Kirsty Sim

For modern people living in the Internet age, identifying as a fan is becoming one of the dominant ways of consuming pop art. The image of the idol is disassembled by fans and is reborn by reassembling the disassembled pieces. This relationship, which exists somewhere between the object of desire and the subject, asks questions about the possibility of synchronising reality with non-realism. Fans’ love is still considered strange because it is difficult to substitute fan culture for the connection made by having a direct relationship with the other person. Nevertheless, it could be prejudicial and brutal to dismiss this affection as strange because the world has never heard of this love or seen it properly.

I made physical prints with chemicals, scanned them, and manipulated the colours digitally, which I refer it to “processing with digital chemicals”. During the time of the pandemic, I sensed the gap between the social construct from the virtual world and the subsequently increasing desire for it to happen in the physical world. This led me to feel pointless about existing in a physical sense. The visualisation of such frustration in my work implies how the physical interactions and sensory are altered and limited online. At the same time, however, I discovered new ways of complex emotional and psychological interactions* that could be born from the limitations. In this work, I ask how the limitations could be viewed as a promise of possibilities for the future.

“Another World is Possible” is a collaborative, self-organised exhibition by Protozoa. The format of the exhibition takes place on a clone site of the Royal College of Art’s digital body.