PAW

Iris Helena Hamers

Info: »We said no tech in the bedroom at night!« my mom shouts, snatching my phone from my hands and replacing it with a minimalist book, roughly the size of an iPad. On its plastic cover, the title shines: ~*^-._3N3RGY_4NG3L_.-^*~. Frustrated yet curious, I pick up the object and bring it closer to my eyes. I am surprised by its weight. It is far heavier than it should be. When I peer inside, 3D images unfold like a diorama, rising from the pages like a theatre stage. The pictures, almost larger than life, swallow me whole. Pulled into the image-portal like Alice into the rabbit hole, my gaze travels further and further, entering an ecosystem that reminds me of an archive of life. A collection of coincidences that are not mine, yet could just as easily be stored deep within my hard drive. Facemasks, aesthetic soaps, anonymous figures, and memes, all their life spilling out from the pages. Absorbed into the eternal stew of images, some I recognize and others I fear to conceptualize, I find myself in a world where the novelty of photons suddenly becomes familiar and ordinary as my iris catches their meaning, as if everything I see becomes the thing it is. I cleanse my eye and lick my finger to turn another page, hungry for more and hoping to step into the next chapter. – Text: Morgane Billuart