What about libertarian thought today? Is freedom a dogma? And if the zombie were libertarian and the naturist libertine? Would the naturist’s emancipation infringe on the zombie’s natural rights? Is the zombie collectivist? Apolitical? Does the zombie have preferences? Is the naturist egocentric?
Naturists vs Zombies is a comparative study between two aesthetic and political statements related to modes of representing the human figure:
The naturist (expression of the right to full control over one’s bodily individuality) advocating absolute freedom based on the negation of authority in social organization and refusal of all constraints imposed by institutions based on that principle.
The zombie (expression of natural rights) – all partially decomposed undead, devoid of language, reason, and often consciousness, who survive by consuming the flesh of the living.
Naturist vs Zombie or Desire = Disaster
The obsession with imminent catastrophe is omnipresent in information networks, in literature, in cinema, and on television. We are at the mercy of climate change and ecological disaster, on the brink of a new world war, prey to religious extremists, victims of industrial food processes, prone to succumbing to the next viral epidemic, deceived by corruption and collusion in the political world, subjected to social injustices—we live each day with the announcement of a new threat.
As the starting point for a transdisciplinary study on the relationships between human groups, this project is composed of scenes where the occupation of territory is staged through different kinds of fences. On the right, the zombie, a fabulous metaphorical creature of this announced end of the world, endlessly consumes everything living it finds along its path. On the left, the naturist, an anarchizing figure born of libertarian philosophy, encloses himself and secretly practices the exhibition of his only possession: his body.
We have entered an era in which the aesthetics of death is a dominant figure. This artistic project is part of my recent research on representational models linked to power, social order, and the pursuit of eternal youth. Inspired both by the omnipresence of the zombie figure in popular culture (TV, cinema, advertising, comics) and by certain writings of Antonio Dominguez-Leiva and Vincent Paris on the history and sociological questions associated with the aesthetics of the living dead, I propose an installation project exploring the metaphorical connections between the notions of slavery and zombification.
