SHAPED AROUND THE MACHINE

Shaped Around the Machine explores the complexity of the relationship between time, the speed of contemporary society, and the pressure to adapt our way of life to the conditions imposed by dominant mechanisms: from institutions, to corporations, to standardized value systems. The proposed selection of works reflects on the transformation of the informational environment, and on our ability to keep pace with certain transitions that mark the development of the markets and consumer mentalities. At a time when property has the ability to become an institution and a mechanism of control, our principles and values are increasingly at risk of being governed by stereotypes: whether in terms of productivity, aesthetics, personal or professional development, systems of value (...). Much of the present time is speculated under the assumption that everything can be augmented and improved, with technologies and large corporations playing a significant role in starting these constructs to ensure their own development/maintenance in the market. There is much more marginal than we can access through the prism of our own screens, and conflict between the professional environment and actually living. The shape of life and its nuances, beyond branding, are in a perpetual state of instability in which the individual is always adapting and readapting. In this context, we invited the artists in this exhibition to mentally visit both places and times of their personal dynamics with what consumer society means to them, but also to imagine a possible end of it through several objective, ironic or sensitive approaches. The subtle message of the exhibition critiques how institutions and the concept of property shape our lives, with the ultimate aim of automating, standardizing, or identifying us as buyers. The works on display illustrate in one way or another the frenetic pace of everyday life, where the collision of the utilitarian and the artificial are central themes, both in how we reflect the present time and in imagining speculations of the future, where inoculated meanings no longer have relevance or reference points. From this point of view, the presence of ruin is inevitable, the need for change being correlated with the abandonment of what is now trending and the migration towards fiction. Freedom from the pressures of the contemporary world comes with observation, irony, chaos, and dreaming. While some contributions in the exhibition look nostalgically at society's ability to invent and generate new and new worlds, or the transition between professional life and sacrifice, other works in the selection subtly investigate the contamination with variable means of consumption designed to facilitate our efficiency, and the revolt and chaos generated by the market's inability to meet our true needs, and by implication, promises. Exhibition part of the Faster Than Your Local Delivery Service project, co-funded by AFCN. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the grantee.