WE ARE BEING MANIPULATED

Tatiana Catanzaro

My main inspiration came from listening to the garbage truck every morning since I came living at Escondido Village. It lead me to a series of reflections on the massive amount of garbage that I begin to produce since I moved in, a much higher amount than I was faced in Brazil. Also, I was never so massively exposed to “positive” advertisements as I am here. Work hard; Make a lot of money; Buy an infinite amount of stuff you don’t need; without perceiving that being a good consumer is the new being a good citizen; and then, trash everything and repeat the process indefinitely without questioning you why you are doing it.
This led me to search for specific kinds of sonorities: an advertisement about how great is to make “your own time” and be “your own slave”, a humor sketch that tries to reveal the absurdity of this reality; the sound of a bunch of coins; the reflections about this situation from the former president of Uruguay, Pepe Mujica, who thinks about “free time”, “freedom”, and not being a slave of money; and the sound of a garbage truck.
The piece goes from the advertisement, the bright side of capitalism, and, through the process of accumulation of the material (which is a very capitalist thing), tries to arouse a sense of overwhelming, alienation, or mechanical-like feeling, and then transforms everything into the garbage sound. The voice of Pepe Mujica then emerges, out of the garbage, modulating the mess.

We are being manipulated (Recording)

Chuck program