AS WE MELT

This manipulated image series by photographer Sara Bastai reflects on future ceremonies and collective experiences in a digital world: the sense of loss of self, the distorted perception of time and space, and the fictional and futuristic spaces of individual self-performance that define our current moment of transhumanization.

The images in the series were composed trough a photogrammetry software that generates 3D scans of the human body, and are accompanied by an installation piece. The individual scans combine into a collective surrealistic sculpture that embodies an archaeology of the present and a projection of the future at once.

With her series, Bastai raises questions about the relevance of rituals to humans as individuals and as a society. 

Seen as a spiritual protocol, rituals seek to regulate and stabilize society, providing a guiding system of shared beliefs, values and norms. In the absence of ceremony, a new guiding system would have to be constructed. 

Can we translate analogue rituals into a digital world? Or do we need to construct new myths in order to live consciously and morally in a period of social acceleration, individualization and atomization? 

Credits
Photography by Sara Bastai
Model by Clara
Makeup by Lisa Michalik
Hair by Yumiko Hikage
Styling by Yann Steiner
Studio by Another.me
Dress by AWS
Shoes stylist’s own