Mark Farid

As we become increasingly dependent on technology and social media, is the human psyche starting to fundamentally change?

Connectivity advances safety and education, medical research and treatment. Social media enables 24-hour connectivity with friends, family and foes alike. Algorithmically tailored news feeds unite individuals and groups through common interests, humour and cultural phenomena.

Through carefully curated public portals into private lives, individuals willingly relinquish online privacy for social stardom, eliminating moments that fail to meet accepted social norms. Acute awareness of this digital documentation promotes subconscious self-validation dependent on the categoric ‘reactions’ of one’s peers. With self-fulfilment deriving from the number of ‘likes’ a projected image amasses, social conduct is increasingly entrenched with this online editorial.

In Poisonous Antidote, Mark Farid broadcasts his personal use of interactive media: emails, text messages, phone calls, Skype, Twitter and Facebook chats. These are all being publicly streamed in real-time, with the artist’s Facebook tags, uploads, locations, web browsing, app use and music shared live online and projected within the gallery. The gallery’s ground floor space has been transformed into a studio space for the creation of Farid’s digital portrait, designed in collaboration with Vicente Gascó.

By publicising the 24-hour accessibility of his own digital life in this manner, Farid highlights that privacy—and in turn true individuality—is being eroded in exchange for a hegemonised and globalised cultural identity. Stored publicly and permanently, conforming to political, social and philosophical ideals, culture and thought processes are now more than ever inextricably intertwined.

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