Phantasmagoria

Just looking at Weimar Surfaces by Janet Ward. There is a mention of Phantasmagoria:

In the hope of deconstructing the aestheticized field of vision, Marx applied the metaphor of phantasmagoria — a term invoking both feverish, fantas­
tic, associative dreams as well as the magic-lantern sequences of the begin­
ning of the nineteenth century, which hid the technique of their art using
back projection—to represent consumerism's hold over us in our cavelike

“mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. ”

And another explanation of commodity fetishism:

Marx's analysis of the “fetishism of commodities” in Capital (1867)
refers to how, under capitalism, commodities are made mysterious and
their use value, or origins of production, are obscured by their exchange
value. This act of phantasmagorical veiling-over constitutes for Marx an act of fraud: the surface cult of commodities thus distorts the way people understand social relations and the working conditions behind the production of objects. In fetishizing (masking) the commodity by means of advertising and display, capitalism gives the individual the impression that existing social conditions are unchangeable"

We could maybe look at using back-projection! As a nod to phantasmagoria!

Niamh