The term empty calories is a paradox.
Empty calories signify foods that provide energy but contain very little or no nutritional value. Which means that they do not have building components but on the contrary interfere with the exploitation, absorption and storage of building materials.
This project deconstructs the concept of beauty that globalization dictates just like empty calories.
Empty kcal is a series of short videos that maps global beauty trends and follow their impact on the formation of primarily online identity. The recordings were found footage, and the Specific Group I am focused on in this research are women. I map the female experience as important because I am a woman myself and I directly feel the pressure of the standard of beauty that globalization conditions. Video works are fragments of different moving images that we encounter on a variety of digital platforms every day.
Although all treatments, actions and selfies (as shown) are a matter of personal choice, they have risen with their continuous repetition and become not only a necessity but also a kind of validation of the status of a modern woman. Which means that the one who invests in that specific way is valuable and maybe even more women than someone else who doesn’t make the same choices (?!). The paradoxical means thus becomes the goal, and we all remain nailed to the starting position.
Although they identify problem points, these videos do not offer any comment, they do not take sides. On the contrary they provide a specific kind of pleasure similar to that offered by empty calories. They are relatively easy to consume. They do not burden the observer. They are not bound by a specific narrative, but circulate without interruption. They can be interrupted and resumed at any time, switched…
With minimal effort they give maximum energy.