Offline Practices
2019
solo exhibition at PINCE, Budapest (HU), curated by Bettina Bence
„I could say that we are witnessing the creation of some second reality. Until today, our society always lived in the actual space, the existing space of actual reality, except for the world of dreams and daydreaming, of course. So we were living in the world of material beings. A world that had distances, depths, dimensions and colours.” (Paul Virilio)
What kind of offline practices used to exist before to experience that we’re social beings? What remained of them by today? Our sense of reality has shifted due to our virtual realities and second lives, the border between reality and irreality has blurred. What do our mediatized communication and thinking have to do with the increasingly spreading mental illnesses such as panic, anxiety and depression? Is our non-stop online availability, thus community experience comforting or unsettling? Is there a difference between real and virtual solitude?
The exhibition focused on the characteristics of the online and offline space on personal and social levels. It’s an investigation of the direct and indirect effects of the growing social media platforms, which affect our communication, human relationships, sense of reality and our ability of positioning ourselves in the world.
FOMO (fear of missing out)
A smartphone is functioning as an IP-camera and is non-stop recording the wall behind it. This live image is projected to another wall in another corner of the room. The virtual image is positioned accurately to the real details of the wall. The projected image diverts your attention, it's almost identical twin, the real wall therefore literally remains in the background.
Settings & Chill
What can you do with a device without internet access? You can browse its settings for example – the customizability and the isolation of the settings' interface satisfies your need of control and leaves you with cozy feeling. The work was first installed at the Offline Practices exhibition, where the visitor could fiddle around with fake settings on an installed screen.
Loaded, Unloaded
At a given moment, the various stages of the loading circle always leave different sections of the circle full and empty. These momentary stages are cast of mould, freezing the loading process into static sculptures, making the content undistinguishable from emptiness.
Photos by Mátyás Gyuricza.