NADA House 2024

Daygame considers the psychical significance of ‘masculinity,’ connecting materials of infantilization, social control and mechanisation.

The phrase “psychic significance” originates with Australian theorist Elizabeth Grosz, used to examine how objects and architectures project ideologies of bodies into space. It suggests a way of communicating structures and systems that is non-verbal, and instead encoded or embodied or transmitted. It is a passive yet physically aggressive mode.

The pheromone used in the fuel tank of the bike is Androstenone, a molecule worn by ‘day-gamers’ and pick-up artists with the intent of projecting or asserting an aura of dominance, sexual aggression, or attraction. It is also used by farmers in pig breeding to prepare female pigs for insemination. It is naturally occuring in the semen, sweat and saliva of human men and pigs.

The “pocket bike” is a motor bike designed for children that is modified illegally by adult ‘mini moto’ racers. It’s finished in silver chrome which is an evasive/reflective colour. The camera remains active by way of battery power and is recording the room. The rather menacing position stands in opposition to its size, implying the performance of an innocuousness/innocence, a lá the “manchild.”

More obliquely, the keyring is an ex libris from Freud’s book Oedipus & the Sphinx, while the artist inverts a reference from Francis Picabia’s drawing “Portrait of a Young American Girl in the State of Nudity” that connect mechanisation and gender.