On The Water
Photo-sculpture, 2018
The work On The Water explores how we deal with the endless stream of news about human tragedies in the digital age. We encounter an image of a tragedy – a refugee boat in the Mediterranean, for example – and after a short moment of affectedness, we swipe away the image to make way for new inputs. The piece takes such images collected online and recreates the gestures of conscious disregard – the gesture of swiping the image to continue the flow of information: one image is substituted by the next one in a constant stream that transforms attention into disaffection. This process allows us to create a distance between ourselves and the pain of others, by turning the reality of suffering into a constant smudge of images that robs them of any meaning or emotional weight. This work fits into the broader framework I have been exploring in my recent projects, which focuses on the relationship between gestures we make on our personal devices and the perception we form of the world around us.
