PEEPING TOM (PORN VERSION)
Thomas Israel
2006
Interactive Installation
Courtesy Galerie Charlot, Paris - Tel Aviv
Peeping Tom’s porn version refers to voyeurism and pornography on the Internet. The flesh offered is degraded, both literally and technically. The artist has worked images with digital degradations, juxtaposing them to create almost psychedelic effects.
There hase been paradigm shifts with the advent of digital voyeurism in the 21stcentury. It is becoming widespread in all spheres of society, legitimized and institutionalized.
Today, we engage in a self-confident voyeurism/narcissism on social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc....). This narcissism, where the triumphant individual displays his happiness and social success in order to exist in the eyes of others, has also become the new norm.
It forms a perfectly complementary couple with digital voyeurism. It is therefore an opening of the intimate that is consented, chosen, calculated, staged for the voyeur who has become legitimate. There is therefore no more infringement, the voyeurs have the right to see, but remain excited because they can continue to chase the intimate, in the shadows if they so wish, although the social contract requires them to notify their passage by an assessment or a comment.
Social networks are companies whose economic model depends entirely on these narcissistic and scopic impulses. They collect our information and sell it to advertisers. They push and cultivate them, then scrutinize us to get to know us better. [...]
As for voyeurism linked to pornography, even if it remains confined to private space, it has become so widespread that it has lost its original taboo. Sexual voyeurism, which was at the center of the phenomenon in a puritanical 20th centuries, has become a marginal and negligible phenomenon in our society of generalized voyeurism. Peeping Tom, who was born in 2005 in response to the surge of poor quality pornography on the Internet, which was just beginning to become omnipresent, quickly became a reflection on voyeurism in the broad sense. Peeping Tom has a set of eyes replacing the pixelated pornographic set of its beginnings.
From the little perverts navigating from digital voyeurism to analog - because Peeping Tom follows the visitor when he gets tired of his pornographic screens - the work has followed the evolution of voyeurism and how the voyeuristic eyes have multiplied, filling its digital space. Big Brother replaces cheap porn.