User:Lassebosch/Finissage

This year’s graduation show of the Master of Media Design & Communication (Lens-Based & Networked) at the Piet Zwart Institute perhaps reflects a shift in popular culture. Whereas no self-respecting media self-help book or newspaper article published in the last decade missed having 'linked' or 'stay connected' in the title, a more recent rash of articles and runaway best sellers feature words such as 'introvert' or 'silence.' Have we reached a consensual moment where we might all agree it has become urgently necessary to critically look at how the words 'social' and 'media' might be used together? Is it now pressing to explore how contemporary media forms part of pervasive networks of both communication and miscommunication, now look at how media can foster community yet also create isolation and foster loneliness? Is the spectre of loss increasingly haunting contemporary digital media? The range of works in this show of the work of the 2014 graduating artists and designers of PZI MMDC at TENT are extremely diverse in terms of their formal approaches and aesthetic pre-occupations yet there is a strand of such concerns running through the works: a persistent focus on displacement, erasure, and loss.