'Reflux': 'Closer' Dec 2014 
digital collated

"Collated articles from web magazine writers for a project called 'Reflux'(this example includes two randomly chosen online contributors from British tabloid magazine 'Closer'). Their articles however, form one reconstructed montage narrative with the contributors. Returning the same approach of storytelling undertaken by the writers, these are then emailed to them as unrequested gifts of their own making. The texts are thrown onto the screen and make up a virtual collage containing hyperlinks transparent layering and untouched font, whilst a narrative is curated. Images are borrowed from the writer's circulated articles, accessible social media and site of the medium they write for... Whilst commercial and freely distributed media is made more publicly available; private lives are certainly made more public through confessional, revelatory exhibitionism and condemnation. Pleasure is found within this dichotomy game of detachment and intrusion, victim and perpetrator. Within this attention economy however, all reality - celebrity/reader/writer - is self-constructed as a collective narrative, in which even 'real life stories' are told as if a realist soap opera. Modern day Greek oracles instigating self-fulfilling prophecies. Participation and opinions are encouraged, but fails in self critique of this narrative function. Closer leading to abstraction. Could an artistic act be made in returning the gift as a reader?"