Simone Hoàng's latest project is called ‘Movie Star’. She is intrigued by concepts such as conditioning and conventions, and this time she investigates this using green screens and screensavers. A background looks like a kind of wallpaper, we don't pay attention to it, but it still conveys its own message. Does such a background also have its own identity? And if you bring the background to the front, what will the message be then?
In Movie Star, Hoàng works with the technique of chroma keying, i.e. green screens. If I have myself photographed in front of a green screen, I can fill in the background with a photo of Aruba or Den Helder, and when I post it it looks like I'm on vacation there. A green screen like this is about dissolving time and place. I find such a photo from Aruba or Den Helder in the stock collections. The computer also offers these standard solutions for placing a screen saver.
A photo of a patch of grass with dandelions, taken during the last walk with my youngest sister, appears on my screen. But the most commonly used screensaver is not your own photo, but a stock photo of Santa Catalina Island off the coast of California. A kind of holiday paradise. A desire contained in a collective visual language. Simone Hoàng took this image to mix it with the colours of chroma keying (green and blue) and transformed the background into a stand-alone abstract image. She even makes a 3D print of it. Technology allows us to fly through time, but does it make it more true? A mirage, an unreal world. What do we dream of?
~ Hanne Hagenaars, curator ~
