Life in plastic
There is a group of people, who are part of our urban landscape, witnessing everything that happens on the street, and no matter what, they keep doing their jobs without saying a word.
They try to look like humans. They try to promote products. They try to sell the dream of a happier life.
Do they succeed?
Isn’t it fascinating how these mannequins try to act as real humans, and how beautifully they fail?
In the age of photoshop, social media, artificial intelligence, fake news, deepfake, virtual reality, chat GPT, when the competition in
the world is about how pixels can feel more real, these plastic figures stand with full confidence in every shop
window of Sonnenallee, without noticing the irony, the careless courage, and the honesty of their communication:
They are here to sell you something.
I often try to imagine myself in their situation.
This is something I do a lot. It is my hobby to walk in Neukölln to look for new compositions, I even started a not too popular Instagram account called @facesofsonnenallee.
Probably it tells something about society how we treat things that look like humans but they are not. And it also reflects our dreams and hopes what we see in advertisement.
I wanted to I want to share my love and interest of the mannequins of Neukölln with the wider audience by inviting visitors to see the world through the perspective of a mannequin.
So I applied for an open call of our local festival: 48 Stunden Neukölln. With Ariel Doron we developed the concept of an installation where visitors are asked to join a mannequin in a shop window. With Christian Kokott we developed a technological system to make the mannequins talk. With Chat GPT we developed a system of mannequin characters and their conversations about capitalism, boredom, freedom, feeling empty and you know, life in plastic. With Mario Guzman we installed it in the amazing space of CANK - the best place possible to imagine for this installation: an abandoned shopping mall. And afterwards the magic happened.