism.org (accessed: March 5th)

Tate (2013) Turner Prize Winner: Elizabeth Price Online: www.youtube.com (accessed March 5th)

Social Networks

Facebook and Twitter are becoming extremely popular. They are used by actors, performers, directors, casting agencies, theatre companies, celebrities and many more. These social networking sites have become a stepping stone for actors and theatre companies as it is a quick and easy way to find out about auditions or shows that are being performed.

Back in October 2012, Facebook reached 1 billion users and has continued to grow since. It is estimated that there are 554,750,000 active Twitter users, which amounts to approximately 58 million tweets a day.

These sites are have become so popular and act as an essential part of people’s daily lives that they are now classified as legal documents.

I decided to set up a Twitter and Facebook account advertising and explaining a little about my performance. However, I am also using this to source people’s views and opinions about being perfect and beautiful. I will then use these as a part of my performance.

 

 

 

WORKS CITED

Huffington Post (2013) Twitter Statistics Online: www.statisticbrain.com