Living in London during the last two years, I became acutely aware of our current social condition and the coercion and misdirection that goes into maintaining it. A big part of this is distraction, filling our heads with worry about the enemy, health, and our appearance. This piece is a result of my ruminations on appearance. How much time, effort, thought, and worry goes into it? A feeling of how ridiculous it is just grows and grows in me, not just physical but as a whole package. From a young age we are put through schools and taught to compare ourselves to each other in a hierarchic order. This extends to our adult lives: “who is better at math” becomes “who has the biggest salary or car.” I find myself doing it-looking at a magazine and thinking, “Oh, she is so beautiful,” and then thinking about make-up or exercising or doing my hair better.

This piece is satirical, meant to help people to wake up to the comical stupidity of the situation. In it, I take on the role of the consumer, complete with mechanized smile. On my shrine to beauty, I examine my “melons”-and finding them inadequate, get to work with a scalpel, carving away in a ritualistic reverse boob job. As my obsession grows, the knives get bigger and bigger until I end up with a hammer and destroy the melons-and the altar-in the process. All this is performed to a soundscape of “Que Sera Sera” by Doris Day overlaid with sounds such as gunfire, tree-felling, and thunder. This action is also reflective of the apocalyptic destruction of nature as we frenetically continue our quest of consumption.

“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.” -H.L. Mencken