Fragments is focussing on the different understandings of private and public in the four countries. How has the transition from a collective to an individual society taken place? What effect do the new media have? Does the careless use of smartphones, sharing our most private moments, affect our right to privacy and ownership? Are we forfeiting our gains on privacy, fought for by many generations before us, because of the benefits of new media? Surveillance is omnipresent! In the public space, as well as with ourselves in the most private. 1984 has become a reality…
In the age of the Internet, privacy and the public sphere are undergoing profound change: while privacy is increasingly regarded as endangered and inherited, a bourgeois public sphere is visibly changing on the Net – mobs, shitstorms, or candystorms have in part replaced rational discourse. Specific writing practices and symbol systems (emoticons, memes) are transforming the practice of communication. “A child born today will never know a private moment,” predicts whistleblower Edward Snowden. IP addresses, online purchases, smartphones reveal what we are doing and where we are 24/7. Others have long since taken control of our data. No one asked: we only learned about data storage and government surveillance programs from third parties.
So what drives people to present themselves on the Internet and reveal their private and inner lives? What is behind this digital publication of the private, which not only makes critical voices proclaim a transparent human being in the sense of Orwell? Worse still, the disclosure of data concerning the individual is apparently done voluntarily or in the promise of better information, products and friends. In such cases, are we witnessing a dangerous erosion of the boundary between the private and the public?
The fake camera is to be understood as a connecting element between the different societies and is thus intended to represent the global phenomenon of surveillance. It will embark on a journey through the four countries. In each country, 5-10 photographs will be taken, all of which have supposedly private moments as their subject. The camera will be part of the staged photos as a reminder and should visualize our careless handling of new technologies through its size.
The photo series will be published.