SURROGATE, ISSUE 1: Page 8-9 (Copyright © Proxy Proxy Museum, 2025)
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SURROGATE ISSUE 1: The Symbol, the Sickness, and the Call for Transformation
Proxy Proxy Museum’s SURROGATE ISSUE 1 is a paradox wrapped in a critique, a mirror that reflects its own artifice as much as ours. This limited-edition art book is both a sharp reflection of our mediated existence and a bold confrontation with the tools we use to navigate it. Through computer-generated imagery—ironically crafted by the very systems it critiques—the book interrogates the surrogate: that which wishes to replace reality, promising freedom while delivering dependence.
The images are visceral, unsettling. On one page, a figure cloaked in synthetic green strands emerges from stagnant water—a ghost tethered to its swamp, unable to rise above the muck. On another, a polished mask reveals a skeletal grin beneath its glossy surface—a chilling hybrid of flesh and machine, life and death. These visuals are not passive; they are confrontational. They demand that we confront the ways we barter our autonomy for convenience, our originality for replication, our authenticity for artifice.
Modern man has become a prostitute for anything that offers the illusion of relief. We barter autonomy for convenience, trade originality for replication, and abandon authenticity for the hollow comfort of artifice. The surrogate is not some distant force—it has seeped into us, woven itself into our being. It is every crutch we grasp to avoid collapse, every vice we cradle to numb the ache, every idle moment dulled by distraction.
And the cost? A slow erosion of the self. We forget how to stand without the scaffolding we once believed would liberate us. Reduced to something primal—a newborn animal: fragile, dependent, unsteady—we stumble through life propped up by the very systems that weaken us. The surrogate promises satisfaction but breeds reliance. It whispers freedom while tightening its grip with every use.
And here lies the irony: Proxy Proxy Museum wields the very tools it seeks to unravel to deliver its message. The computer-generated imagery—mechanical yet mesmerizing—is itself a surrogate for human creativity, a stand-in that questions its own legitimacy. The book becomes a proxy for its own message: a substitute for reality that interrogates the very act of substitution. It’s a sly acknowledgment of complicity, an admission that even resistance cannot fully escape the systems it aims to dismantle. This duality sharpens the edges of SURROGATE ISSUE 1, making it both an artifact of this age and a weapon formed against it.
Transformation begins within. To transcend dependence, we must first confront our complicity and then reclaim our agency—not by rejecting all aids but by refusing to let them define us. SURROGATE ISSUE 1 invites us to rise above the swamp of pacification and rediscover what it means to truly stand on our own.
With only 20 copies available online, SURROGATE ISSUE 1 is as fleeting as it is profound—a tactile reminder that even in an age dominated by the digital, there is power in holding something real in your hands. Let this book serve as catalyst: a call to rise above the swamp of dependency and rediscover what it means to stand on your own.
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This article features computer generated content. AI technology, specifically a large language model, has been utilized to generate both imagery and text. We chose this approach deliberately, not to undermine our message, but to strengthen it by demonstrating the complex relationship between humans and technology. Our use of AI serves as a practical example of leveraging its strengths while maintaining human oversight and critical thought.