A standard criticism of the sender-receiver model of mass media is that individuals are given no opportunity to insert themselves into the universal flow of images. This runs contrary to a strategy for longing and identification – affective deep in the psyche of the individual, and increasingly, in the marketing of products. The 1997 work Suspension breaks down the pretty faces of media seduction into their constituent parts, and puts them back together anew. Reminiscent of police identikit photo techniques, the deliberately faulty analogue picture editing manages to disrupt the façade, whilst maintaining the illusory sense of desire. Thirteen years later, in contrast, the protagonists in Magic for Beginners have long since given in to the emotional power of media ideals, and are left wondering whether there is actually any difference between artificially generated emotions and their own lives. In Eight Characters and Two Syllables, YouTube's appeal to "broadcast yourself" is an effective counter-argument. Uploaders from a make-up community become minor celebrities themselves – with several thousand followers. Consumerism, however, remains their guiding star.

Suspension, Anthony Discenza, us 1997, 8 min
Magic for Beginners, Jesse McLean, us 2010, 20 min

Eight Characters and Two Syllables, Andreas Schneider, de 2011, 43 min

(Image: Jesse McLean. Magic for Beginners. Copyright of the artist, courtesy of Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org)