RSA/ ISA: How the working class will be saved, 2019-2020
Althusser and Marx wrote about state apparatuses. The Ideological State Apparatus controlled the public through idealism, religion, politics etc. The RSA or Repressive State Apparatus controls the public through force and violence. I embody these ideas through portrayals of these characters within the non-space. How might idealism or repression manifest itself in an environment void of humanity? What learned gestures do we enact to feel qualified socially? "Concrete individual persons are the carriers of ideology-- as subjects. Individual subjects are presented principally as produced by social forces, rather than acting as powerful independent agents with self-produced identities. Althusser's argument strongly draws from Jacques Lacan's concept of the mirror stage—we acquire our identities by seeing ourselves somehow mirrored in ideologies." My RSA and ISA utilize the double sided mirror as a way to remain both transparent and reflective of the current socio-political landscape.
