VIP MECCA

Single Channel Moving-Image on a 4K Screen, 10 minutes, 58 seconds, 2023
 

VIP MECCA is a single-channel moving image work, continuing Lizzy Deacon’s long-term investigation drawing on specific behaviours and individual histories of the non-fictional characters that she interacts with in both IRL and URL domains. 

 

The work follows the protagonist, Frankie from Chippenham, and two girls and through a non-linear narrative as they traverse a range of locations and environments - a party island, a boxing ring, a YouTube challenge, a luxury car, a low-budget music video. Just turned 21 and on his third gap year, Frankie goes to a party island to practise and assert an alternate model of masculine power that he's learnt online. Hoping for sun and sex, Frankie’s holiday fantasies play out. Surrounded by nice cars, and dressed with expensive brands and hot women, he uses the model of a hyper-visibility of wealth as a persuasive display of power, as if to inspire compliance/recognition/a transfer of wealth, and a call for others to treat him in a way that he suggests he's been treated in the past.

 

The spectacle of fighting is a central motif in the film. Tied up in histories of sport, entertainment and performance, fighting is figured as occasions where expectations, power, the absurd and class are visually manifested and constantly redefined. In this way, Deacon uses fighting as a way to explore social tensions and hierarchies, as well as symbiotic intimacies that are caught in flux.

Director, Writer, Music, Editor: Lizzy Deacon
Cast: Frankie Brown, Josefina Mellado and Lizzy Deacon
Assistant: Samuel Vilanova
TV Installation and Fabrication: Kieran Rook
Interpretation Text: Lizzy Deacon and Maggie Matic
Commissioned by: Open School East