Wired brings us this story of artist Chris Eckert’s “Party Gift,” a sculpture featuring a creepy, lifelike eyeball in a red box adorned with Chinese Communist Party insignia and a wooden block print of Mao Zedong.
Let’s linger a bit on that eyeball, shall we?
Eckert explains: “For me, the relationship between the eye, the box and the viewer can change abruptly. Sometimes the blue eye is trapped inside the box. Sometimes the eye peers out from the box — watching. The eye is a hostage, an observer, and a witness.”
Constantly watching, but always watched. In China, leaders all peddle Substance D while simultaneously using it, addicted. D may not stand for death in this case, as it does in A Scanner Darkly, but I sure like to think of politicians here as trapped under heavy and restrictive suits, watching their own demise yet helpless to change any course except by dodging and deceit.
Eckert, on his website, explains Party Gift and other of his works. We have a video for you after the jump.
I like the mechanical sound it makes.