Contemporary society is outspoken with personal statements of the self. Be it a constructed identity or the genuine bearer of singular ideas, one’s self is rendered explicit via ordinary daily tools, including the typical social media channels. In the digital world of “followers”, we hold the power of creating liabilities between the statements and the actions of the self. This power has the capability of turning every one of us into representatives of our presented selves. It is much easier to follow the popular, the mediatic and provide criticism, as it is exercised in media itself. However, the liabilities of being followed are even much stronger among a circle of → friends. SALT suggests discussing self-representation by examples of the people we befriend and follow, artists and collectives who work with different tools of representation. This discussion includes works and projects by a young architecture collective Architecture for All, Syrian/Armenian artist Hrair Sarkissian, artist, network analyst Burak Arıkan, and the exhibition Disobedience → Archive (The Park) by Marco Scotini and Andris Brinkmanis, which was shown in spring 2014 at SALT. Selected works and projects discuss how the ideas of “the self” are represented in various public manifestations. The exhibition demonstrated an example of resistance from the self towards the follower when the self is demanded to package itself into a representation.
