UN-CONTEXTUALIZED ABUSED
INTERACTIVE VIDEO INSTALATION
Un-contextualized abuse is a piece that aims to create a forced empathy between the viewer and the abusive situations displayed, recognizing this situations regardless of gender, race, class or age. The viewer is also taken away from those characteristics and left only with his human-like shape, which she/he shares with the characters in the abusive situations.
This project hopes to challenge stereotypes that affect many every day; anyone can be in a situation of abuse, regardless of age, gender or social class.
An iMac computer and a Kinect camera welcome the viewer, giving an automatic reading of that person, a reading of only its silhouette. But after several seconds, as the viewer gets used to his interaction with the piece, this mirrored experience is interrupted by different clips of abusive situations. However, those people in the videos are not different from the viewer: they are un-differentiable from each other. A forceful call for empathy.
Because of the immediate outcome of the captures taken with the depth camera, it makes it an extraordinary tool to link the viewer with the subject of the main piece. In this piece, the result will not only be the figure of the viewer transforming itself into one of the shapes that appear in the videos, but also the people who move behind will be visible replications of those performing.
THE GIFS
This project wants to reach awareness about how the word abuse is now part of a social stereotype in which only certain demographics are believed to be victims, while others are always the abusers. These labels and presumptions are a barrier that do not allow people to get the help needed when in an abusive situation. Some victims not only have to deal with the stigma associated with being in an abusive relationship/family, but also with the disbelieve of their situation in a society clearly shortsighted.
More information about the installation at:
http://nklehr.wix.com/uncontextualized
