Sergio Monje

A video filmed with a webcam, featuring the whole lenght of a single session of Facebook use.

The news feed is the navigation system designed by Facebook to maximize the time we use its service, with algorithms that keep us right in the border between the interest and expectation of finding a rough information diamond, and total boredom and fatigue. Exposing the image that is never exposed in the space of total exposition and transparency –that is, representing the user making use of the application where he represents himself, in a contrary way to the ideal construction of his identity- allows us to make visible the real duration and tangibility of what constitutes a form of invisible and unpaid work, of which Facebook, through recollection of the data we produce while navigating, extracts massive benefit.

This work was exhibited for an entire year in a bank branch in Ghent, in collaboration with HISK. The employees who lived alongside the work on a daily basis, in which I appeared motionless in front of a computer, began using the expression “you had to be a hard worker like Sergio”.