Sean
Synnuck

        Notions of aspiration, futility and socio-political impotence underpin much of my work. I create sculptural objects for use in video works and performances. Recent performances are formatted as participatory games, in which punitive and rigged rules play with the illusion of players’ agency, exposing their powerlessness to affect pre-determined outcomes. Various mechanics such as audience votes draw on populism and soft power dynamics in relation to individual, institutional and societal hierarchies. Particularly, the role of premature value judgements and biases in establishing and maintaining social power structures. In ‘Ip Dip’ audiences pick whose team to support for the chance to win a prize. Their judgements on contestants’ competence before the game starts facilitates factionalism, and spectators are incentivised to want their baseless judgements to be vindicated. These games also expose a sense of oppositional camaraderie, hinting that being supported by the collective often establishes an exclusionary dynamic. To want your team to win is to want another team to lose. To be part of an ‘in’ crowd, others must be relegated to an ‘out’ crowd. 

         I try to ambiguously imply narrative, to suggest a ‘meaning’, or an ‘explanation’, while withholding enough information to encourage oscillative readings. In works like ‘Timepass’ this operates through short film loops, establishing a ‘static momentum' in which progression and resolution are denied despite their implied existence. I aim to frustrate the audience with the anticipation of an event that never occurs. These videos have similar durations to gifs, vines or tik tok clips. To me, they relate to the body’s relationship with digital spaces and in turn digital spaces’ relationships to physical ones.
        In the work in progress ‘Just browsing’, I am trying to respond to how drastically lockdown has shifted our relationships to online spaces and the body’s increasing mediation through screens. Digital spectatorship and online dating growingly facilitate a marketplace of bodies. To scroll through Grindr is to have potential romantic or sexual partners codified through a grid. Squares of torsos cut the soft edges of the body into boxes to choose from. I am influenced by how this encourages unhealthy self-regulation of the body. To be muscular, to be completely hairless, to be ‘masc’ enough or ‘femme’ enough are all pressures to compete, to present, to perform, to constantly monitor your body in relation to its digital manifestation. In these spaces, your body becomes your brand.