Post-digital paradigm shift: from Narcissus to Perseus

Abstract

A common approach to self-portraits is via paradigm (and theory) of Narcissism. Still, a shift funeral, hospital or roof selfies introduce into visuals of our time is; they describe the world, not as a mere individual set in front of the medium of self-reflectivity, but contextualising the individual in the world set in his own back (Peraica, 2017).

A genre initiated by Breanna Mitchell recording her Holocaust selfie, years ago, has culminated with the project Yollohaust (https://yolocaust.de/). Yollohaust, made by a satirist Shahak Shapira, samples images of people self-portraying in Holocaust with photos of corpses and sceletons of concentration camps' victims recorded in and immediately after the WW2. This controversial artwork redefines the horror commonly defined in terms of knowledge by Holocaust studies, by approaching to it in terms of reality stratification.

Namely mediated perception in Holocaust selfies is dividing layers of reality as layers of mere visuality, reapproaching reality not as only mediated but also as - secondary to the image itself. This supremacy of such mediated image of reality over reality itself, I will be elaborating in (art) historical terms of initial Renaissance perspective of Narcissus onto himself leading towards contemporary anti-perspective of mediated world of Perseus onto Medusa (as reality), in the order to master her (and reality).