My Wall is your Filter Bubble \\ Barnaby Festival

After premiering at AND Festival 2017, My Wall is your Filter Bubble returned to the UK, to be part of Barnaby Festival 2018 in Macclesfield.

My Wall is Your Filter Bubble is an Augmented Reality (AR) exhibition which takes a critical look at the borders and silos we are confronted with in our online lives. The cultural, social and political climate has us searching for answers, and yet, the echo chamber we build through social media only magnifies news and opinions similar to our own. Expanding upon these echo chambers, and how they relate to broader issues such as accessibility and inequality, My Wall is Your Filter Bubble, features thought-provoking AR commissions by six Mexican Artists. Each artist has created work that reflects on their own personal experiences of bubbles and borders local to them – including stories of border-town blind spots, the impact of televised Japanese culture, and architecture funded through political corruption.

In reflection of these virtual barricades, My Wall is Your Filter Bubble is a geo-fence along a trail that operates as an intangible border, meaning that the exhibition is only accessible to visitors online when in the physical vicinity.

My Wall is Your Filter Bubble, commissioned by Abandon Normal Devices, curated by Doreen A. Rios and Matthew Plummer-Fernandez. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England and British Council, Mexico.

My Wall Is Your Filter Bubble was originally created for AND Festival 2017 under the programme strand Dis-Location.

My Wall is Your Filter Bubble includes the following works:

Cultural Glitch – Martha Maya
View a 360-degree video filmed in Tijuana, a Mexican city situated alongside the US border. The video transports visitors to the scenes where stories of border crossing and crime take place, as well as unknown spots that demonstrate hope for a better future. The wall hasn’t been able to divide two cultures and Tijuana has become a cultural melting pot of improbable alliances – a cultural glitch.

Bakteria – Archangelo Constantini
Mexico is known to be host to local bacteria’s that have little effect on Mexicans but make outsiders ill with stomach ache. The locals jokingly call this the “Revenge of Moctezuma”. Illustrative depictions of these foreign bodies are virtually rendered across the landscape, sniffing out their new-found territory and invading the horizon.

Mexit – Gibrann Morgado
Emanating from the landscape are floating cement ‘CEMEX’ castles, which grow larger and more visible across the skyline. CEMEX is the company that have put itself forward for supplying the material needed to construct the Mexican/US border wall. Depicting a nightmarish virtual supply and transformation of the material, Mexit is a reflection of the infrastructures and industries behind politically charged walls.

Mixed(F) – Leslie Garcia
With virtual billboards displaying positive and negative tweets that highlight the gender bias and inequality prevalent in the use of social media in Mexico, Mixed(F)uses Twitter to search for examples of both harassment and struggles over gender equality. Springing up as you move around the experience, the billboards represent the ongoing opposition and fervent battle between feminist and misogynistic attitudes.

Epic Battle – Diego Ortega
The Mexican socio-economic divide fosters a noteworthy disparity in the cartoons and advertising that Mexicans grow up with. Exposed to either cheaper Japanese imports such as Manga, or American cartoons. Ortega’s floating figures are adorned with the brand logos that advertise to these separate audiences.

Peña Fiel Fountain – Alfredo Salazar-Caro
Gain insight into the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto’s personal palace, bought with public money. Since being elected in 2012, Peña Nieto has been tied to corruption, crime, violence, and economic problems, and has become one of the least approved presidents in Mexican history. Exaggerated versions of Peña’s architectural spoils virtually appear; anti-monuments that mock the self-interest and vanity of this much unloved politician.