Tomi Faison, First As Tragedy, Then As LARP.

About

Smack Mellon is pleased to present First As Tragedy, Then As LARP, Tomi Faison’s first solo exhibition in NYC. The exhibition unfolds through two of the artist’s recent works that combine cold, filmic realism with the fantastic and unhinged performativity of the increasingly politicized world. The two works appear in the exhibition using different looping mechanisms projected onto opposite sides of the gallery and separated by a wall. Faison’s practice is informed in equal parts by her upbringing in Washington DC–watching the ongoing deployment of protests on Capitol Hill; cinema in its expanded materiality, history, and social spaces; as well as her participation in online communities, particularly Do Not Research (DNR), an online platform gathered around topics of political fragmentation, memetic propagation, and the role of the internet in shaping emergent cultural and ideological trends. 

The exhibition’s central installation, First As Tragedy, Then As LARP, comprises a 16mm film flanked by two fabric flags. The film contains footage captured by the artist on a Bolex camera in Washington DC during the “Stop The Steal” insurrection on January 6, 2021. In absence of an accompanying soundtrack, the film sets a quiet stage for the escalating violence that transpired through the day, enacted by protesters wearing Trump merchandise and military tactical gear. By retaining the film in its original medium, Faison devirtualizes the event, grounding it directly to her experience and apart from its wide consumption and unstable relationship to reality in the public imaginary. 

The flags mounted on either side of the film projection depict Melpomene and Thalia, the muses for tragedy and comedy in ancient Greece–the birthplace of democracy–captured from 3D scans of statues at the Louvre. The title of the work “First As Tragedy” and “Then As Larp” surrounds the two muses respectively, written in a font and format often used to construct internet memes. The titular phrase borrows from a well known and heavily quoted (and misquoted) phrase by Karl Marx, remarking that historical entities often appear twice, “first as tragedy, then as farce.” Her adjustment of the language to reference Live Action Role Playing (LARP) games, combines with the dramaturgy of how the events of January 6 unfolded on a global stage to present a poignant and chilling representation of current American political affairs. 

The exhibition’s second work, Carousel No. 1 appears somewhere between photography and moving image. A looping slide projector rotates through 80 slides—both found and captured by the artist. The montaged images are sequenced associatively, close-up images of teeth precede those of car crash sequences, internet memes and vulnerable bodies. They compose a temporal experience that gestures towards the physical, psychological, and emotional fragility of the individual within an endless cycle of capitalism, accounting for desires, bodily limitations, and psychological distress.