(neo)liberal systems #4 “entertainment”
Formation: tactile device + videoprojection
Creation: september-november 2021
Duration: ca. 8 min.
Premiere: 6-12-2021. IGNM (Bern, Switzerland). Luis Azcona, performer
When Steve Jobs presented the iPhone to the world, the phone evolved from a telephone or working tool to a toy. In this historic presentation, Jobs plays with his hand and his phone in front of the audience showing all the different possibilities of this new device that will become the founding icon of a new era: a time governed by the paradigm of the digital entertainment: the compulsive consumption of apps, social networks, videos or audiovisual platforms will be just natural steps toward these new entertainment society opened by the iPhone and hastened by the pandemic.
Nevertheless, this paradigm of innocent game and entertainment hides the dark reality of the battle for the control of all our data and movements or the race for the continuous launching of new gadgets and devices, something which is carried out through the quasi slave work of thousands of workers (so called i-slaves) during unending working shifts in assembly lines.
The present work articulates those contradictions from the hand movements of a performer over his/her tactile device, going from routine finger movements to the imposition of speed and repetition. At the same time, those gestures are mapped into sound and images, which gradually show the production conditions underlying the quotidianity of our entertainment.
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