Notes from My Mobile, 2013

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The video shows the artist running self-critique sessions through his smartphone. The video is installed in a box with a peephole and the sessions are listened to with headphones, as if the audience is peeping into the artist inner world.

 

Self-critique and self-exposure are the motors of our lives and personalities. We are obsessed with ourselves, and mobiles with cameras have changed our relation to ourselves. This is very obvious when we think of the recent trend of “selfies” and the working mentality of social media. The contemporary control mechanisms are based on the production and modeling of selves. Mobiles are the lake of today’s Narcissus. In this instance, the words I say to myself in the video are not mine. They are coming from my mouth, but I am not the one speaking.. It is the dominant ethos of the self speaking. A voice that pushes, criticizes and humiliates to make you a decent and successful person. That is why everybody can connect to and recognize these words.

 

The video is placed in a box so the viewer can peek into it. This form of installation creates an effect of intimacy. As if we are stealing a look at somebody’s inner world. However, the words are paradoxically common and recognizable to anyone. In a way, the most personal becomes the most common. This is where the power that operates through ourselves and functions insidiously.