Common Ground, Frost Museum, Miami, FL, 2022
As part of the Common Ground exhibition.
Exhibitions
Common Ground, Frost Museum, Miami, FL, 2022
The Contemporary & Digital Art Fair, New York, NY, 2022
The Contemporary & Digital Art Fair, New York, NY, 2022
(DO YOU WANT TO QUIT?) is part of Southworth’s series REVELATIONS, a project encompasing 256 text and image based works that explores moments of quiet absurdity to existential crisis linked to the growing marketplace of algorithms and artistic production. Southworth uses text and image to reveal shifting sentiments and further question how the tools we use attribute to digital identity and social relationships.
The process of making each work derives from the belief that in order to be seen, we have to exhibit the predictability and consistency of algorithms. But as much as we crave the reliability of a protocol, the results often create unintelligible output. Paradoxically, as the algorithm itself attempts to become more human we become less so.
Letters cut from each image are digitally collaged over the work to create nearly illegible messages that disappear into the clouds. Viewers must inspect the work to decipher each word. Works function as singular pieces and as groupings where truncated sentences connect with one another. When read in sequence a call and response exchange between the artist and viewer reveals a murky narrative about existence and iteration.