In this project for W’s Art Issue, titled "placebo pets," supermodels Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid appear as super friendly, domesticated humanoid pets. The idea grew out of the artists wondering: “Who would survive if a superior alien humanoid species came to Earth?” Their answer: “The friendliest.” Fitch and Trecartin see in our relationship to pets a parallel with our relationship to technology, in the way that we’ve been trained to adapt our behavior, our language, and the images we choose to present our changing selves. “There’s a certain power that animals have over us when they respond to us in unexpected, friendly ways,” says Trecartin. “And it’s really them domesticating us almost more than us domesticating them, because they’re training us to want them. Training and taming something is not one-sided. We created social media, but then it changed us because we interacted with it. It transforms us and transforms the next thing that happens just by existing. You can’t really avoid being trained.”
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