Labels and categories allow us to make sense of the world in bulk: They are shortcuts that serve personal sorting systems and social constructs alike. Despite their seeming efficiency, their axiomatic nature leads to errors and oppressive dynamics. This project focuses on the effect of biases on self-image, on the ways we resist labeling and the conscious choices we can make towards positive stereotyping.
Read
Read a short and simple story about a personal experience with labeling. The visual and auditory elements are there to enhance it.
Listen
Audio pieces made from various voices that shared their thoughts and experiences on the topics of bias and labeling. Do you see yourself in their descriptions? Is there a similarity of emotion?
If you'd like to be interviewed and have your voice in one of the songs that will follow, please contact me.
Watch
A video piece on the systematic exposure of generations to stereotypes that create a deep sense of inadequacy and set impossible standards. Its duration is meant to reproduce the mesmerizing effect of the repeating themes that were reproduced multiple times per day during the golden television years: Today's algorithms are even more pervasive.
Characterization Generator
Feel the power of adjectives and choose yours. How do the "bad" words that affect us become bad and are all "good" words good? How important is context? Is repetition overwhelming? Does it become desensitizing at some point? Can repetition of "good" words change the narrative and affect the way we see ourselves and others?
Instructions: You need a desktop or laptop with a keyboard. Use your keyboard to play [not the mouse]
Explore systemic bias
In a dystopian present, marginalization is also taking place through the elimination of words that gain their position in the public dialogue through decades of social struggle.
Empathy Training Mill
Kindness is a muscle. We can exercise it and use it to provide relief, support and encouragement to ourselves and others and make the world a little bit better. Non-verbal cues are as important as verbal ones. Look at how our words and actions create green interconnected murals of positive meaning.
Instructions: Insert your answers in the field and watch magic happen.
Repository
Read other people's stories and feedback on the project. Finding out how common our experiences and emotions are gives us strength and new ways to resist assimilation.
About
This art project is the product of research and experimentation on the subject of labeling in connection to identity, or, in other words, on how words acquire their meaning, how they shape us and how we can affect them in return. It is a growing project and elements will be added and adjusted according to the findings.
The project also has a physical version, an installation that contains all the above elements but also unique props, such as mirrors, lights, a cassette player, color markers etc. that help build through materiality an intimate atmosphere, where vulnerability is welcome. If you find this project meaningful, have space and would like to host the project even for a few hours, please contact me.
You can see more of my work and read about me at www.sans-systeme.com.