LINGXIANG WU
"DIGITAL LANDFILL (EXPANDING)"
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Today's digital communication platform performs like a giant meat market within the phantom of Neoliberal capitalism. Visual content is stripped naked to accelerate information exchange, thus stimulating instantaneous gratification of desire. Anything that does not perform along with what Byung-Chul Han articulated as the aesthetic of the smooth becomes invisible to the algorithm. Images are now atmospheric yet hypervisible, creating gusts of wind embedded with bold-lettered messages, coming at us from all angles to sway our subjectivity. As the inhibitors of this digital realm, we are both creators and consumers battling over visibility. We are entangled with the algorithmic reflection of the self in this reflective room of mirrors. Drowning within the endless cycle of overproduction and overconsumption is orchestrated through the exploitation of the self. Instead of caring for the self and knowing the self, we voluntarily exploit the self in exchanging visibility and likes. We smooth out criticality and mistaken variations of the same as authenticity. Mitchell Foucault once asked, "What are we in our actuality?" Amongst the rapid advancement of contemporary digital technology and our everyday engagement with social media, maybe it is dire for us to reestablish the technology of the self through a communal pause from the desire to consume.
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Digital Landfill is an internet-based ongoing project in response to this increasing aggression. A stubborn retaliation with the risk of becoming invisible. Various abstract digital landscapes are created using images fragments collected through social media posts and photographs of physical debris like aluminum foil. The project invites viewers to linger and contemplate instead of consuming. Reclaiming the leisure aspect of our time that it is now so saturated with fillers and routines. Accumulating counter aesthetic to the smoothness that may eventually overflow back to social media.
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