Print Screen: single-channel version

Marina Rajšić’s latest piece is a film (single-channel) version of the namesake video installation Print Screen (2021), consisting of five simultaneous video screenings onto surfaces arranged spatially so that they simulate open tabs on a computer’s workspace (kept in the collection of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka). Examining the influence of digital technologies on the perception of one’s own (female) appearance, achieved by analysing search engine patterns via Google Trends, and manipulating one’s own image via Snapchat, the author challenges the beauty imperative and the youth cult imposed by the media and championed by the social media. The emphasis is on the new form of body dysmorphia evolved thanks to the Snapchat application and it’s face filters, underlining how the dependency on the digital image has deeply ingrained in reality which exists outside the physical sphere. In a dense grid of quotes from popular and academic culture appearing in Print Screen, the impact of John Berger and his critique of stereotypical gender roles and ‘female’ space limitations stand out. He speaks about the new age crisis of the female identity and slaving to the image of perfection in the society of mass consumption. The dysmorphia phenomenon points to the mechanism of the socially acceptable yet covert violence blurring the boundaries between truth and lies. A single-channel version of Print Screen mildly deflects from the installation version with a few added shots portraying the author at the time of the editing of the piece, highlighting the difference from the previous five-channel version, which is first presented at the central space of Vodnjan’s Apoteka as a storyboard - a sketch with elaborated shots.

— Ksenija Orelj, Sabina Salamon (an updated text accompanying the exhibition Where is this Cloud floating?, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, 2023)