How to Get Rid of Homophobia and Sexism in Your Country is a performative video piece featuring the Drag Face Filter, created for the exhibition Magical Hotspot at Vent Space Gallery in 2020. The work explores pseudomagic through digital augmentation, performative rituals, and speculative identity transformations. In the video, the jewellery witch Seraphita applies a custom augmented reality (AR) face filter to official portraits of conservative politicians, digitally queering their faces with exaggerated drag features such as bold makeup and extravagant eyebrows. This act symbolises a ritual of resistance, challenging societal norms and confronting political authority through speculative digital adornment.
The piece employs Haptic Visuality, blending digital manipulation with performative gestures. The act of selecting filters with long fingernails becomes an embodied ritual, making the interface physically felt through close-up shots and dynamic interactions with the cracked phone screen. This multisensory approach transforms the digital adornment into a charged pseudomagical artefact, blurring the boundaries between political critique, performance art, and speculative jewellery.
Idea and performance: Darja Popolitova
Video effects: Ando Naulainen
Sound: Andres Nõlvak
© Darja Popolitova