RACHEL MACLEAN is an acclaimed visual artist and avant-garde filmmaker. DUCK is her first exploration into deepfake. Starring Marilyn Monroe and Sean Connery, DUCK exists in a world of artifice, subterfuge and intrigue, referencing classic Hollywood, video games, film noir, and sci-fi to raise compelling questions about truth and power. This collection presents 20 short segments, each a reinterpretation of content from DUCK.

The thematic thread that runs through DUCK is one of socio-political conspiracy, namely, that surrounding JFK, Marilyn Monroe and UFOs. The fragmentation of the narrative into 20 distinct segments mirrors the conceptual idea inherent in conspiracy theories and conspiratorial theorising more generally - that of taking distinct pieces of information (some factual, some not so much) and synthesising them into a new ‘reality’ or myth. With DUCK Maclean pushes the tenets of postmodernism to an absurd conclusion, realities within realities with seemingly no epistemological foundation, indeed, as Sean Connery says in one scene “none of this makes sense”.

DUCK as presented here is a new expression of the film, fragments of the whole picture, that can be recombined and re-configured to create a new ‘reality’. Maclean’s films and artwork frequently take recognisable tropes from popular culture and the media as material to invert and subvert, challenging the ‘truth’ we are presented with through a patriarchal, heteronormative, capitalist-driven lens. DUCK is no exception, by resurrecting Marilyn Monroe as an indestructible self-aware AI, Maclean flips the script on the cult of masculinity, female sexuality cliches and gender power dynamics.