Visage - Iteration #1
Visage - Iteration #2 (Demo)
Visage - Iteration #1 and #2 , Hologram. 2022 - Current
Video Directed, Edited, Recorded, Composed, and animated by: Mo Darwish
An ongoing and current collaborative video project, where I record friends and participants facial structure. The videos recorded are of different point of view of the face, all taken at the same and exact moment; frontal, three quarter, and sides, all in two different vanishing points above and on the horizon line. The face is then re assembled through collaging and video editing, where all the faces are spliced together resulting in a one single facial structure that is rather flat and 2d.
In the video, faces emerge only to gradually deteriorate and blend into a liquid substance background until they become unrecognizable. Metaphorically, these faces are tossed into the sea, sinking into the depths. Looking down from above, we see these faces gazing back from the abyss, dissolving, and vanishing into the vast emptiness until they lose all individuality. Eventually, they become mere indistinct figures without any clear definition or identity, a resemblance of a human, without a definite visual of who they are or how they loo like.
As an immigrant, I have firsthand experience of the numerous challenges faced when trying to integrate into a Western society. These struggles are often overlooked or underestimated, from fitting into a society with different cultural norms to feeling alienated and displaced. Immigrants encounter hardships in pursuing careers and navigating societal structures. The Western society may lack the capacity to empathize with these difficulties most of the times, treating immigrants as equals without giving them space to adjust to cultural shock. This is particularly true for those from vastly different cultures.
The project highlights the concept of oppression and injustice, where the voiceless is thrown deep in the ocean, starring back at the viewer as they keep sinking further down eliminating who they are. At the end, they are just people, like many others, loosing the opportunity to voice ones own struggles, to state their journey and experience, as they disappear off from society.