The information age gives us the opportunity to live anywhere, and to always be in the centre. Travel is about being in airports, railway stations and ‘Holiday Inn’ hotels with ‘MTV’ and ‘CNN’ on cable. The fantasy of discovering new places and experiences can all be fulfilled in exotic theme parks, or through an Internet tour of Bill Gates’ new home.
The communication media offer the possibility of full accessibility, 24 hours a day. Under the guise of “quantity is not quality, but such a large number of people can not be wrong”, the mass media present the idea of participation and interaction to offer a real and objective spectacle – the spectacle of the medicalization itself.
The medicalization of information creates a new mode of narration, a different way of writing and reading history. Notions of city and countryside, sexuality, domestic and public, the good and the bad, are shifting.
With contributions by Francis Alys, Xabier Arakistain, Gillion Grantsaan, Matthieu Laurette, Birthe Leemeijer, Guillaume Paris, Hinrich Sachs, Ross Sinclair, Zorica Vasic
Edited by Mariette Dölle, Lisette Smits and Asier Pérez González
Design by Femke Snelting
PRD