Exploring the connection and isolation, eroticism and detachment, when we started making the machine learning experiments series in 2019, we had no idea then how our collective relationship with machines, screens and technology would shift so dramatically come the pandemic year of our Lord, 2020.
The steadily ever increasingly online-ification of day to day life, communication, commerce, sex and social relationships took a massive and unprecedented leap when lockdown forced us into isolated bubbles with only our black squares for company and connection with the outside world.
Somewhere between the end of some surreal ASMR YouTube recommendation rabbit hole and the climax of a B movie Phillip K Dick plot twist, we present to you, Automaton.
The pull of the black square, the luminous screen, both a window and a mirror has been ever more persistent in our consciousness. Increasingly our presence only felt when mediated through a lens or an app or an algorithm, an intermediary of our existence. Creeping derealisation.
You belong to the machine, you are nothing, you are use, you are there to be taken, entered, fucked without feeling.
Although they are technically inert objects, tools we own and willingly use, it increasingly feels as though our devices, and the forces behind them, control our lives. An unexplainable unease, the sense of constant observation and manipulation. A direct line into our subconscious. Whether the reality is fact or conspiracy theory we can’t escape the palpable sense of discontent, the question - who is in control? - remains.
I’m a 90s baby and the scene in The Matrix where a disorientated, naked Neo gulps awake inside the primordial birthing pod finally able to perceive his true reality had an interesting impact on my psyche. Before I start sounding like those dad Facebook posts about the dangers of social media, there’s no moral or value judgment here. The phenomenon exists, so why not explore and more importantly, eroticise it.
featuring performers Miss Marilyn and Daisy Love and a lot a lot a lot of extension cables, with an original score from from Boy Harsher's Augustus Muller - this is a swan song to the digital isolation and claustrophobic, erotic imagination of the last year.
Making this film was entirely influenced by the conditions of pandemic, this is pre vaccine and mid lockdown so getting to bubble up with the crew and make something in close quarters felt like such a joy and a privilege. The usual testing centres were closed so we had to think of ways to fuck and film outside of the norm - machines and gloves and barriers became our friends.
Marilyn and Daisy were the absolute best, navigating all the temperamental technology fuck ups in what was a pretty ambitious set up in our spare room. They’re both talented fucking artists in their own right and they brought so much to set not least of all making me laugh my head off for the first time in what felt like a year.
Incredible on set photos by BLSSM to be released in full shortly
This trilogy is some of the hottest, weirdest and most ambitious work we’ve made but it’s summer here and the world feels a little more hopeful and open and I’m craving some warmth and human heat and physical touch to counteract the dystopia. FEATURING Miss Marilyn Daisy Love
MUSIC original score by Augustus Muller
REFERENCES All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Adam Curtis, BBC(2011) The Matrix, Lana & Lily Wachowski (1999)
CONTENT NOTES domination, powerlessness, vague kidnap and intoxication vibes.
