{**A cacophony of Images # battle against each other, breaking free of Instagram’s imposed grid format and overtaking the screen. Images of an ever-mutating face collide and overlap, interrupt each other's composition, and struggle for coherence. Aside from this strange face, the only thing that seems to join these photos together is the recurring presence of Disney’s Donald Duck. Yet, this character too becomes distorted and confused the more the Instagram feed evolves. His presence is effervescent; he looms perpetually in a crisis between visibility and dematerialization.  What emerges is a character in the midst of an identity crisis. Leroy tries on all these faces and manifests all these worlds, in a fruitless attempt to get to some essential truth as to who he is.  #}

Donald Duck Massacre strives to push the boundaries of self-curation into the realm of the avant-garde. It takes the premise of identity construction - disconnected signs existing within wider spheres of reference - and destroys it. It reduces it to its bare essentials, its ultimate meaninglessness. All the while, it explores a new way of viewing still photography. No longer static, the image is a dynamic object that flows within an infinite stream of visual information. While at the core of the feed is the grim assertion of a self without intrinsic definition, it is not entirely nihilistic as it similarly proposes a utopian vision. If identity is just a self-built mythology, then we can {b ]#whoev*ever we want to #b.~

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I don't need, don't need anyone to be who I want to be, I'm the only one

理想を仮想で梦见るモードのTokyo Pygmalion

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****#Lips: as a word, formed of four glyphs: l i p s. As a sound; a curled toungue rolling into a half smile before collapsing into a push of air, succumbing finally to a hiss {snakes > reptile, serpent, garden of Eden, “I’ve had it with these mother fucking snakes on this mother fucking plane”}. /lɪps/. Word or sound, it exists as a signifier - pointing towards the soft, movable sensory organ that extends from the mouth. The signified. It is this simple process of identification through verbal and written language that forms the basis of human communication. In order to be understood, we name (refer to) things. 

> Leroy’s 

> lips

> are

> yellow

In this first order of signification, a process of association leads to an assumption about an object; its name, and thus its presence. As a form of conjuration, words create reality. A person comes to be known, to exist, when categorised. Leroy exists because L.E.R.O.Y x /liːˈrɔɪ/ exists.

But association is a train of thought. Lips suggest a kiss > seduction > sex > the erotic x pornographic. They sing:  sensuality > murmurations > secrets spilled. Sometimes, their shape mimics the vagina so they’re covered. In this second order signifying transaction > meaning evolves. The object becomes not just a thing, but a thing with meaning beyond how it defines itself. 

Culture shapes this meaning. 

> Leroy’s

> lips 

> are 

> yellow 

Yellow:

Early Christian church: Judas Iscariot, a colour for heretics.

China: glory. “Yellow movie” 

Ancient Greece: the hair of gods. 

Traffic: caution

Van Gogh: happiness
Piss piss piss. 

In Donald Duck Massacre, the microcosm of a wider sphere of reference, yellow lips suggest Donald Duck. His yellow beak. It must make sense; it is a recurring motif: repetition > importance > domination > a commanding presence that alters its sphere of reference. Commands reality.

But without the combined effort of Y.e.l.l.o.W x /ˈjɛləʊ/, yellow has no meaning to begin with. It is not defined and thus it does not exist.  

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“PINK YELLOW BLUE

RGB

CALIBRATING COLORS

WHAT CAN YOU SEE?

ROY G BIV

LOVE LAUGH LIVE

YOU LIKE REPETITION

REPEAT TILL THIS SINKS IN”

— Jackie extreme, RGB

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^***Like culture, words take meaning (existence) only when defined within a wider context, that of the sentence. A syntagmatic chain, or building blocks. Strings of information, of data. During this unification process, a reality is constructed. Word-signs act as a photomontage to build an image of a world. But zooming in on the chain, these signs have no innate meaning. They are simply sounds or glyphs. At the core of language built reality then is an a priori meaninglessness. Leroy is meaningless. 

{ b###*]wear the s*q*a*ure } 

> beware the square?

       > be wary of the square?

       > be wary of harmony? 

       > square > instagram's imposed grid format 

            > imposed, forced, domination, capitalist ideology 

            > Instagram: constructed life, artificiality, the masquerade. Crop out the clothes in a pile of the bedroom corner. Remove the bad. Censorship. Living blind.

> social media =BAD. 

> be/wear the square 

   > become the square?

   > embrace self-curation > new life > new vision > being a perfect version of yourself

> social media =GOOD 

> ‘...###*] …. *...*...*...’

   > random glyphs?

   > is it not all random glyphs?

   > does it mean anything to begin with 

   > questioning reality > nothing has meaning

  > nihilism. 

Bye bye! 

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{SOPHIE took sonic soundscapes to SUNLIGHT-TWILIGHT-MIDNIGHT

abyss  (the trenches)

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#’DONALD DUCK has no meaning. He is a sign endlessly repeated across the West without order or backstory. How many people could tell you his middle name is Fauntleroy? How many people still exist to know the name /F.O.N.T.L.E.R.O.Y/, can conceive its functions and second orders? 

DONALD-DUCK is the capitalist blip; unremarked, stretched to the point of banal bedsheets-pezdispenser-legobrick(click click syntagmatic units)-

{I saw a Donald Duck shaped toy camera, 35mm. My biggest regret is never buying it.}
-pandora jewellery (?)-slapped to the side of a plane and my god my wardrobe! Leroy’s clothes!

So what does he represent? Surely, capitalism! Surely! Surely! Surely
But what an absurdly boring idea. 

To me Donald Duck represents banality, the flattening of things into two-dimensional sign units that refer to nothing. To me. To you?

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{Looking back, all these years later, it makes sense that the majority of the people that loved Leroy were on drugs at the time.}

Leroy shows a possibility; the self can be not just a body, or strictly a performance, but a total artistic medium comparable to painting, sculpture, film, photography. It demonstrates how the total lived experience, and all means of constructing self-identity (every sign medium),  can be manipulated to such a degree that the artist's presence and their lore are open to the same kind of critical analysis reserved for artistic expressions. Leroy speaks, through mythical lips, “I am a work of art. Treat me as such.”

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&]#QUEER BODIES+IN_FLUX / it’s like queer people know that the world is unstable, that every concept and word we use pretends that things are fixed, when in reality things move fluidly. Instagram makes flow static // contradictory obligation to move through the exact-same-path but Leroy disrupts flow. Random images interposed, break up the face a thousand times till Leroy sobs a cruel howl into the breach. 

Queer people know identity is ours to re-shape. My queer family taught me life is a work of art. My queer family taught me that cult-status is born not from your own innate-self but from being perceived. That all the world’s a stage and visibility means thrown into an ideology that has absolutely no bearing on reality. 

Queerness is flux and fluidity in an erotic dance with abjection and disruption. Queerness is smashing the unbent smoothness of glass to refract reality, to twist the universe into new shapes. Nature is queer, but violence is truly the queerest art form. 

An identity crisis is what I have always been staging.
My greatest gift is the fact that I have never known who I actually am. 

My body is a projection of your desire to possess me in your own skin. 

ss]]#” mergerofdiscontinuousbeing intoaneternalflowofcontinuity ]]”

TAKE THAT CAPTAIN JACK OF THE PUMPKIN PATCH !  TAKE THAT !

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Hey, DDM isn’t an art piece. It’s a fucking sonic journey.

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to change myself with an aesthetic impulse Monotonous essay that when read aloud, becomes a summoning ritual instagram is total focus of a liminal kind sensual, and most importantly - immaterial experiences going on for it to be just  moving towards an understanding of the human mind as a computer I discovered that I wasn’t the only Orlando  no right way to look at the pictures, but maybe it’s helpful to pay attention to how you feel as you move through the flow of images Donald Duck produces a visceral reaction a confusing and paradoxical double play DDM succeeds photography as in stasis, a still object to be looked at overall vision is to constantly push art beyond its limits who know that their experiences of the world are real. That their world is real. I am also self-obsessed, against the better wishes of society, I have immense pride in who I am and what I have to offer. Similar to Orlando, moving through time. It’s the experience of viewing, not the act of creating. The sign marks the absence of basic reality. The images calls into question what the reality is, and if it even exists. Iphone as an object and as an experience that toes the line between immaterial and material; this physical thing that stretches into an infinite digital space Unbent smoothness, perfect immateriality. Distortions in the human body and the commonplace way of viewing reality (flesh, 3D, textured) “We Want Data” at Tate Britain Barely perceptible, fuzzy almost, representing the meshing of the two realities. Rather than being a totally unique, monogamous form, self is built upon/through/with this massive catalogue of signs that can themselves be fragmented into even smaller units of reference and so on. To play God. Conclusion; is my manifesto.  

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jaeger 2019 - 2026