“Who are you?” is a question that 2Fik believes is a question that everyone can connect to. And who is 2Fik? He is the current artist in residence at Carleton through November and so much more.
At some point, every person has been asked, “Who are you? Where are you from?” and has to think about their own identity. With that in mind, he creates projects to challenge the audience to question their identity and grapple with what it all means. One of these projects is currently in progress here in Northfield and 2Fik wants to let Carleton know about it.
“My next series will be about why and how we create ourselves online. I think all of us– at least single people or newly single people– have been on a dating app, whether we want to or not, because of peer pressure, because of curiosity… Years ago it was a shame to be on those apps [but] nowadays it’s totally normal. We talk about being on Tinder like we discuss being on Facebook.
So with this in mind, I was like, ‘How come people are choosing certain photos, certain text?’ That’s what fascinates me, self-creating… How come we are in the situation where we create ourselves all the time? Selfies, what you post and what you don’t post, how you post– it’s so interesting to me.
So to work on this, I’ll be creating 100 people who will each have a profile, who will look for love, lust, friendship, networking, you name it. I will try my best to have an equal amount of people that define themselves as straight, homo, as pansexual– we’re gonna have different genders as well.”
Working on this project since April, 2017 2Fik has created 67 of the 100 characters. Once he has all of them completed, he hopes to create a dating app with the profiles of each character that students can download and use to chat with 2Fik’s characters as he responds live. The goal of this, 2Fik explains, is to allow people to be someone else.
“The goal is to let people really be something that they wish they could be online and never dared to… I like this idea of allowing people to let it out, just unleash the beast in them– I just want people to let it out.”
2Fik will be holding a talk, “Dating Apps: The Art of Self-Curating and Performance” in Leighton 304 on Tuesday, Oct. 30 from 5:00 – 6:30pm for those interested in the subject.
The artist is also excited to bring to Northfield the “High He High Heels” event, a workshop and performance at the Northfield Arts Guild on Friday, Nov. 2 from 5:00 – 6:30pm. With this performance, 2Fik aims to focus on the idea of masculinity and its toxicity and fragility.
“Like, why are men so scared of high heels? Why is the idea of the high heel emasculating? I believe there is a real, genuine misogyny that we need to work on as men… I want to prove the fact that the high heel, which can be a very seductive beautiful and feminine object on a woman, can become an accessory of aggression and violence when it’s worn by men. That’s why I wanna do this walk.
So it’s at the same time a mix of making men more sensitive about who they are, about their position, about how it feels to to be in high heels, and also the whole physical suffering that comes with it, that men don’t have to go through it while women are socially obliged to go through it. And at the same time seeing how the appropriation of high heels by men becomes, once again, a very aggressive thing with the noise and the sound of it. That’s what I want to do.”
2Fik welcomes all men, cis or trans, to come to this military march. High heels will be provided!
“I think whether you define yourself as straight, gay, pansexual, bisexual, whether you’re cis or trans, or anything else you can define yourself with, I think you’re welcome to rock on your heels and just stomp it.”