The Castle, 2021
Single Channel Video
20 sec
Created during the period of the Facebook-Australia Incident. the break down of RMIT online system and the cyber attack of Box Hill Hospital, this video work is a digital assemblage of the daily encounters of system error/blockage online, featuring an emotionally vivid sound avatar reading a popular online quote from Franz Kafka’s existentialist novel “The Castle”, with 24 likes.
Coming from my own frustration in such digital failure situations, this work questions the inaccessible “black box” of digital systems and the sense of dread that arises from such inaccessibility. Paralleling the Kafka critique of the bureaucratic system, the work re-articulates the phenomena of “The Castle” in a digitally reliant post-internet world. Where the seeming omnipresence cyber “castle” becomes even more absurd in its invisibilities, while the artificial machines become increasingly vivid and the fragmented expressions of “likes” on social media become increasingly banal.