All studio members come from various humanities disciplines, including philosophy, art history, political science and documentary studies. This blend of backgrounds is reflected in the diversity of the creations and techniques we employ. We started producing together under this single entity, u2p050, because we believe in mixing our skills as they could converge to shape a single cohesive universe. In our minds, philosophical research, sound design, image production and text production are inextricably linked and cannot be separated. They form one way of processing and producing art.
Honestly, *Smack Dat* was conceived as a joke exhibition, delving into the quirky side of the self-kiss symbol. The kiss of Emmanuel Macron was our very first production of an image that provokes amused reactions from the audience. We have therefore created a series of political kisses, spanning the entire political spectrum, as various interpretations of narcissism and political pride.
Given the current AI boom and the viral nature of such generated images *- such as the Pope donning Balenciaga and Donald Trump pursued by police -*, we felt it was the opportune moment to engage with the virality of these images and play with it. These images aptly portray the troubled times we are currently living, where artificially generated images still remain distinct from “real images”.
So we tried to bring another virality for these images, propel these out of the screens and infuse them with a tangible presence. Consequently, we’ve plastered the image of Macron kissing himself across Paris, conducted a sandwich board-man performance in front of the Centre Pompidou, and worn out auto-kiss T-shirts in various Parisian venues during Fashion Week.
First of all, we believe there is a strong cultural overlap between the US, Europe, and France. The political and ideological problems in the United States have a big echo in France and vice versa. That is why the show includes these two references.
On another hand, we are currently working on a documentary about the Capitol attack, composed by AI-generated archives. We select sentences formulated by the various actors involved in the event, from Donald Trump’s tweets to the report presented by the 6th January Committee, and use them as *prompts* to generate our images. AI proves to be a powerful medium to produce true/fake images to speak about an event that happened mainly because of the circulation of fake news.
In *Smack Dat*, the American auto-kiss series served as references to key moments in the history of the post-truth regime, with the Bush autokiss, referring to the deceit surrounding the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Likewise, the Clinton pizza auto-kiss serves as a nod to the Pizzagate conspiracy, while the Musk auto-kiss embodies the significance of Twitter and its newly appointed COE in perpetuating the propagation of fake news.
Trump is the very first auto-kiss that we’ve created. While generating a lot of images for the Capitol attack documentary, we tried an experiment featuring Trump engaging in self-kisses and we just loved the result. Trump is also surely the ultimate embodiment of political bride and the manipulation of information in politics. So that’s why we picked him as the main piece.
We collaborated with Puff Rugs, a super talented carpet maker. Lilly, from Puff Rugs and the niece of our gallerists, creates some super flashy carpets and we felt it was the perfect addition for the Pop-Up store vibe and an opportunity to dive deeper into the textile medium. Instead of generating a super realistic Trump kiss, we opted for a carton-style one that fits Lilly’s aesthetic. This Trump rug is a one on one piece! There won’t be any other.
The effect you are talking about is what we call the glowy effect. We wanted to add a kind of fake/cartoon layer to the image so that they don’t appear too realistic. This eyeliner and lipstick are among the outputs we got through artificial intelligence.
Because… you know… We mean… 2003 – Akon! We felt the name of the song was the perfect match with the exhibition.
Auto-kiss t-shirts can be purchased directly on our website.
Next September, we will be showing a combination of VR and sound installation at So-Hotel in Paris. We will then go to Taiwan for two months in order to prototype a new XR work called Deep Ecology. We are pursuing a long term artistic investigation on the consequences of the global infrastructure that subtends our increased digitized world. From microchips to fiber optic cables, we’ll delve into intriguing stories, such as 3.0 nomads in Kyrgyzstan who move around the steppes with their crypto mining equipment stored in a truck.
