SITUATION #128

Lauren McCarthy explores our contemporary social interactions and the increasingly mediated systems that underlie and shape them. In her performance series Follower the artist provides a service to obtain a real-life follower for one day. After signing up participants are selected and given an app to download, which will notify them when the following begins – an act one is aware of, yet which remains just outside one's sight. The following lasts one day and at the end the participant is left with a photo of her, taken from her follower. Through this seemingly simple shift from online to real-life follower, the artist explores the complexity of our desire to be seen, subverting the normative accumulation of faceless followers on our social media accounts. The performance can be seen as a balancing act between the affective and the surveilling role of networked images, treading on a fine line between attention and control within social media.

Follower will be available for the first time in Switzerland during the SITUATIONS/Follower cluster. The performances will take place on the 26, 27 and 28 of May 2018. Joining the performance is free but slots are limited.

Sign up here to participate (participants need to own an iPhone): follower.today/fotomuseum
For any questions please contact: digital@fotomuseum.ch

More by Lauren McCarthy: lauren-mccarthy.com

Kindly supported by Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.