Somerset House

24/7

A wake-up call for our non-stop world

'An essential exhibition for today, exploring the non-stop nature of modern life'

This exhibition takes visitors on a multi-sensory journey through over 50 multi-disciplinary works that both provoke and entertain. It gives people an insight into how technology has both improved but also corrupted our ever growing world completely. People don't know how to act around each other people we have become so dependent on technology to sort out every little problem for us. With the growth of technology comes pressure, a pressure to produce and consume. A pressure to connect and work relentlessly. Devices knowing our exact whereabouts and listening in on the private elements of our lives leaves us forever vulnerable. How we even begin to cope with this invasion is an urgent issue facing people today- if not one of the most prominent. 

This exhibition is inspired by Jonathan Crary's book '24/7' shines an unexplored light on our always-on culture and invites people to step out of their day to day routine and engage. 

Every installation affected me in a different way but these are some that particularly stood out:

DAILY TOUS LES JOURS

'I heard there was a secret chord'

Approaching the end of the exhibition, you could faintly hear the melody of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' echoing through several rooms. I wasn't sure where it was coming from so i just followed the sound to a curtained-off room. I walked in to find several people sitting on several circular benches, all connected, with multiple microphones hanging, suspended, from the ceiling. There were no lyrics, just the melody through soft humming. You could tell it was a layer of several voices, both male and female as there were different pitches and tones. The people sitting on the benches were humming into the microphones so i assumed that they were adding to the looped hum, only to find out that the benches actually vibrated as you spoke into the microphones. The intensity of vibration would change however, depending on high high or low you sang a note. So, it's a room where visitors unite with listeners around the world to hum the chorus of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' at the very end of the exhibition. You are able to feel the song through feeling the vibrations of your own voice. It's a very intimate experience that really resonated with me.

'It is a scientific and spiritual experiment to highlight the metaphysical connection between people on a common wavelength.'

dailytouslesjours.com

PILVI TAKALA

'The Stroker, 2018'

In 2018, Finnish artist Pivli Takala posed as a wellness consultant at 'Second Home', an East London co-working space for entrepreneurs and start-ups. She was supposedly the founder of an innovative 'personnel' company, alledgedly employed by Second Home to provide 'touching services' in the office.

'The Stroker' opens up questions about how we conduct ourselves differently in the workplace and in our personal relationships. It also highlights certain people's discomfort about touch and how that ambivalence can be conveyed through non-verbal gestures. At first, i wasn't sure what i was watching. All i could see was a lady walking around an office approaching people who clearly didn't want to be approached. For me, it began as being quite humorous, just purely because some of the reactions these people gave to being touched were rather absurd and over-dramatic. When i realised that it was showing how disconnected to one another people have become, it was a lot more engaging. I stood watching it for about 10 minutes because parts of it were rather surreal but also a lot of it was oddly relatable. I've come across people who genuinely don't know how to interact with you without the comfort of their phone or some form of technology, or people who have lost social skills because they only communicate through technology and not human interaction. The fact that a mere touch made people in this office uncomfortable made me uncomfortable. Human touch is one of the most important aspects of life. It can change someones mood in a matter of seconds and improve mental health. It's healthy to want to be touched because it creates a connection we wouldn't otherwise have.

This exhibition has inspired ideas for my portrait project. Technology has taken so much from us, sometimes you just want to capture a moment for what it is. This is the difficulty with a camera. It's a piece of technology but it's used to capture only the truest, most intimate moments we don't want to forget. It's not necessarily a toxic piece of technology like a phone. We don't surf through social media on a camera. We create art on a camera and do thing with intention when holding a camera. A camera gives everyday things happening in our lives a different meaning that we may not have seen before. It's tempting to use the disruption of technology to my advantage and go around taking photos of people going about there everyday lives. Just take a look at how many people revolve around their technology to get them through a day. Even if i'm not happy with the photos, i'll use this idea as an experience- spend a day in London just people watching. Witness interactions and just try and become invisible for a few hours.