ESCAPE
Anomic America.
Picture of “Mobile Lovers” from a distance, against a stone wall
All prose credit here given, as appropriate, to Kyleigh Dalkin. :
Picture of “Mobile Lovers” from a distance, against a stone wall
All prose credit here given, as appropriate, to Kyleigh Dalkin. :
This image by Banksy, titled Mobile Lovers (2014) it shows two people, one man and one woman. They are in each other’s arms as if they are about to kiss. The photo is in all black and white, but gets increasingly lighter towards their faces and the hand that is holding a phone. The woman has her left hand on the man’s right shoulder and her right arm is behind his head holding her phone. The light from her phone is reflecting onto her face. The man has his right hand on the woman’s waist, but his left hand is behind the woman’s head holding his phone, with the light reflecting onto his face. Both the man and the woman appear to be holding an iPhone, which is currently society’s most popular phone. Rather than looking at each other, the people are staring at their own phones. They also both appear to be wearing work clothing, more specifically suits. The photo is graffiti and therefore it is done by only spray paint and stencils that were cut out by the artist himself. The art does not have clear lines, rather the images are blurred and fade to another color. The entire photo is basically all shadows and light. The texture appears to be very soft, since everything is blurred and faded. The picture itself is life size. The people are painted on top of a door, which was painted to be a completely black background. This makes it look like there is no door at all and the two people are simply just standing in the doorway, making it very realistic.
This piece of artwork was done by a graffiti artist named Banksy. Banksy has remained anonymous, but over the years more and more information about him has been released. He was born in 1974 in Bristol, United Kingdom. Banksy is a political activist and film director. His style is a combination of subversive epigrams and dark humor to send very powerful messages that leave room for interpretation from the viewers. His art is done through a graffiti stenciling technique. In addition, Banksy is heavily influenced by figures such as Princess Diana of Wales, Käthe Kollwitz, a German artist, and Marcel Duchamp, an American-French painter. Typically, Banksy makes his artwork overnight. Being a graffiti artist, they must work fast since it is an illegal form of art and getting caught could put them in jail for vandalism. This specific piece of artwork, Mobile Lovers, created in April 2014 in Banksy’s hometown of Bristol, conveys the message of the importance of living in the moment. In today’s society, people are consumed by technology and living their lives through their phones. However, living through a phone deprives a person of making real life connections with people. This piece of art was influenced by this overpowering use of technology. Banksy feels that people are spending too much time on their phones and social media and not enough time living in the moment with the people they genuinely care about. The couple in the artwork are acting as if they are paying attention to each other, but their attention is focused on their phones. Growing up in the time of this new social media and technology era, I understand the effect that technology has on people. People are spending more time talking through the phone than face to face, so they are not actually creating a connection with the other person. It is nearly impossible to go out to a public place and see people completely focused on another person. Everyone is too busy on their phones worrying about things that do not matter in the moment. Living in the moment is the best way to appreciate life and all the opportunities and connections a person can have, yet technology is keeping us from living in the moment, therefore keeping us from living our lives to the fullest.
Closer view of the cell phone light reflecting onto their faces
Immanuel Kant says that beauty is a concept that only exists in the mind. This means that beauty is independent to the viewer. Therefore, an object that one person thinks is beautiful might not be beautiful to another person. I think that this image is extremely beautiful for many reasons. This image makes me contemplate the society that we live in today. People are worshiping material goods like phones and technology and how many followers they have on Instagram and other forms of social media. When I think of the relationships I have with people, I realize that a majority of them were founded through social media, like through a friend of a friend who saw your Instagram post or a recommended friend on Snapchat. The things I love most about my relationships with people are the way we can laugh together and how they can give me hugs when I am sad. If a relationship involves more technology than personal connections, we do not have the most important elements of a good relationship. It makes me sad that there is a chance that in the future, people might not connect with people at all. I feel like people are so consumed by social media and their life on social media that they completely forget about their real life. I wish that more people were able to see this issue and realize that they are not living their life they way it was created for them to live. I personally live my life by living in the moment and focusing on the person and the people that I am with at the moment. To see that other people realize the effect that technology and phones have on our relationships makes me very happy. This is such a powerful message that is being conveyed through the simplest picture, just two people and their phones. It is an extremely relatable message and addresses one of the most concerning issues in modern day society.Kyleigh DalkinFollow
All prose credit here given, as appropriate, to Kyleigh Dalkin.
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At Washington, as The Imperial City destroys Her own Empire, police sirens shriek amid the shouts of men made lunatic by ugly envy and craven ambition, the citizen is now, fully, numb.
