Acknowledgment
DESENSITIZING CONSENT was initiated during a three-month residency (March - May 2024) at Mouhit Space.
Mouhit space team: Nour Amrani, Sara Bouzgarrou, Aziza Gorgi, Shayan Javan, Salma Kossentini, Emily Sarsam & Kenza Zouari.
32Bis team: Amine Aouadi, Mohamed-Ali Berhouma, Wissal Bettaib & Hela Djobbi.
Exhibition texts: Nadia Jelassi, Karim Sultan & Najah Zarbout.
Graphic visuals: atelier izotop.
Exhibition Setup: Haithem Toumi.
Dhia Dhibi would like to thank:
Friends and collaborators: Aicha Filali & the Centre des Arts Vivants de Rades, Nizar Amous, Amine Hammami & Hajer Riahi.
My family, especially my mother Hayet Hfaidh. And to all the people who, in one way or another, contributed to this project...
A . OVERHEATING, 2024
Video with female TikTok AI voice-generated text. 2:40 min
B . DESENSITIZING, 2024
15-piece Installation, Printed fabric embroidered with circuit components, stuffed with wadding and attached to wooden hanger.
Variable sizes
Circuit components: Relays1. Integrated circuits 2. Antena amplifiers 3. Transistors (Bipolar junction) 4. Buttons 5 Resistors6. Electronic counters 7. Diodes8.
Relays1. Integrated circuits 2 Antena amplifiers 3. Transistors (Bipolar junction) 4. Buttons5. Resistors6. Electronic counters 7. Diodes8. Inductors9. Ceramic capacitors 10. Cable assemblies 11. Chemical capacitors 12 RCA Inputs & Outputs 13. Transistor (MOSFET) 14. Screen circuit panels 15.
A OVERHEATING, 2024
Video with female TikTok AI voice-generated text. 2:40 min
DESENSITIZING CONSENT
Karim Sultan
October 2024
We are implicated, but distant. The very same platform that delivers us the self-reported activities of our friends also delivers news of atrocities and death. They look like they could be our friends too, in one photo full of defiant life. In the next photo, they are rendered unrecognizable as human beings. What does it mean to dehumanize or be dehumanized, and how are we part of this process?
Asbel of Pejite, a character in Hayao Miyazaki’s apocalyptic manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, tells the titular protagonist in captivity something we are collectively coming to realize: ‘It is a mistake to believe that war only happens to other countries. Even your Valley of the Wind will become a battlefield.’ (Nausicaä ponders silently in response, ‘He’s right isn’t he...’)
We are implicated. We see ourselves in who we see, a kind of familial bond. We share aspirations – their fight is our fight. Their victory is our victory. Their defeat means defeat for all. But what can we do? We are trapped, and for many of us, our only action is to consume these images, made of the bodies and work of real human beings, and share them so that others may consume what has become nothing but content. We are overwhelmed by design, as this incessant stream of content breeds a particular kind of resigned passivity that produces the question: ‘But what can we do?’
This feeling, shared by so many, is at the heart of DESENSITIZING CONSENT, a project by Tunis-based artist, curator, and researcher Dhia Dhibi. Drawing on Herman and Chomsky’s seminal 1988 text Manufacturing Consent and tracing its core ideas into the present, Dhia’s work illustrates how in our present moment a half-willing passivity (and even acceptance) of catastrophe can be drawn out through sensory overwhelm of media consumption, a corrupted form of ‘consent’, obtained through desensitization.
So much of what has become necessary has been replaced with privately-owned services whose sole purpose is to generate profit through the extraction and productive transformation of information. We can only now see through those services, which learns how to appease us for another scrolling flick of the finger. We are bound, unable to look away from ‘what is happening’, itself dictated by who is able to photograph, publish, and what content delivery systems deem appropriate for our feeds. Some things are never recorded, others we will never see, forever enshadowed. Although we exist in multiple points in space and time, and at different paces or systems of time, we are unified, forcefully, through our repeated and regular consumption of media.
This has been thrust to the fore with the ongoing genocide and expansion of a present-day colonial enterprise in Gaza, where concern and the sharing of news and information has been accompanied by an intensity of both heightened awareness and helplessness transmitted and received in realtime. These ideas come together in two works, OVERHEATING a video work, and DESENSITIZING, an installation consisting of numerous ‘tabs’ made up of multiple, hand-wrought materials suspended in space.
OVERHEATING reflects a particular state of burnout. It makes a clear line between the phenomenon of electronics melting, to the now common feeling of overwhelm from overconsumption of images. In such a state, the work asks if we are rendered ‘incapable of holding onto an emotion before the next click, swipe, scroll’. In DESENSITIZING, the primary mode of bringing together and reproducing images is the screenshot. It allows for the viewing consumer to capture a moment, to take it out of sequence of the feed and into a standalone image. The process of reconstructing these ‘tabs’ into a new visual environment allows for the possibility of pausing and placing before us something so many of us have experienced. We may encounter familiar or similar images, but without the incessant desire to drag our finger to scroll. We have the time to see and reflect on what passes without a moment to process, only to react.
One element of this work, ‘ANTENNA AMPLIFIER’ , frighteningly encapsulates this. A screenshot of an Instagram post (which indicates that 116,776 people have ‘liked’ this) sees a figure in the bottom right, arms crossed, dressed in black, in a resigned pose, looking upon rows of bodies wrapped in white against a light colored wall. The image, printed on fabric, is adorned with the named electronic components – one on the face of the figure in black, and ten on the various bodies. Only five are connected by a mass of golden thread to the ‘eyes’ of the seated figure. The others are disconnected, and from the perspective of the seated figure, they do not exist. Only we see them, but we cannot do anything.
DESENSITIZING, 2024
Piece N°3: ANTENNA AMPLIFIER
Printed fabric embroidered with antenna amplifiers and golden threads, stuffed with wadding and attached to wooden hanger. 100 x 100 cm
That such despair is produced domestically is brought about through the use of material. Each image is rendered as a tactile object, made up of soft, stuffed fabric, the ‘tab’ that holds it shaped from wood. The glass screen in our hands we drag and poke with our fingers more resembles the environments we inhabit. After all, those moments before sleep are the ones we are greeted with all this – a highlight of a football game is interspersed with news of the death of those we are in solidarity with, interrupted by an update from family. The pillow we lay our head on also cradles and softens the violence of perpetual images of violence, pushing and pulling us between anxiety and momentary hits of dopamine. To become desensitized is not only a sensory condition, but one in which the idea of any possibility outside what is being presented fades.
B . DESENSITIZING, 2024
15-piece Installation, Printed fabric embroidered with circuit components, stuffed with wadding and attached to wooden hanger.
Variable sizes.
DESENSITIZING, 2024
Installation view
DESENSITIZING, 2024
Piece N°10: CERAMIC CAPICITATORS - Detail
DESENSITIZING CONSENT
Nadia Jelassi
Octobre 2024
Dans un élan de prolongement et de renouvellement de CARESSING PIXELS[1], Dhia Dhibi nous présente aujourd’hui DESENSITIZING CONSENT. Dénouement plastique et vidéographique de sa résidence de trois mois à Mouhit Space[2], l’exposition se décline en deux propositions distinctes et supplétives : OVERHEATING, une vidéo sonore en plan fixe de 2mn40 et DESENSITIZING une installation composée de 15 pièces suspendues.
OVERHEATING : Le plan fixe de la vidéo représente un circuit électronique vert. Le seul mouvement / événement animant la séquence semble découler directement du circuit même. Produit d’une surchauffe de ses composants, une tache discrète à ses débuts envahit peu à peu le bas du plan pour évoluer en coulée. Générée par une application, la voix off, unique bande sonore de la vidéo semble suivre et recouvrir la cadence d’un texte rédigé par l’artiste et superposé en phrases découpées au plan fixe. L’auteur y exprime son désarroi et son inquiétude face à une surconsommation d’images et de sollicitations numériques générant une disposition à la banalisation du contenu et provoquant une désensibilisation aux maux du monde. L’individu perdrait de la sorte toute forme d’empathie. Par analogie, on pourrait établir de prime abord un lien en mode SUR, une jonction entre le processus de surchauffe du circuit et la surcharge sensorielle vécue par l’utilisateur et provoquée par une surstimulation des sens.
DESENSITIZING : L’installation présente trois formats différents, tous multiples de ceux des smartphones, des écrans d’ordinateurs et des posts Instagram. Différemment, ces 15 pièces, qui s’originent dans des captures d’écran opérées par l’artiste depuis le 7 octobre 2023 sans desseins précis, sont soit imprimées sur tissu, soit imprimées et fixées sur une tulle métallique. Chaque pièce est augmentée en reliefs d’objets issus des « entrailles » des ordinateurs. On peut y reconnaitre ici et là divers types de
[1] L’exposition de sortie de résidence au Centre des arts vivants de Radès en octobre 2023
[2] Printemps 2024
condensateurs et de circuits intégrés attachés par un fil doré à l’image imprimée sur tissu et doublé d’ouate. Ces objets ont été minutieusement sélectionnés par l’artiste en fonction de leur rôle au sein même de l’ordinateur notamment au niveau de la génération de l’image. Bordés d’une bande de tissus faisant cadre, ces pièces sont maintenues à la verticale face aux spectateurs grâce à une barre argentée dont la forme convoque celle des entêtes d'onglets de navigateurs.
Le type de composition adopté pour les deux propositions renvoie essentiellement au rectangle, à la juxtaposition et superpositions d’interfaces inhérentes au navigateur Chrome ; la fenêtre constituant ici une référence obligée. En raison même de leur nature, les fenêtres de Dhibi, ces vedute contemporaines n’ouvrent pas sur une seule histoire mais instantanément sur plusieurs, mettant en difficulté les limites de la perception humaine. Choisies par l’internaute, principales ou secondaires, ces fenêtres sont parfois surplombées de pop-up, autres types de fenêtres s’ouvrant et s’imposant à l’usager indépendamment de sa volonté. Dans ces conditions, accaparé par une multitude de fenêtres, le navigateur peine à éviter les collisions et trouver sa destination. Le magnétisme des images et des informations, l’attrait de la vitesse entraîne une perturbation des repères. Déboussolé, fragilisé, le navigateur non averti finit par perdre le cap et à ne plus distinguer le principal du secondaire. En l’absence de passoires, aussi antithétiques et variées soient-elles, les représentations imagées débouchent sur un même écran et finissent par acquérir la même valeur. La différence du contenu s’efface en faveur d’une normalisation / standardisation.
De part leur origine, leur technique, leur agencement, leur système d’accrochage, les propositions plastiques de DESENSITIZING sont non seulement des médiums qui mettent à nu des « entrailles » des machines et soulignent leurs nuisances mais surtout des dispositifs qui fixent et arrêtent le flux des images et sollicitations envahissantes de l’ordinateur connecté. Ils appellent à une suspension provisoire du temps, de la guerre et des violences intrinsèques aux multiples barbaries, …, au relâchement des sens. Tout en l’invitant à s’attarder sur
un monde à peine mobile, l’option plan fixe de OVERHEATING peut être interprétée comme une manière de tenir à distance le spectateur et de lui éviter peut-être les méfaits d’une surstimulation. En suivant en temps réel tous les signes du processus de surchauffe, l’œil concentré sur cet unique phénomène se prémunit et s’immunise. OVERHEATING fonctionnerait alors comme un talisman ou un vaccin visuel. D’une autre manière, ici aussi, le temps suspend son vol.
Sans faire l’éloge de la fixité, à travers ces deux pans, DESENSITIZING CONSENT nous invite à un autre corps à corps avec l’image connectée et les fenêtres virtuelles. L’exposition nous convie à un moment de lenteur nous permettant d’habiter autrement le temps, de défendre nos sens et protéger nos sensations.
DESENSITIZING, 2024
Piece N°5: ELECTRONIC COUNTERS - Detail
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About the project:
The initial research for “DESENSITIZING CONSENT” took shape during a three-month (March - May 2024) residency at Mouhit Space. There, it developed its core themes and main question; How does constant exposure to online imagery of war, violence, and brutality impact our perception and emotional response? the project delves into the desensitizing effect of scrolling through digital landscapes saturated with extreme content and amplified by the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The residency culminated in a gathering event with a presentation entitled "Who owns the media?" by the residing artist Dhia Dhibi, followed by a participatory talk with curator Karim Sultan and moderated by Kenza Zouari. This event explored the project's central ideas and outlined the process behind the artworks.
For the exhibition, Le 32Bis suppoerted and hosted the project at their atelier space from the 24th of October till the 7th of November.
The exhibition consists of two elements: a video work and a suspended 15-piece installation.
