Hey Siri, why don’t I look like that girl on Instagram?

Artist
Clémence Vazard
Medium
Sound artwork
Date
2018
Exhibitions
London, Paris
Hey Siri, why don’t I look like that girl on Instagram ?

The impact of social media

For this sound artwork, artist Clémence Vazard has gathered testimonies collected from young women who share their experiences with social media. Addiction, self-depreciation, depression, eating disorders... the ordeals through which they have gone testify to the power and negative impact of the images conveyed by social media.

Represented by "Siri"

However, it is not through the voices of these young women that we hear their stories, but through the synthetic voices of different English-speaking female "Siri". And thus, Rebecca, Sarvin, Twyla... lend their voices to Tessa, Allison, Susan (the South African, Indian, British and American « Siris »)... giving their stories a standardized and strange tone, as perfect as it is unreal.

Depersonalization

The depersonalization of these women's intimate stories echoes the filtered images, retouched selfies and over-played scenes that we scroll en masse every day on social media. By modifying our appearance before delivering it to the world, we put on a mask, we disguise our body and neutralize our individual properties. We neglect and reject part of ourselves by trying to approach perfection, leading to great suffering.

The mirror effect

Clémence Vazard's work reveals a mirror effect between the standardization of artificial images and the soulless, bodyless computer voices to which we lend our stories. For if Siri is a voice without a body, the sound of her voice evokes confidence in a perfect body. Protected behind this "perfect" yet inhuman voice, the intimate narrative through which we tell ourselves, we reclaim our story and build our identity loses its authenticity and thus its value. We then come to question the veracity of these stories, as we do with the artificial images which scroll before our eyes every day. Once again, the filter of standardized perfection turns against their users, reaping part of their identity and self-esteem in the process.

Hey Siri, why don't I look like that girl on Instagram? is an artistic participative project