BondAge, the new work of French artist Thomas Ollivier, is not subtle in its portrayal of our relationship with technology—but that doesn’t make his visualization of gadgets as BDSM gear any less funny, or relevant.
“I wanted to create thought provoking images that made us think about the dynamics of our relation with technology. It’s so present in our lives that it feels like an inevitable topic for art,” Ollivier tells me over email from his studio in London. There is a sense of oppression and empowerment that got him to explore through the code of BDSM, the acronym for “bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism”.
He thought that merging everyday tech objects—ranging from iPhones to Bluetooth speakers—with BDSM accessories would result in a disarming visual collision. And he’s right, as you can see below.
The ‘plug to unlock’ buttplug is so perfect that I wish Apple were selling them at the back room of its Apple Stores. The VR gag mask will not be as hard hitting as the buttplug to most people—as virtual reality goggles are still a niche product for a (sub)segment [pun intended] gamers—but Zuckerberg will probably love this one (not implying that he is into BDSM, mind you, just that he would probably be willing to try anything to rescue his failing metaverse from oblivion).
Then there’s the tablet with restraints. Looking at how many parents use tablets to turn off their kids, if they made those in pink or baby blue, I’m sure we would see them used not as a BDSM accessory but to tie toddlers to these mind black holes in restaurants all around the world.
The cat o’ nine tails is a perfect metaphor for the suffering that some people experience with their fear of missing out on social media—as is the leather paddle, which captures the intrinsic pain of refreshing your Instagram feed when stuck at home.
And that speaker strap-on dildo, well, what can I say, I’m sold, because that’s how Spotify would feel to me if I used it.
Right now, all these are CGI models made by Peter Kolus, with whom Ollivier collaborates to create the digital prototypes. “The second step is to build them as objects for exhibitions, which is what I did with my re:birth project,” he tells me. Exhibitions? I think he could actually find a consumer market.
However, even if the BDSM goods aren’t real, Ollivier’s critique is both hilarious and spot on. Technology has been feeling like this for years now. The tools that were supposed to set us free often act as our masters exerting subtle but ironclad power over the lives of millions, myself included. The data is undeniable: almost three in ten US adults say they are almost constantly online, American adults check their phones an average of 96 times a day on average (once every 10 minutes), 80% of smartphone users check their phones within one hour before going to sleep, and 40% of US online users aged 18 to 22 years believe they are addicted to social media, which goes up to 52% in adults aged 23 to 38.
I can keep listing statistics to illustrate this master-slave relationship for the next five pages, but that’s Ollivier’s BDSM gear’s râison d’être. The only question we really need to answer is whether this relationship is still consensual or not.
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