Unavoidable Friends/ Look at Me
An interrogation on the persistence of polluting images. Unavoidable Friends consists of a growing collection of billboard- photography and social media posts. We edited a video-essay called ‘Look at Me‘ to ignite conversations.
“Those who fail to learn how to decipher photographs will be the illiterate of the future”.
Walter Benjamin
When we move around our cities we see printed faces all around. Our eyes see all the time; only if we are blind we can avoid it. Subliminal messages, constantly seeing misrepresentation and manipulation without any control, alter our sensitivity.
In a more private setting, we imitate the dream of the commercials becoming billboards ourselves. When we dive in the online social media were we participate, the continuum of images (and texts) from our social network is often too intimate, almost pornographic, even paranoid: how did we end up sending messages to our dead parents or unborn children? Can we stop polluting with complacent pictures our “owned”, private spaces?
We stringed together our social media friends, removing their pictures (their visuality), with faces of our commercial friends. Both always present.