42/42/42 is a performance between artists Sara Koller, Matt Mottel and Britney Spears. Koller, Mottel and Spears all turned 42 in the year 2023. The inert fact of their shared age is in opposition to these artists› relationship to the ‘world’ that views them. Britney Spears at 23, her relevancy in ‘pop culture’ was at its peak. Koller and Mottel were just beginning their own artistic ascent. Due to the mafia ensnared world of pop culture, Spears’s decline in relevancy, was not by her own doing, but based on her captivity as a fetishized and objectified performer. Her defining independent attempts at ‘relevancy’ became moments of psychological and physical self immolation ; ie. when she shaved her head to ‘mass media tabloid shock.’ Meanwhile, Koller and Mottel emerge as artists without the lens of pop culture magnification. There is no MTV noose around their necks. At this pivotal astrological moment, when these artists each turn 42; Spears likely yearns to be more like Koller and Mottel; as artists who work in anonymity and via independence. Spears is a contractual servant, whose own birth control is even mediated by her father’s dominant strictures. Spears is trying to free herself and gain her own independence. Mottel and Koller encourage Spears to become the artist and performer that she wants to be. The vorpal membrane of the panopticon ensnares the pop star. The pop star is a medium to infect the population with the desire to be the pop star. Suddenly the pop star is the body that has lost power. The fandom controls the image. The image is the information. The body of the pop star has lost an identity of information. It is never more than just a body of the person, but a shared commodity.

Matt Mottel and Sara Koller translated Britney Spears songs into Emoji language, a contemporary image based language that tries to capture and express an emotion or opinion. By translating back to lyrics the confusion reaches a second step and the interpretation of the original intention of the lyrics is further distorted.

Photography: Video still at Susan’s Salon in Brooklyn