Blue Idol:
Sarah Boo's Zoom Princess
written by _feature_creep_team_


_‘I love Zoom’

_Sarah Boo’s video work Zoom Princess repeats this line many times, its not-quite-human central figure (portrayed by the artist herself) seeming to speak simultaneously at and for the viewer. While filled with interesting visual details, evoking both contemporary and early web aesthetics, this figure, presumably the titular Zoom Princess, carries the works loose, disjointed narrative. A narrative (I’m uneasy about using that word, but cannot think of another) which lays at the turning point of a much larger cultural and personal narrative which many of us have been actually living since the pandemic began; especially those of us who have had to adapt to Zoom and other digital mediaries.

_This larger story, which Boo’s work evocatively alludes to, is one in which we have all had to embrace new personas and new technologies, with the line between the two often becoming blurred. New social expectations (as well as outright necessities) demanded the adoption of Zoom and its contemporaries, as well as the development of new kinds of digitally compatible identities and relations. Corporately controlled, for-profit networks, which were already aggressively geared towards adapting Us to Them, gained ground in that struggle at an alarming rate; and the overall cultural shift towards online-ness was exacerbated and given a sense of immediacy which demanded our collective acquiescence. It was Online or Not-at-All.

_Zoom Princess reminds me at several points of the type of dream where one is right on the verge of lucidity, understanding that we are experiencing an unreality without quite grasping that it is a dream specifically. The type of dream (or rather nightmare in most cases) where we know that if we could just speak a single word, or raise our hand a few inches, it would all be dispelled; but where we cannot, no matter how painfully close we come, force that one small gesture to free ourselves. This dream-ness pervades the work, with the framing making it clear that the central figure is both us and not-us, in that uniquely oneiric way.

_The Zoom Princess herself is at once a much more alluring, even powerful version of ourselves, while also being beholden to the network on which she’s constructed; slavishly repeating corporate mantras at us ad infinitum, like a for-profit digital specter.

_‘I love Zoom. It’s super natural, and easy to use.’

_Supernatural.

_The piece reminds me of Satoshi Kon’s equally dreamlike film, Perfect Blue, in which a young pop star, Mima, attempts to make the transition into acting. Over the following months (or possibly weeks, the films sense of time being appropriately disjointed) she spirals into a mental health crisis, in which her ability to separate reality from the fictions she’s used to help produce (both on screen and amongst her fandom) utterly breaks down. Throughout this she begins to have experiences of another self, one which represents everything she is expected to be, desires to be, but which she cannot attain. This second Mima, who first emerges as merely the evidence of online activities which the real Mima cannot remember, (a blog in her name, chat logs, and so on) eventually appears as a full-on material entity. An entity which simultaneously wants to be Mima and destroy her.

_Without spoiling too much, Mima’s breakdown is eventually revealed to be the by-product of a confluence of both her own purely internal state and the machinations of several outside forces seeking to use her in various ways. The other Mima is a construct comprised of three main parts: Mima’s own genuine, organic desires; the psychological and material ways in which Mima has been conditioned to be amenable to the corporate / social interests around her; and the purely external desires which are projected onto her, seeking both financial and personal gain.

_It is precisely this type of three-part-construct which has been fostered in all of us over the course of the pandemic, at least in relation to our online activities and selves. While it’s a foundational aspect of Neoliberalism that we are all compelled (through both hard and soft power) to construct and maintain the system of our own exploitation, this relationship, when translated online, takes on a whole new aspect.

_Firstly, because the central fiction of traditional Capitalism, that of material scarcity, no longer holds up within digital spaces where everything is infinitely reproducible. Instead we have been conditioned to accept other, more abstract forms of scarcity, related to mood, perception and sense of self. Secondly, because unlike the purely mental and social personas which we construct to navigate our world(s), digital personas are not entirely ephemeral. They have a very real, not-quite-tangible materiality to them, which exists in fragments on hard drives, servers, chat logs, and corporate algorithms. Our other Mimas, our other selves, really do exist; a collection of procedural echoes, data-scrap ghosts of the still living which haunt the network. And like the protagonist of Perfect Blue, these fragments of self are subject to co-option by the dominant power structure, reproducing its biases and desired outcomes through pressures both external and internal.

_At least, that’s what I personally see in Kon’s film, and in our real world here and now. It’s also what I see in Zoom Princess, which encapsulates not only the phenomenon itself, but also the lengthy, exhausting, isolating path by which it is arrived at; all with a truly impressive economy of action, words and visuals.

_Equal parts spooky, funny and insightful, and incredibly, desperately contemporary in its outlook, Zoom Princess deserves repeat viewing. Ideally while home alone.