Hajar Ali: We only ever experience most things as mediated through a screen, from a safe distance and via propagandistic imagery that exists to serve a narrative.
This applies even to our most basic interactions- of nature and travel. Waking up in a luxury safari resort in the Serengeti, I part the automatic curtains and see the Savannah in its full glory through the floor to ceiling wraparound windows. Most of us experience nature guided by the voice of David Attenborough and remote places through National Geographic Channel.
Events like 9/11 that leave a generational imprint are memorialised in our collective consciousness through videos of the towers crumbling. Covid lockdowns barred travel and current talk about the metaverse and AI art have brought us full on into the society of the hyperreal.
Images unironically generated on Midjourney.
