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interest in primitive subjects (cave walls and prehistoric flora) as well as Hollywood staging finds its waypoint in the cardboard mockup's DIY version, not tricking anyone. But the gesture towards mimesis is there. It's low grade magic, like cave paintings once were, premised on the same belief of movie suspension. These and their smells (there's smells) aren't suspending disbelief, their stupidness is there to provides that distance. (To say one of those annoying things art writers tend to say:) they're more to do with our desire to be tricked, playing our fascination with the machines of verisimilitude, creation. Perhaps easier to believe in magic when it's primitive: an iphone is not magic but a rock certainly is.
