Zeitgeist  - face control

The Face Of Our Time

[български] [english version 2 ]

18.06.2007 Ventsislav Zankov

The spirit of our time does not only require but also is a control--many and diverse controls. This control exist on every level including seemingly the most private one—our DNA. One’s “face” controls other’s “face” and this is the “face” of our times. We are often “shut in the face” by “your face is not appropriate.” You don’t look like “everyone else”—your face betrays you—you don’t belong to “these” or to the “others”; you don’t belong to “the privileged,” to “the appropriate,” to “the acceptable”--your face is “rejected”, your face is “not allowed.”

Your face upsets, confuses, disrupts the acceptable order. You look different, your face reveals you are not from the “appropriate, ” your face reveals that you are “not suitable.” No suitable for what? Why? Explanations are usually missing. The face control and the body guard are there instead.

It means the answers are probably written on your forehead. Unfortunately you are not capable to read them, because the mirror you look at is flipping them. The only thing you can think of doing is to change your face--“face/off” [1] —to become a movie character, to look like someone else, to be someone else, to think you are someone else—beautiful, intelligent, rich, acceptable and important. [2]

The plastic surgery had torn apart the pair face/identity. This is just one more painful reason for your identity crisis. There is no more guarantee that what you look is what you are. The surface of the skin does not reveal or hide identities. The skin is already a self sufficient object. [3] The only thing the skin reveals is the life style: the standard of living, the financial or social status of its beholder. These are the marks the face control looks for and builds its values on. This is where the “control over the face” begins. The one who is not capable or does not have the resources to clean or hide the marks of time or social status is not for this time and not for this society. This person is free to be absent, free to disappear. These persons can make that in a way of their choice: jumping out of a window, driving a hole in a head with a hammer drill or hanging themselves with electrical cables.

The accident statistics is what is left behind. [4]

Losers! The little step from “rejected” to “being released from” and “being ready for” is made. The crime is committed. This crime is the “face” of the imposed values.

Your face betrays you.

If you can’t change it you would better “mask” [5] it to escape the inescapable—to be recognized.

Although recognizing have never been knowing and will never be.

Translation Boryana Rossa

[1] Jonh Woo, Face/Off: action drama, 1997 {the characters of John Travolta and Nickolas Cage caught in a gripping identity swap}

[2] Alexander Valchev, Reminiscences: photography, 2005 {remake of Renaissance portraits, featuring Valchev’s contemporaries}

[3] Ventsislav Zankov, Levitation: C print, 2002 {the artist pieced together the scanned images of his body parts, each piece presenting a truthful image, except for the end result}

  [4] Lubomir Armutliev, Boys Don’t Cry Indeed: photography, 2006

[5] Boryana Rosa, We Know You Love Us: photography, 2003, Caesar and Cleopatra

We Know You Love Us: photography, 2003
"We Know You Love Us" is a series of 20 portraits of
teenage women criminals. These photographs were made
during an art therapy meant to help their
socialisation. As part of the psychodrama class these
girls had to create an "alter ego" make up and explain
what it is. They pose in front of a civil defense
agitation poster against nuclear war. This poster
remained in their school from the eighties.

The portraits represent the following characters:

The Angel
The Warrior
The Prisoner
The Witch
Caesar and Cleopatra