The Trend Is Your Friend
Installation by Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler

26 Sept - 8 Nov 2009
Medienkunstlabor, Graz
Part of the Festival Steirischer Herbst, Austria (24 Sept -18 Oct 2009)


Do trends influence and change us personally and the society?

Festival Steirischer Herbst
From 24 September until 18 October 2009, the Austrian festival Steirischer Herbst presents theoretical discussions, performances, theatre, dance, music, exhibitions etc under the special focus on 'indifference'. This year the festival Steirischer Herbst gets once more interactive: under the motto 'All the Same – What is valid if everything is valid?' the visitors are invited to get involved in questions around in/equalities and in/tolerance. Therefore the festival makers have chosen the "Spielfeldforschung" ("Playing field research") as the theoretical backbone. The visitors will experience the answers through their own behaviour.

'The Trend is your Friend' is one of the exhibited installations that offer the playful experience of the past, the present and the future and our role to influence them. The interactive installation with sound by Peter Szely is about our environment and how it is shaped by fashion or the analysts of economic trends.

fig.: Medienkunstlabor Graz 'The Trend is your Friend'. Photo: Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler.

The Austrian artists Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler ask:

• To what extent do they influence and change us as individuals and as a society?
• By recognising and relying on trends do we become part of an economisation that promises profit but at the same time absorbs us?
• Does the individual who opposes the trend get socially marginalised?
• So is the trend in a knowledge-based society nothing but Orwell’s famous Big Brother?
• A new, if more complex uniformity of control that denies us future with its hubris of calculability?

The installation is produced by Medienkunstlabor in Graz in co-operation with Steirischer Herbst, Institut für Elektronische Musik und Akustik (KUG) & Institut für Maschinelles Sehen und Darstellen (TU Graz). Find details and the extensive program with 'Programremixer - use the controls' on www.steirischerherbst.at.


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