Cecilia Stenbom

The work of Cecilia Stenbom leads an investigation into her conviction that in the consumer driven culture of a 21st century over saturated with information, fear has become a more powerful motivating factor than sex. Appropriation and re-enactment are central to Stenbom's methodology. Taking her source material from public distribution media such as television, movies, advertising, government information broadcast, 24-hour news, and the Internet, Stenbom frequently casts herself as the protagonist of a pastiche that examines our anxieties and desires, reinterpreting scenarios within mass media, retail, and domestic life. "...I have become specifically interested in what triggers fear in contemporary life and how that fear is used to capture our attention and imagination, making us 'happy customers' and ultimately controlling us." Alive - An Essential Guide to Survival is the latest in an ongoing series of video works in which Stenbom performs an unsettling monologue to camera. Past works have included a guide to her collection of gadgets and a sideways look at US fat fighting drugs. In this case she provides us with a contemporary survival guide made up of official and unofficial advice on how to stay alive such as how to avoid being killed by an accident, by an infectious disease, or how to survive a terrorist attack. Stenbom presents a humorous and self-defeating world of narcissism and neurosis where everything from washing up to watching TV is fraught with danger and the potential to discover another way to die.