Reverse Engineering (2013)

Overview

A self-parodying portrait of contemporary artistic genius, of the guises in which the notion of genius carries on even when no one wants to acknowledge their attachment to it. The video begins with a fantasy of your former art school contacting you on your deathbed, but their acknowledgement comes too late, history cannot be reversed. We see faces browsing the internet head on, shot through webcams. These portraits are layered over shots of The Artist holding them like framed paintings. One of the people portrayed reads the “stage directions” they received from The Artist, then the lines proper: internal reflections on abilities and self-image. Ideas follow from a process, but is this really "reverse engineering" as the video suggests, or the normal course of things.