Drawing from Baudrillard’s concept of “hyperreality” and simulation and simulacrum, this lecture examines blurring of the distinction between real and unreal, reality and reality television.

Pulling screenshots from reality television dating shows “The Bachelor”and “Love is Blind,” Sasha Baskin weaves screenshots like chapters in an Hero’s Journey and overlays digital patterns and lace grids to create veiled goddesses out of reality television starlets.

A final rose recipient on “The Bachelor” can become a modern Helen of Troy when she tries to flee the show and break the structure of the past 23 seasons. When she is trapped in her hotel room and forced to resume the season, she becomes (as was Helen) a prisoner of forces she cannot see or control. She is both powerless in the moment while extraordinarily powerful: Helen of Troy started the Trojan War; Cassie from Season 23 of “The Bachelor” changed the nature of the franchise and redefined the structure of reality television.    

Reality television exists to remind us to feel comfortable in our own reality.  Hyperreality exists to make us feel comfortable in our own existence. Baskin's work seeks to question that comfort and how we engage with the reality television narratives which surround us. Through bobbin lace and woven images the work captures the immediacy of pop culture with the slow analog process of thread. The images themselves unravel. Slow down. Examine the simulation frame by frame.