Conflicting adaptation to new circumstances, other rules and procedures. A challenge to the personality that requires patience, intelligence and psychological strength. Moving away from your normal routine. Restriction of freedoms.
Increasing contact with the “big algorithm” and spending more time on screens, which are already infiltrated your everyday life. The artificial and flat virtuality lacks the depth of reality. It does not contain feelings, sincere conversations, smells, etc.
In the digital flatness of the screen, a person moves away from himself and splits into two parts. A vivid “second, digital self” appears. The individual, maneuvering between virtuality and reality, starts a double life. However, virtual life does not replace the real one. Ignoring this fact changes the hierarchy of values of personality. Consumerism of excessive information and material takes over, without which we feel as if we are naked.
By developing and enhancing virtual “our self”, we sacrifice time for strict self-discipline. As the result, we have a blank screen and suddenly lost hours, days and years. A lost opportunity for real feelings and deep experiences.
Unsuccessful persistence and quick trying to get oneself back on track and the right balance between reality and digital life further reduce motivation. The fight withers like a flower. A person continues to become dull, the antennae of feelings fail or stop working at all, and he returns to the world of the binary system, to his virtual “I”. He returns to the algorithm as a newborn animal returns to his mother – to be calmed down, to forget…
A person doesn’t learn to love himself, gets even more lost, instead of looking for new solutions, new ways to the joy of life and ways to faith. Faith in oneself, one’s mission. To grow an inner tree, strong and alive. And trees, these days, instead of taking care of, are cut down. The world is damaged, and a man is damaged too.
It’s important not what you’ve been made of. It’s important what you’ve made of what’s been made of you. Responsibility and clear knowledge of what you want. Time to learn again.
Learning to catch the moment, feel and love. It’s time to stop wasting your time looking at digital icons, and time admiring the real ones. To each his own icons. For someone, the face of a loved one is an icon, for another, a bouquet of young birches growing in a meadow, or the sea, or mountains. Creations of nature. Each time is different, each time unique, full of moods and multi-systemic, like the most memorable literary novels in which every letter is important. Important is every minute given to us.
We become versions of ourselves that we don’t want to be. Losing balance and inner peace, we keep looking for new ways to ourselves, but we are still playing hide and seek with the truth. Still indebted to time, nature and tomorrow. We are consuming more happiness and producing it less and less.
Lost, with the war by side, trying to protect our feelings, believing in a bright tomorrow. We are still degrading into complete closure, senseless consumption, and an empty meaningless existence.
Author of the project: Vladimiras Mackevičius
Curator of the exhibition, art critic: Jolita Mieželaitienė
Address Didžioji Vandens str. 2, LT-91246, Klaipėda
