Digital Bodies, Capitalism and Arca: An Interview with Filip Custic
Words: Upasana Das
Make it stand out
Wearing a T-shirt from her own merch, Arca attempts to click a selfie on her phone, with stickers of herself pasted all over her body. A second Arca hugs a pillow printed with her face, as she looks straight at the camera – a keyring hangs from her navel, of course containing a print of her visage. A third and fourth Arca are caught in between creating content for their socials, surrounded by memorabilia of themselves, like her Vogue Mexico and i-D covers, collectible cards, phones with wallpapers featuring her.
This reproduction and proliferation of Arcas were photographed and digitally collaged by the Spanish-Croatian artist Filip Custic and is on view at Museo Cerralbo in collaboration with Photo Espana and Coleccion Solo. Custic investigates consumerism, questions of identity through our interactions online and our performativity within such spaces, through multimedia installations and performances. This work with Arca is one amidst other, albeit more commercial, collaborations with music artists like Lil Nas X and Rosalia. “I’ve known Arca for seven years,” he said, “We always wanted to collaborate – last Christmas she came to Madrid, and we decided to shoot.”
Initially he was intrigued by the number of selfies Arca took for her socials. “It takes a second [taking a selfie] and it's very organic,” he reflected, “Whereas what I create is very produced.” Even so, there is an amount of production involved when the Arcas in his work, titled ‘Id vs Superego’ create content for her fans.
Influenced by celebrity culture and the fragmented notions of identity in a digital world, like in the film Perfect Blue, Custic views people as implanted within a system, i.e., capitalism, that views them as products. Which becomes starker with public figures. In a different digital work, directed more towards the art market than popular culture, titled ‘me promoting myself at Miami Art Basel’, tiny frames of Custic’s entire body of work cover his naked body, as he walks around the art fair. “You are selling yourself literally as culture,” he said.
Within consumerism is located the stan, often balancing their admiration within the capitalistic system. Custic hadn’t considered this work from a ‘fan’ perspective per say, more from a self-obsession point of view. But everyone is a fan of something, he noted.
“I think that’s really beautiful,” he said, “It’s part of the experience of being human in that moment when you’re super obsessed!” How does ownership, significant in capitalism, work in fandom? “I remember in the past when I had something physical from someone I admired, I felt like I have that I admire, it felt like I have a piece of that person. Lady Gaga – I had a vinyl, or a T-shirt and I was loving that. We sell ourselves in a way – and people who buy my art, own me, in a way, with them!” In his work ‘human product’ (2023), he generated miniature doll versions of himself, floating between electronic devices, on a larger installation of his own face, referring the doll collecting culture – one’s existence, celebrity or otherwise, is more valuable to the system when it’s monetized, even through capitalising on their time.
“Collectibles often serve as mediums that bridge the tangible distance between the celebrity and the fan. It's a symbiotic relationship – neither category can really exist without the other.”
Collectibles often serve as mediums that bridge the tangible distance between the celebrity and the fan. It's a symbiotic relationship – neither category can really exist without the other. Extending our connections with the online realm has also brought with it the concept of intangible collectibles – Custic recalls Karol G’s recent Fortnite collaboration where she performed a weekend-long concert for players.
Those attending the complete show would receive special virtual merch for their game characters to show off. “We are transitioning into deeper implications within the virtual world,” he mused, also adding how it would have been impossible to convince him to buy something like this ten years ago – now social media simulates an illusion of closeness as we see Arca’s cat, her during the entire process of facial feminization, or her on vacation plastered on the walls of the room in Custic’s work.
A certain level of obsession is, of course, perceived – from Custic’s eyes it was one’s own self-obsession, while from a fan perspective it is their own obsession with the personality or even the latter’s need to feed into the fan’s obsession.
How does one address the distance in mediated social media production? Custic highlights the artificiality inherent to web through masks – which is important to Custic when considering online identities. In the work, one Arca holds up a wig and a mask of her own face in one hand – one eye has been covered with a screen that shows the same eye, but possibly with a filter. Being human straddles humanness and being cyborg, for him.
“It’s a gamification of society – we create a character of who we are,” he notes reflecting on how he considers TikTok filters as virtual masks. “When I open the TikTok camera, I’m like wow, I have perfect skin!” he laughed, “Then I open the other camera and ah, I’m still human – I have expressions and all of that.”
Having a uniform visual of perceiving oneself is complicated and is almost never attained. “I see myself in my mirror, on my phone, in another lighting – I don’t really know how I look,” he said, “We all have dysmorphia – we are just making new filters.” This is perhaps a unifier between celebrity and fan experience online, even as we continue to create visuals that provide a semblance of uniformity. In a sense we are also becoming digital clones, mirroring each other in following trends, replicating what our favourite pop star is doing, reading the same books in every It girl’s summer list. Perhaps there is some semblance of this awareness of the viewing and the performative experience highlighted in Custic’s work, which we ourselves are becoming more aware of as digital personas while we continue to obsess over our favourites.
