Zeyno Pekünlü and Tatlıhan Tuncel confront the giant companies that create consumer profiles from our personal data and cover our online walls up with advertisements; an imaginary algorithm vs algorithm, follow for follow.
Gösterim tarihi 5 May 2022, 19:00
YouTube kanalı Altyazı Sinema Dergisi
* Following the online screening, there will be a live talk session (in Turkish) with the directors, Zeyno Pekünlü and Tatlıhan Tuncel, at 19:30.
“I Am Watching You started with a simple user curiosity in 2017, a year earlier from the 2018 Facebook – Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which exposed how our collected personal data was used to influence the elections: If the giant companies that collect our data in exchange for their free services are constantly watching and listening to us, can we figure out what kind of data is more useful for them from the advertisements that are selected for us? We took screenshots of Facebook ads that appeared in our timelines for 232 days and stored them in our computers for years without knowing what to do with them. Finally, with Altyazı Fasikül’s call for videos for the From Below series, they came back out from our drives, with a focus on the act of ‘watching the watcher’. Imitating an artificial intelligence that is trying to make out meaningful results from our online movements, the most recurrent ads were matched with the period’s calendar notes.
From Reina massacre to wealth fund, from justice walks to Man Island scandal, from Donald Trump’s election win to the start of #MeToo movement and Turkey’s referendum for switching from parliamentary system to presidential system, 2017 was a year of intense political agenda, which became one of the most important parts of our online universe. In such a year, was our personal data just used to increase our self-care, plane ticket and clothing purchases?” – Zeyno Pekünlü, Tatlıhan Tuncel
I Am Watching You
6 minutes / 2022 / Turkish (with English subtitles)
Directors Zeyno Pekünlü, Tatlıhan Tuncel
Editing Tatlıhan Tuncel
