Can't Delete Later
Posted by <Alfred Muszynski> on 2021-09-15
Can’t Delete Later is a collection of oil paintings based on a series of images outsourced on social media. This project investigates the power that images and related media possess when existing as an archive rather than a single object, suggesting that individuality has been demoted as a result of the growing cultural preference for collective archival and anonymity. History, contemporary politics, and meme culture intersect into an archive which does not rely on the linear progression of time, nor the confines of digital existence. Through a process of ‘devirtualization’ (first coined by Jak Ritger), the feeds of images become what looks like hoarding, digital culture enters a codependency with physical reality, creating a new way of perceiving our online behaviours and perhaps reaffirming their importance outside the realm of the digital. They are turned into something of a holistic experience, offering a portrait of no one but also everyone, in a new format, presumably un-deletable.