Digital Dictatorship

The installation "Digital Dictatorship" refers to the growing power of social media platforms and their influence on our daily decisions in all areas of our lives. These algorithms that target our personal preferences contribute to the creation of countless conformist information bubbles in which the word "choice" loses its meaning. According to Byung-Chul Han, we are entering the age of digital psychopolitics, in which Big Data is a highly efficient psychopolitical tool that makes it possible to gain comprehensive knowledge about the dynamics of social communication. Today, boundless freedom and communication are turning into total control and surveillance. Social media increasingly resemble a digital panopticon. Dataism is now considered the second enlightenment. Transparency is now the buzzword of the second enlightenment. As David Brooks describes it, data provides a "transparent and reliable lens". The Second Enlightenment imperative declares: everything must become data and information. The soul of the second enlightenment is data totalitarianism or data fetishism. Although it proclaims to renounce all ideology, dataism is itself an ideology. It leads to digital totalitarianism.

In cooperation with "Universalmuseum Joanneum – Institut für Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Steiermark" and with the support of "Kulturvermittlung Steiermark"