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10 Transforming Youths addresses the City of Melbourne commission's remit to deal with aspects of 'youth culture' in some way. The work choses not to add another skateboarding/MP3/mobile phantasm of youth consumerism to the mediascape of public imagery, but instead tackle the state of a mediascape already saturated with youth imagery. The result is a work that depicts youth as nodes in a network of desire invented amd maintained by mass marketers and product branders - many of who might be parents who neurotically want to appear 'hip' by living out regressive fantasies of 'staying young' and inflicting such imagery upon young people. While young people may look at such imagery (for alchohol, technology, fashion lifestyle and leisure pursuits) and identify 'themselves' within its mirages, one wonders what kind of 'mirror' stands in front of their gaze. 10 Transforming Youths provides an inverse mirror, wherein one can see the temporal viscitudes of aging, of living, of being.
In 10 Transforming Youths, the parade of impassive countenances, stabilised by a cyclic flux of time and momentum, paints a revolving panorama of how age transforms the Self. The calm of the youths as they age and rejuvenate creates a phantasmal experience for the viewer to consider their past and future, irrespective of their own age. ‘Youth’ is thus presented as a locus for contemplative dynamism. The transformative act of on-screen aging affords a wide range of viewers a liberating ‘out-of-body’ experience, inviting one to fantasize the impact of age upon oneself.
The intention is to create an inclusive experience in direct contrast to the divisive ‘age-demographic’ marketing which assails us from both conservative commercial and progressive community enterprises. The ‘public image of youth’ as projected throughout the mediascape is a constant static signifier, designed to target and ensnare those who register themselves in its mirror mirage. (‘Senior Citizens’ lifestyle marketing and ‘New Family Home-Owners’ real estate hawking work in similar fashion.) Youth imagery has become a particularly narrow option as technological fetishization targets them via expensive marketing. 10 Transforming Youths wishes to change the static icon of ‘Youthdom’ into a site of possibility and potentiality. In short, it seeks to transform the media mirror into a broader dimension of identity – to allow all ages to consider the spectrum of age.
Complete contents of this page © Philip Brophy