We are stuck in a glitch. Automated performers of established ideas of progress, speed, and
productivity. Isolated in our flats lit by blue lights, staring at our blue screens starving for attention
and connection. Suspended in futuristic ideas of a negated future, between cyborgs and the
apocalypse. Transhumanistic projects for the few, and floods of brown water for the many. We are
others to ourselves, to nature, to all others who are not us. Protagonists of narcissistic movies nobody
is ever going to write. Self-performing to exist in the eyes of others. Those days I do leave the house, I
find myself comparing the outside world to the one I have been seeing on my screens.

 My phone is an
extension of my hand. My headphones appendices like ears. My eyes scanning like the lens of a
camera. I am what I watch, what I buy, what I eat, what I love. Therefore, these days I am no longer
just human, whatever that might mean. I am not just a body anymore. I am a cyborg, a virtual avatar, a
username, a brand. But above all, I am transcending the self without reaching any promised land.
Addicted to what has been designed to attract me. Craving what they made me crave. Always trying
to fill that money shaped hole in my chest with something. Collecting things. Stuffing myself,
starving myself. Following that new diet, that new trend, that new lifestyle, that new ideal. 

As a kid, I used to think the world itself was black and white before the 1950s. Could not
comprehend how the grainy reality I saw on the screen could be the mirror of a world in colours like
the one I could see with my own two eyes. No colours before Kodachrome. Growing up the screen
and the reality outside it were year after year colliding ever more, blending into each other. From
walks in the mountains to virtual hikes on imaginary lands. From touching to swiping on the toilet.
The past year everything has been amplified. The pandemic has changed most things, foremost the
way we communicate. 

All is just a wave

These days, I find myself stuck on this idea of progress, of always reaching for
something better, shinier, which is somehow going to fix this broken world. I have become
accustomed to instantaneous fulfilments of pleasure. If there is something to crave, if I am lucky
enough, I can get it immediately. If I own enough, if I produce enough. Then I can consume enough to
keep the ball rolling. Another job in a bank, in a coffee shop, in a hotel. Where you don’t see them.
They don’t see you. And we are all just walking zombielike on an imaginary path to nowhere. Never
having time to think, to stop, to understand what the heck we are trying to do in this damn confusing
world.
Yet, all this progress is what is making the glaciers melt, the forests burn, and the cities flood.
Nothing to say against the privileges of modern lifestyle. All progress is not bad progress, otherwise
even this moment would not possible, people we love would not be still here with us; we all would be
drastically different. 

Still, there are downsides to the dream of enhancing, fixing, perfecting. It has
created the paradox we now live in. We are at an alt. We are at the brim of an irreversible glitch. We
can keep going, like all is good; someone else is going to fix it. Or stop. Change how we live, how we
eat, what we call success, or happiness. We do not really need that much. We need to eat, love, be part
of a community and feeling like we matter. Existence is mattering. It is being there, alive enough to
witness your own life from your own perspective, in your own body. All else is fluff. Shiny doomed
fluff that is allowing me to sit here, writing while I listen to a podcast I cannot even hear, in a flat
filled with stuff, I now call my personality.

You could call this an artist statement. 

I grew up in a house filled with too many books for one lifetime. Too much history for one person. An identity of in between. Between past and present, trauma and faith, creativity and science. 

I am fascinated by Dadaism, Surrealism, and science fiction. If I could have some dead people over for dinner, I would love to have a chance to meet Woodman, Dali and Atkins and see what they think of how we have been living. I am sure they would find the world hilarious and terrifying. Imagine a project on climate change by Salvador Dali, or one on fast fashion by Francesca Woodman. Maybe they could help us rethink it all.

We need more art from as many possible perspectives. I dream of a cubism of the soul, maybe leaving aside the misogyny. I believe in community, collaboration, and empathy. I strive for art that asks good questions, that opens as many eyes as possible even the tiniest bit. 

There are colours beyond the ones we can think of. Roads beyond the ones we can see. Art is faith. A voice saying that it will all be ok if we keep looking into each other eyes to see the world from someone else’s perspective.

 I believe in art as an alternative to fast fashion, 

                                                       meat consumption,

                                                                         flooding,

                                                                          cows’ explosions.

 Without it we are walls. With it we can turn mirrors into doors.

Website: https://www.miriamlevi.com

A picture me looking for jobs.

This is me starting the blog.

Yes, I know, we don’t really need another voice to add to this confusing white noise, between facts and opinions. Still, here I am.

I am an Italian visual artist based in Edinburgh. I recently graduated from Napier university with a photography degree. Currently considering what to do with this underwhelming piece of paper. 

So, here I am finally let free in a world that seems to be crumbling, bit by bit. But let’s not be apocalyptic. There is no need to worry, it will all fix itself if we keep hiding the stains under our napkins a little longer. 

They say I am now supposed to become a member of a society, a functioning one; but I never received a guide, or maybe it got lost in the mail. So, I am here hoping a pigeon will come bring me the leaflet on how to be a human these days. 

Preparing to face the future

Wishing there was an alternative to this way of living. Turning privilege into guilt while we avoid each other’s gazes. Creating double skins for our digital avatars, commodifying dreams to pay for our boxes to be tighter. 

These days, I am more and more intrigued by the split between our perceptions of the future. I see a fracture between trans-humanistic dreams and eco-anxieties. Unsure about how we ended up so lost in obsessions of perfection and sanitisation, using screens to see ourselves and not each other. Turning windows into mirrors. 

Anyhow, to end this nonsense blabbering, I am here to carve a tiny little corner of the internet to reflect on what is going on, without much constriction, or construction. I will use it write about the art I made and and the one I am trying to make. Or better, I will try to remember to keep this up, so it does not turn into another fun idea with the lifespan of a Scottish midge.

                                                                                                                                                                    Miriam