PARS PRO TOTO
Online Screenings by peer to space
Pars Pro Toto is peer to space’s online series showcasing video art works which focus on very personal stories narrated by the artist or by the protagonist. The works are embedded in a thematic context of cultural, social, political, or environmental issues. A new iteration focusing on a further topic will be released quarterly.
Pars Pro Toto creates a digital space for users to be silent observers and to simultaneously witness the social complexity of the world. By discovering artworks based on individual experiences yet presented in a broader context, the series demonstrates how the personal symbolizes a part of the whole, a pars pro toto. The personal story seen as an extract of an overall reality becomes visible and fits into the mosaic of the collective experience. Exploring larger issues through the individual lens activates awareness within the viewers. This leads to a deeper and more empathetic understanding of today’s global social conditions. The series promotes the importance of freedom of expression and the necessity of providing a voice for everyone as a basis for a caring and participatory society.
Previous iterations: The Personal is Political, Home Is Where Heart Is, Mirror, Mirror, Hou Lang Tui Qian Lang (后浪推前浪), Another Person In You, Giving Contours To Shadows, Dreams Of Solidarity, Desire Is Something Boundless, My Body, My Choice?
My Body, My Choice?
(Online from April 1 until June 30, 2022)
Works by Echo Can Luo, Corie McGowan, Molly Soda
Curated by Gloria Aino Grzywatz and Tina Sauerlaender
The ninth iteration of Pars Pro Toto explores the themes of capitalism, consumerism, and the beauty industry, topics which from a feminist perspective are decidely interconnected. The stories of artists Echo Can Luo, Corie McGowan, and Molly Soda demonstrate how the female body is subject to forces of influence created by external systems. Such systems affect the personal self-determination of women and suppress it in subtle yet highly efficient and consistent ways. A guarantee of absolute control over one's own body has always been more utopia than reality. A utopia that is once again coming under great threat. All three works make this clear and follow the path of female self-empowerment. The title My Body, My Choice? goes back to the women's rights movement of the 1960s. Even today, this slogan is used as an expression of bodily autonomy and was deliberately formulated here as a question.
Echo Can Luo (CN), Chocho studio-reshaping the face - Chapter one beauty score, video, 4:09 min., 2019
Echo Can Luo
Echo Can Luo's video work Chocho studio-reshaping the face - Chapter one beauty score critically addresses the prevailing trend of cosmetic self-enhancement, which is significantly influenced by social media and the resulting digital beauty craze. These days, machine learning is expected to help humans evolve in the field of plastic surgery as well. However, it is crucial that plastic surgeons are aware that artificial intelligence (AI) could be creating a biased view of patients, rather than promoting objective beauty. More and more young people are using algorithms to determine if their faces are attractive and they’re using AI to rate their looks. But what they really want is the perfect body and face without the help of social media filters. They’d like to be able to take the perfect selfie from all angles, instantly, and without software applications. Their reason for plastic surgery is no longer to look like a star, but to become more and more like their idealized perfect self. To become as beautiful in real life as they are with an Instagram filter.
Corie McGowan (IE/UK), Silicare™, video, 11:19 min., 2019
Corie McGowan
Silicare™ by Corie McGowan explores the underlying anxieties surrounding healthcare products and the hyper-capitalized regimes that govern them. Healthcare is a lucrative market - and whenever possible, private companies attempt to profit. Thus, the availability of health care services through market relationships is often affordable only to those who are able to pay for them. McGowan's work addresses precisely this dark reality of hyper-capitalism. Silicare™ plays on the notion of parody; it paints an almost near future in which ultra-personalized, "multi-faceted" healthcare dominates our screens. We are fixated on getting "better" and solving our problems with narrow-minded, artificial intelligence-driven "smart" care, 3D-printed pharmaceuticals, and digital primary care physicians. Anxiety and hypochondria are on the rise in our society. At the same time, we face climate emergencies and a sense of being corrupted by the environment or alienated from our bodies. McGowan addresses and critically illuminates these paradoxes.
Molly Soda (PRI/US), Wanna Know My Secret?, 03:28 min., 2020
Molly Soda
Wanna Know My Secret? by Molly Soda explores the capitalist behavior of U.S. drugstores. They are known to throw away great quantities of expired makeup every year and destroy it in order to prevent people from taking it out of the trash and continuing to use it. Intent on continuously increasing their own profits, the entire industry is constantly coming up with new products and flooding the market with overstock. At the same time, the mostly female consumers are persuaded that the products make their lives better, that they themselves are more attractive, more valuable, more desirable if they use them. At the same time, the link between capitalism and the beauty industry fuels a division within the female sex. Instead of standing together, they are forcibly classified as haves and have nots: the people who can participate in this industry and those who lack the financial resources to do so. A clandestine class struggle is perpetuated by the fact that the cosmetics industry sets female beauty ideals and beautiful people are perceived as more successful, which consequently opens more doors for them. Soda's work critically questions these issues and imagines a form of self-care that is removed from external influences.
Previous PARS PRO TOTO iterations:
The Personal is Political (2020)
Home Is Where Heart Is (2020)
Mirror, Mirror (2020)
Hou Lang Tui Qian Lang (后浪推前浪) (2021)
Another Person In You (2021)
Giving Contours To Shadows (2021)
Dreams Of Solidarity (2021)
Desire is Something Boundless (2022)
My Body, My Choice? (2022)