Mediated Bodies: The Body Before the After is a research-led moving image artefact exploring how algorithmically curated fitness content shapes body perception, comparison, and self-expectation. Centred on a fictionalised personal fitness journey, the work follows a viewer whose relationship with her body becomes entangled with Instagram fitness transformation videos.
Combining publicly available Instagram content, screen-based imagery, gym footage, mirror scenes, bodily gestures, and inner monologue, the artefact moves through six sections: The Feed, The Promise, The Attempt, The Comparison, The Loop, and The Body Remains.
The work examines how fitness transformation videos compress time, foreground dramatic before-and-after results, and obscure the effort, fatigue, repetition, and uncertainty involved in bodily change. Rather than explaining these processes directly, it translates them into an emotional and embodied experience: pausing on an image, saving a routine, attempting to change, checking the body, and returning to the feed. It asks what happens before a body becomes an 'after', and how knowing that images are edited does not always prevent comparison.