DIS(CONTENT)

Self-portrait digital video, 2021 (5 mins)

In (dis)content Meg employs her artistic direction, writing and production design in a series of performed ‘living pictures’. In this short 5 minute film Meg brings to life, with dramatic staging, the emotional experiences that happen behind the addictive blue glow of our smart phones. In the early 19th century ‘living pictures’ were a genre chosen by women in the suffragette movement as a form of protest for their dramatic emphasis on staging, pose, makeup, lighting & facial expression. Using the same agency, Meg performs like a GIF using powerful social media allegory to etch a lasting impression in the minds of audiences. Meg draws on the 10 years she’s spent exploring how social media can impact on ourselves. Normally Meg would be an active participant within the work as her persona Megastar, a hyper-real version of herself. This is the first time she removes the mask and ‘speaks’ in her own voice through a spoken word narration. On turning 40 Meg felt it was important to make this work now as she belongs to the last generation with an analogue childhood. Those behind her never experienced the creation of identity without social media. Meg hopes her voice bridges both generations to tell her story, to tell our story.

Meg was funded in full by an Arts Council of England National Lottery Project Grant to make (dis)content which screened locally at Trowbridge Town Hall Arts cinema and then went on to premier at Sothebys London in ‘Humanity’ a year-long national tour of four art venues with award-winning arts organisation Outside In. It was longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize. A series of prints and NFTs accompanies the digital video.