Jenny Schmid and Ali Momeni: The Department of Smoke and Mirrors February 23, 2012

The Department of Smoke and Mirrors (DSM) is a meditation on the effects of contemporary media on our collective and individual relationship with contemporary political discourse and action. This work draws on the spectacle of journalistic firepower that hijacks today’s politics: from Washington and Wall Street, to the network of satellites and screens that report, to the protests that Occupy, the whole world is watching what a few of us are producing. DSM is comprised of a sculptural diorama of miniature architectural facades augmented with mapped projections, and surrounded by surveillance cameras — all surrounded by self-reflective panoramic video projections. This augmented mis-en-scene investigates the relationship between authority, protest, the lens and the screen. The rhizome of surveilled objects and subjects in this work reflects on a culture where there is no time or distance separating the artifact, from the experience, from the spin.

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