Lifelike is a video that follows disembedding and increasing abstraction of contemporary life; a sublimation that is aesthetic, architectural and financial. Shot in and around Hudson Yards, it surveys the largest and most expensive private real estate development in the history of the United States, which opened in 2019 about a mile north of the Whitney. A gimbal-mounted iPhone captures the shimmering sites while a vibrating pleasure device attached to the camera disturbs their serenity.
While observing the libidinal commingling of finance capitalism and art, the innervated lens collects images of places such as BlackRock, Manhattan West, and the Vessel. Lifelike is made with minor, consumer tools, forging a representation that disorders the ideological image. Video’s form is generated by its materials, and its process made palpable, similar to a neo-structuralist film. Set to the music of UK Brad, its guiding tempo is stuplimity (Sianne Ngai); “a syncretism of boredom and astonishment”, of excessive excitation with extreme desensitization. It is a recognizably contemporary feeling; awe and fatigue, amidst all the overwhelming.
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Image credits: Installation view Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2024 Photography: Oto Gillen