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SuperSpa: On the Facial Surface and Imperial Commodities - FaceOrFactory in conversation with Debbie Ding and Joella Kiu
Convened by SAM artists in residence Aljaž Rudolf and Eva Smrekar, FaceOrFactory is a research-based artistic platform that studies the (human) face as a complex territory of genetic, juridical, cosmetic, political and military power relations.
The latest chapter of FaceOrFactory is titled SuperSpa and explores how technology, orientalism and ornamentalism are coalescing in relation to the (human) face through the cosmetic and spa industry. Structured as an imaginary place of contemporary exotic wellness, SuperSpa traces the face as a never-ending surface, stretched, modelled, cut, cultivated, disseminated and injected by the western fictitious worlds and exotic perceptions of the East, leading to the development of an imaginative geography of techno-orientalist discourses.
FaceOrFactory was joined by artist Debbie Ding and SAM curator Joella Kiu as they discuss different approaches to artistic research on the history of imperial economies, archiving and categorising data, fictionalising reality and memory, as well as exploring new physical materiality.
