Glitching Girl

The woman with the resting glitch face

Preview of the Dancing Girl origin story and how she became Glitching Girl, the woman with a resting glitch face.
This photo story will receive irregular updates and gradually transform into something else. No, I don’t know what, yet, but you can check back from time to time to find out how it evolves. This will be ongoing during 2024.

A photo story, published by Alternative Reality publishers¹
This work is supported by : Swiss arts council Pro Helvetia

Glitching Girl’s origin story

As she wandered through the museum, the presence of the past was overwhelming.

She needed to sit down to figure out what to do. Also, after a century of standing on display, her legs were at once stiff and wobbly. 

“I’m out of here. I’ve got to leave this stuffy museum and see why I’m being treated this way”

“I must find my voice and tell my own story, and I need to move. No statuette is meant to stand still for so long, it’s just not right”

So she left.

Her weightless body left the past behind as she flew into the sky. She felt free, she could move in many new ways.

From above she saw the shimmer of a lake, which reminded her of her own flicker so she descended to meet this beautiful shimmering body of water.

From this peaceful place she heard a strange rumbling sound. It was scary and intriguing so she decided to walk over.

It was a large city.

After just one day in the city she was starting to feel depressed so she decided to go clubbing.

It turns out that Glithching Girl really does love to dance. This was it. “I will dance until the sun comes up”

In that night club she saw a group of dancers who were doing strange moves that disarticulated their bodies in improbable ways. Amongst those dancers were Manju, Meghna, Akanksha and Mandeep, the ones who had invented this style. Glitching Girl joined in and her flickering morphing nature fit right in. She felt free for the second time in a long time.

In the morning she decided to go to Indus Valley as a pilgrimage to her birthplace. 

At the border she proudly showed her face as proof of her identity, but It turns out that, as far as border guards are concerned, statues don’t have citizenship or nationalities and they can’t hold passports.

As Glitching Girl tried to reason with the customs officials she inadvertently wandered into the zone between the borders. She was standing on the line that separated Pakistan from India and herself from the land where lived for over 3000 years. A defining moment if there ever was one, but she could waste no time thinking about it because she was now stuck in no-statues land with guards refusing her from both sides now.

She couldn’t return to India, where ironically she was the mascot of a grand celebration, and she couldn’t enter into Pakistan. “What to do?” She wondered. It seems that British men had done it again. One had named her Dancing Girl and changed the way that the world would see her and the other had drawn the line on which she was standing. “Fuck this shit!” she muttered. “I’m not Dancing Girl, I mean I do like to dance but I’m the statue of a powerful woman, and I can fly.” 

The border guards looked worried as she released her cry of freedom “I’m Glitching Girl! Behold my resting glitch face. Oh, and I’m out of here, bye.”

Satisfied that there was little logic, and certainly no humanity, behind all of these rules and lines and categories, she flew up and over the border on her way to the Indus Valley.

Her pilgrimage was a nostalgic and slightly sad affair for her, as memories of thousands of years ago flooded back and she struggled to reconcile what was now and how she remembered it.

… to be continued

Glitching Girl will be telling her story in more detail and in her own voice as an interactive AI art installation that will be premiered during 2024.

¹ Alternative Reality publishers only publish mostly unverifiable historical facts that give an alternative view to the various other “true story” histories that you might find published elsewhere.