CATFISH

Catfish - a documentary or mocumentary?! - one cannot be sure even after watching this intriguing film, a true product of the current obsessive online social media climate. The film documents the sheer lack of integrity (the key theme for my B.O.W) in the labyrinth that is the online world. Filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost capture the relationship that forms between Nev, a 24 year old photographer in New York, and a family from rural Michigan that connect initially through Facebook. When Nev determines to meet the family in person he is confronted by the startling disparity between the online projection of the family and the offline reality. The key message from the film is not in fact whether the film is a set up or not, but rather that the scenario is unquestionably possible in an online realm where identity is invariably malleable.

The film was provoking in light of my current efforts in working towards a body of work that is concurrent with the themes and issues connected with social media and identity as expressed within the film.

WEEK 5 - Video Artist

Spanish artist Greta Alfaro's work conveys a similar agenda to the intended theme for my B.O.W. Alfaro comments 'My work addresses the lifestyles of contemporary Western society and its relationship to the image, highlighting the difference between what we want to be, what we say we are and what we are actually among the public face of life and life in the the private domain. Similarly, it explores the reasons for the existence of this inconsistency, which is related to how we construct our identity through the production and consumption of images' (Alfaro, G http://www.videoartworld.com/beta/artist_1923.html)

Link to Alfaro's blog: http://gretalfaro.blogspot.com/
Link to video art: http://gretalfaro.blogspot.com/search/label/2009%20-%20In%20Ictu%20Oculi.%20%20Video