Cell Phone
New talent, Liam Campbell, gives us the great black mirror: the mobile phone. We have a love/hate relationship with this device: it’s both a tremendous source of entertainment and information but also a nuisance constantly bothering and distracting us.
Liam questions the nature of our modern addiction to this constant need for connectedness. His larger than life mobile phone becomes a kind of prison cell. But who is inside trying to escape? A common theme in this year’s festival is that between the real and the virtual. We’re asked to think about which version is the true version.
Liam’s phone depicts a trapped person trying to escape the screen. Is it an expression of the true inner-self, free to be itself and escape the limitation of our physical bodies? Or is it an inner-demon, lusting for constant entertainment - clingy, demanding, and with an insatiable thirst for funny cat videos. Is the real world the problem here, so we seek to reimagine ourselves with filters and avatars that can better express who we really are? Or is the virtual world the mundane, a sensational story of retouched cartoon-like images we can escape to when the complexities of the real world become too much to bear. That’s for you to decide. Either way, there’s something not quite right about our relationship with this device: a blessing and a curse. What version of you appears in your phone when the backlight is on? And what version do you see in the black mirror, when magic is switched off?
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