Our “Self” does not Exist – my Ego is an Illusion

On Saturday 29 June, at 12:30 we will be discussing this thesis by philosopher and consciousness researcher Thomas Metzinger.

This is the thesis of philosopher and consciousness researcher Thomas Metzinger. In his bestseller “The Ego Tunnel”, he explains that a person’s self-image is an internal matter that is not congruent with reality. The self is a constructed entity, a hallucination of the mind.

The proliferation of deepfake technologies, which have advanced from the high-tech to the consumer level, further complicates the relationship between physical appearance and personal identity. Applications such as Mug Life have enabled consumers to make other people’s faces say what they want – Elvis Presley ends up being little more than a digital artistic mouthpiece.

Video artist Anna Ehrenstein’s decision to undergo a real nose job serves as an opportunity to examine social attitudes towards authenticity and self-presentation. While neuroscience has yet to reach a consensus on what the self or consciousness is, or whether it exists at all, the reactions to Ehrenstein’s surgical alteration reveal a societal insistence on a fixed notion of the authentic self.

On the screen, Ehrenstein performs a series of tasks and exercises that, according to various online instructions, are intended to harmonise her surgically altered face with a truer self. In a collage with the fake film footage, overlaid with quotes from Metzinger’s “The Ego Tunnel”, the artist decimates the authenticity of the self in favour of a more malleable version.

In addition to the content-related considerations, we also deal with practical questions:
– Who guarantees the authenticity of the video?
– What does the video cost?
– How should it be presented?
– Can a collector resell the video?
– Is a copy of the video identical to the original?

Admission is free.