DIKTAT

DIKTAT (2023)

Text & curation Anika Meier

I don't know how you feel when you hear the word dictation. When I hear the word dictation, I get a slightly queasy feeling in my stomach. It throws me back to school days, to the playground and the classroom. Getting up early in the morning. Being attentive all day. Dictations and tests. Grades and report cards.

How do we feel today when we open apps on our smartphones and browsers on our laptops? Attention is demanded from morning to night. Just don't post the wrong thing. It's like being in the schoolyard and classroom: ratings, popularity, concern.
About 33.4 million people in Germany use the internet several times a day. Around 12.7 million even almost all the time.

What does our daily life on the internet look like? Berlin-based conceptual artist Joachim Bosse subjects himself to the stress test on the web surrounded by 24 monitors in his exhibition "Diktat." 24 hours of constant fire. From getting up to going to bed. A day in the life of a user. Attention. Excitement. Friends. Followers. Notifications.

Bosse takes notes. For a day and a night. The algorithm determines life. Bosse puts the cacophony of everyday life on the web to paper, as if it were a test to pass. He documents, dissects, and reassembles the content that rains down on him.
He allows himself to be targeted and fully surrenders to the content compiled for him. TikTok, Instagram, X, YouTube, Spiegel, Pornhub, Google. "Edeka loves food". "22 tips and ideas to get rich". "Germany is becoming increasingly right-wing". "Lonely housewives in your area want to be f*****". And thousands of other messages rain down on him and become a collage of the present in the post-digital age.

This creates a passive portrait of the artist. A chronicle of the times. A dictation of society. And all of this in beautiful handwriting.

Reviewed by Elke Buhr, Editor-in-chief, Monopol.