Becoming-Baby
video for planetarium, 2023
Becoming-Baby takes the viewer on a tour into the mind, narrated by the most private of companions: the inner voice.
Who is she? Where does the voice without a mouth emanate from? Can we rely on her as a voice of guidance, or is she inadvertently trying to deceive us? In this case where does the line between producer and listener lies? As opposed to the voice of conscience, Becoming-Baby proposes the inner voice as the manifestation of fragmented individualities. Drawing upon the concept of "becoming" by Deleuze and Guattari, identity is understood as including multitudes at all times, a possibility always in a flux.
Through anthropomorphizing the inner voice as a character, Becoming-baby uses the complex power-dynamics of cuteness to highlight the ambiguous nature of selfhood. Cute objects aestheticise powerlessness and innocence, yet they provoke a very strong affect. Almost as if in a spellbound state, the victim of cuteness feels compelled to nurture the object of cuteness, therefore making the latter hold a passive agency, which even goes as far as making the subject act as the object, hence collapsing the distance between them.
By establishing a connection between the inner voice and the mechanism of cuteness, the boundaries between self and other, inside and outside, listener and producer, and the dynamics of control are put into question. When listening to the inner voice, who is producing it and whom is it speaking for?
Becoming-Baby premiered at the Zeiss Großplanetarium Berlin in 2023.