The Dream Method: An analytic reflection on creating an accelerationist live performance for

contemporary audiences.

Accelerationism is a philosophy that argues that technology, particularly computer

technology and capitalism should be massively speed up and intensified. Opposing

ideologies that seek to moderate or reverse the pace of change of the modern world,

accelerationism argues that technological and economic progress are a part of nature law

that cannot be controlled (Shaviro, 2014). We live in an acceleration society; the history of

capitalism can be characterised by a speed up pace of life collapse of spatial distance as a

result of globalisation. This accelerated modernity has contributed to a frenetic pace of life

in terms of both work and leisure, technology enables us to stay constantly connected and

allows us to compact more and more into our day, showing no signs of ceasing.

In this analysis of the performance, I and my collaborative partner Imogen Davis, created for

MA Performance Making’s ‘THIS’ festival (2017) , I will discuss how our approach to live

performance making was informed by the human experience of this change. Through our

references to reality TV, social media and self-help and lifestyle industries in ‘The Dream

Method’ we attempted to define the characteristics of an accelerated society by viewing it

through the lens of its cultural artefacts. In this analysis, I will discuss how we transposed

the fundamental properties of these artefacts into live performance in order to illustrate

how this high speed frenetic pace of life have altered states of cognitive function and

experiences of temporality and subjectivity. Furthermore, I will discuss the effects

commercial forms of modern culture have on user perception of reality and expectations of

narrative particularly those who matured performing the ‘self’ as a digitally embodied

activity on social media, for whom ‘lifestyle/personality branding’ has become the ultimate
commodity. ‘The Dream Method’ examines how this has affected their understanding of

how to behave and ‘perform’ the self, while constantly aware of an audience, real or

imagined, and conjunctively how this affects process of making live performance work for a

contemporary audience that have come of age in world dominated by communication

technology.

We explore this not by the incursion of the media derived technics, but instead with our

approaches to performance, characterisation and narrative structure. Using these

approaches to performance making we extrapolate this trend in mediatisation of live events

in order to create an accelerationist form of live performance that acknowledges and

satirises contemporary prepossessions for the mediatised in cultural objects and the effect

this has on making and viewing live performance, while exploring the ideologies of capital

and reproduction that define this accelerated culture.

1.1

Millennials are defined as the generation who grew with the internet, otherwise known as digital

natives. The internet is a prime source of brain stimulation for this generation, this digital

stimulation encourages brain cell alteration and neurotransmitter release and in doing so

strengthens new neural pathways in our brains and weakening old ones.

This digital alteration of the brain means it evolves to focus on new technological skills and drifts

from fundamental social skills. Digital natives habit of constant connectivity places brains in

heightened state of stress with no time to reflect, contemplate or make thoughtful decisions.

Instead existing in a sense of constant crisis; on alert for a new contact or exciting new information

at any moment (Small & Vorgan, 2009). This heighten state of stress is known as ‘partial continuous

attention’. This state of constant connectivity is highly addictive; it creates a sense of control and
inflated feeling of self-esteem and self-worth. Unfortunately, this sense of control and self-worth

tends to break down, as the brain does not yet have the capacity to maintain this high alert status.

Hours of continuous connectivity creates a brain strain also known as techno brain burn out,

sufferers describe feeling spaced out, fatigued, irritable and distracted. ‘The Dream Method’

explores the tension between this inflated sense of sense and its subsequent breakdown and the

neurological and emotion strain it creates; the performers enter the stage to an artificial bombastic

ceremony but as they engage with the performative demands expected of them they are put under

increasing pressure and the veneer they present in their initial appearance soon falls.

Excessive exposure to the demands of new technology, can inhibit brain response. Studies have

proven the link between greater symptoms or ADHD and inattentiveness among young children and

adults, incurred by the brains adaption to perpetual exposure to multiple bits of information

delivered through exposure to modern fast-paced technology. The rapidity of changing images can

lead to a sudden shifting among multiple neuronal circuits, which over an extended period

(particularly among young developing brains) disrupts the laying down of normal neuronal

pathways, which leads to impaired attention abilities (Small & Vorgan, 2009). ‘The Dream Method’

responds to the adaptions the modern millennial brain makes to this consistent stream of

information, and extrapolates how new cognitive habits, such as partial continuous attention and

other impaired attention abilities could potentially redefine mainstream modern culture, both in

how it is made and received by audiences. The accelerated pace of the dream method in terms of

dialogue, scenographic changes, and the tasks being performed on stage was designed to simulate

the visceral experience of being hyper-connected. We endeavoured to create a performative

response to heighten stressed state of ‘partial continuous attention’ and create a form of

performance that viewers recognise on a sensory level as being akin to the rapid processing of

images and information one experience while occupying digital space. As the two performers run

through scripts simultaneously, at different moments one line of text maybe emphasised, depending

on the instruction of ‘the producer’ and on the individual viewer, one performers script may be
given precedent or they may completely aurally overwhelm each other. This experience for the

audience member prompts the stressed state of partial continuous attention by forcing audience

members to engage in an increased frenetic cognitive style by perpetually exposing them to multiple

bits of information at a rapid pace. The performers also enact this state of stress, while they are fed

stage direction at an increasing pace by ‘the producer’ their actions degenerate from precise

deliberate accuracy to quick, clumsy reactions.

This sensory simulative approach was influenced by our appreciation of the work of video artist Ryan

Trecartin. Trecartin Describes the extrapolative accelerationist themes of his work as the aim ‘to

push where we’re at at the moment’. Through his video installations he seeks to ‘capture the

vibrations’ Figure 1. ‘Any Ever’, Ryan Trecartin, art.buffalo.edu, 2011

of a hyper-connected and networked ‘age of intensity and anxiety’. The videos explore and embrace

a kaleidoscopic, post-human subjectivity as a result of digital embodiment. Trecartin protagonists

are unhindered by the physical boundaries of the material body allowing him to explore the

multiplicity and fragmentation of temporality and subjectivity that is reality in digital online spaces

(Beagles, 2014).

Trecartin’s excessive, accelerated amplifications of modern media trends appropriates commercial

culture and uses transgressive accelerationist aesthetics in order to both entice and repel his viewer.

In ‘Any Ever’ (2011) Narrative structure borrows uncannily from commercial popular culture (talk

shows, reality shows, lifestyle bloggers, social media sites etc.) changing rapidly and fluidly from one
to another leaving the viewer with a both a sense of unconscious understanding of the dynamics

between the characters and one of unease.

The POV filming style is intercut with 3D animation, over processed layers of digital effects (see

figure 1), Auto tuned, speed up dialogue creates an atmosphere of unforgiving sonic and visual

intensity. Similar to the performers in ‘The Dream Method’, Trecartin’s characters are constantly in a

heightened state of stress and over simulation, addressing the camera and each other in an almost

impenetrable yet familiar language based solely on commercial banalities, buzzwords and jargon

remixed with catchphrases and modern colloquialisms. We sought to achieve a similar sense of

uncanny familiarity with the cultural artefacts we are referencing, by accelerating their material to

the point of overstimulation for the audience and in doing so creating a sensory experience that

mimics the cognitive experience of the hyper-connective word we live in.

1.2

Our perception of time has also been altered by progress in digital technology, the

exponential growth in digital capitalism and globalisation has resulted in changes in our time
consciousness. In 1930 economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that the working week

would be drastically cut, to perhaps 15 hours a week (Elliott, 2008), with people choosing to

have far more leisure as their material needs were satisfied. He anticipated that the growth

of productivity resulting from technical progress ,under capitalism would eventually solve

the economic problem of supplying human needs at a fraction of the existing work effort

(Wajcman, 2015, p. 163). However, technology has not liberated us in the manner Keynes

described; the technological innovations that where expected to free our time have

paradoxically bread a growing sense of time pressure. We are increasingly moving away

from the ‘clock time’ of the industrial age, which was the logic of ordering and demarking

time in linear sequences of events. In Manuel Castelle’s ‘The Rise of The Network

Society’(1996), he argues that the world is increasing organised in the space flows: flows of

merchandise, people, money and information around dispersed and distributed networks of

what he terms timeless time (Wajcman, 2015, p. 19). Psychologist have found evidence that

the ubiquitous technology we interact with that has made our brains more efficient at

processing information has also resulted into us perceiving it as passing faster than it is

(MacDonald, 2015). Lack of distinction between work and leisure influences how we

experience real ’lived time’. Our unlimited amounts of news and information creates a need

for immediacy and speeds up our perception of time, even leisure time is monopolised by

constant search for instant gratification. Virtual networks and ubiquitous computing are

conceived by users as borderless immaterial spaces with disembodied instantaneous times,

thus the intersubjective linear time in which people coordinate their time practices in real

world contexts gets completely obscured. Our personal ‘real world’ time can be modified by

the ways in which we interact with technology, and the accelerationist effects technology

has on everything around us makes us impatient for anything that takes more than seconds
to achieve and we become more susceptible to compulsive behaviour. (Wajcman, 2015, pp.

15-21).‘The Dream Method’ attempts to create an extrapolated accelerationist performance

that caters to the modern mediatised audience’s predilections for Instant gratification.

Harmony Korine’s ‘Spring Breakers’(2012) is an example of a mainstream film with accelerationist

tendencies. It recognises its audience’s predilection towards rapid image-heavy stimulation and

appropriates this to engage the viewer, however, he refuses to prescribe a didactical condemnation

of the world his protagonists inhabit describing the hyper-sexualised, hyper-violent activities

explored in the film as a late-capitalist state of transcendence (The Guardian, 2013). The opening

sequence serves as a microcosm of the film itself; a relentless audio-visual simulation. Korine creates

a rapid succession of images, that assault the senses by using highly saturated colour, hypersexual

and hedonistic imagery (see figure 2) and an intense Dubstep soundtrack that is interjected with

Figure 2, ‘Spring Breakers’, Harmony Korine, A24,2012 slow

motion

sequences of incongruent imagery and changes in film texture (Shaviro, 2013). Similarly, in ‘The

Dream Method’ the producer tailors the instructions of the performers to appeal to the mediatised
audience by encouraging the performers to ‘be more likeable, expressive, sexier, conceptual’

resulting in a cacophony of audio-visual simulation while also referencing art making in an attention

economy.

1.3

Similarly, to Trecartin’s ‘Any Ever’ (2011), Korine explores a fractured sense of real time in ‘Spring

Breakers’, sequences are non-linear, there are multiple narrators, and repetition of scenes and lines

of dialogue. He defines this narrative structure as a ‘liquid narrative, more like a feeling or a drug

experience, more tonal, sort of like a culture of surfaces’ (The Guardian, 2013). In ‘The Dream

Method’ time is dictated and altered by ‘the producer’ responding to the audience’s reactions, the

audience’s gratification is how the duration is measured onstage. The dream method explores how

our cognitive functions and our experience of real ‘lived time’ has become skewed in the age of

accelerated connectivity and ubiquitous technology. The frenetic pace of modernity and it

symptoms became source of inspiration for the form and tone of the piece. We can attest both

Trecartin and Koirine’s commitment to creating a principally tonal, sensory experience of

accelerated modernity rather than a predictable anti-capitalist didactic. We too explore the neural

and perceptive experience of participating in this hyper-connected society as material for the

structure and content of ‘The Dream Method’, and its effects on of cultural practices, by considering

the changing tastes of modern audiences as we become more accustomed to this altered state of

cognitive function and perception of real linear time.

2.1

Through the character’s extreme acts of violence and hyper-sexuality, Korine’s ‘spring breakers’ he

also explores modern mediatisation as a result of capitalism, with characters frequently repeating
the sentiment ‘just pretend like it’s a videogame/act like it’s a movie’ and many prolonged scenes

taking on the quality of a promotional music video. In his book ‘Liveness: Performance in a

Mediatised Culture’ (1999) Phillip Auslander explains how we have come to live in a culture defined

by mediatised representation, to the extent that the mediatised experience has taken precedent

over real live experience. This is an extension of Walter Benjamin’s discourse of the effects of what

he referred to as the ‘aura’ in his seminal essay “The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical

Reproduction” (1936). In this essay Benjamin discusses the shift of perception as a result of the

effects of mass production on experiencing an art work, he stressed the degrading effect that the

reproduction of an art work has on the ‘aura’ of the original. Benjamin states that there is a

contemplative distance between the viewer and the original work that is inherently tied up in

tradition, ritual and the uniqueness of the object, when it is reproduced, either mechanical or by

means of mediated representation/Telepresence, it results in the ‘contemporary decay of the aura’

(Benjamin, 1973, p. 216). We, as consumers of images, have a desire to ‘bring things closer spatially

and humanly’ (Benjamin, 1973, p. 217) examples include the near mandatory use of body mike in

live concerts or the ubiquitous screens around us that flash information such as time, news and

temperature. However, Auslander argues that today we rely on technology such as cameras or

digital screens to more fully experience ourselves as live bodies existing in the moment, as a result of

a mediatisation of the modern mind. Furthermore, we have accepted a new type of mediatized

realism as reality. Auslander’s argument focuses on the relationship between television and theatre;

initially televisions ability to replicate theatre in its claim of intimacy and immediacy and how

subsequently live performance developed towards the replication of the discourse of the televisual

and mediatisation resulting in a ‘remediated’ form of theatre in order to appeal to the contemporary

mediated audience’s sensibilities (Auslander, 1999, pp. 10-23). Through our references to reality TV,

social media and self-help and lifestyle industries in ‘The Dream Method’ we attempted to define

the characteristics of an accelerated society by viewing it through the lens of its cultural artefacts, in

doing so creating a form of performance ‘remediated’ towards the replication of these newer highly
commercial forms of media. Audiences have grown accustom to highly edited reality, as a result of

the mediatisation of the modern mind. When a viewer watches a scripted reality show or

participates in social media they participate in the production of new economies of realism (Biressi &

Nunn, 2005, p. 34).This portrayal of reality is mediated by the production/editing process but this

mediatisation is obscured through the imitate, profoundly domestic nature of the medium of

television, this is a simulation of reality that over time can feel real, far from being symbolic of reality

it is much closer to being a metaphor for television itself- intimate, immediate, rooted in the

everyday yet highly produced and packaged for an audience. However, concerns over the limits

realistic representation of reality are at odds with the specific pleasures cited by reality TV viewers.

Annette Hill audience research surveys for ‘Big Brother’ in 2000 noted that 68 percent of

respondents expressed enjoyment at witnessing group conflict, an integral element of the

narrativization of real life and 60 per cent also mentioned the pleasure of watching ordinary people

do everyday things (Hill, 2002). The contract of viewership we enter with these formats is that we

accept them on their own terms as successfully realist genres, as representations which are the

logical extensions of the extremely mediated societies attempt to reproduce reality. ‘The Dream

Method’ endeavours to explore the specific pleasure in consuming these forms of media in order to

determine the consequences of living in a hyper connected accelerated society on the human

psyche, social behaviour and the consumption of culture products.

2.2

One of the main explorations we undertook while creating ‘The Dream Method’ is the effect

commercial forms of modern culture and technology has on user perception of reality and

expectations of narrative in live performance. This was explored through the presence of ‘The

Producer’, a disembodied voice that prompted the performers to actions based on what would be

considered more entertaining or dynamic for the audience members. The role of ‘The Producer’ in
‘The Dream Method’ is used as an allegory not only for the role that a producer or editors would

have in the creation of a scripted reality show/talk show/self-help seminar, but also for the constant

anxious, self-editing that characterises performing an identity online through social media. These

formats hold a striking resemblance in how subjects perform themselves through narrativization of

real life events, which has given way to a new form of mediatized realism. Scripted reality is defined

as being based on real events but some scenes re-enacted for the purpose of entertainment.

Producers play a huge role in crafting editing footage in order to make narrative structures out of

real life events. Techniques used to get the results they want included creative editing, reshooting

and large behind the scene crews (Braff, 2017). In ‘The Dream Method’ under ‘the producer’s’

manipulation the performers enact this editing live on stage by being asked, for example to repeat

certain lines of the script with different intonations, costume and light changes, and performing

absurdist tasks. The performers also enact key generic traits of the genre, these includes dramatized

and stylised moments of tension, conflict, self-revelation and cathartic resolve by being feed lines

directly from ‘the producer’. In ‘The Dream Method’ this process of mediating reality is laid bare for

the audience, it mimics they ways in which reality is editing by producers and media personalities (in

both scripted reality television and online social media settings, respectively) in order to appeal to

contemporary audience’s desire for holistic, punctuated story lines. This is expressed in the

trajectory of the narrative of the performance, which although is partially improvised, is still set

within a three act structure of set up, confrontation and resolution.

Arguably the appeal of reality television lies in the attempt to reclaim what seems to be lost after

the digitalisation of modern culture, that is to connect with other subject through time and space

(Biressi & Nunn, 2005, p. 32). In the age of accelerated society we live in one of the dominant

themes of modernity is loss, that is the loss of community, tradition and of an existence steeped in

the meaning of a shared ritual (Andrejevic, 2004, p. 25). Many people note the worsening of

depression symptom and increased anxiety disorders resulting from too much exposure to

technology. Despite the seemingly endless opportunities for connection most of these digitally
 Figure 3 & 4, Keeping up with the Kardashians, Ryan Seacrest Productions, 2017

mediated modes of communication lack the intimacy and warmth of corporeal contact, and only

serve to worsen feelings of social isolation (Small & Vorgan, 2009, pp. 76-78). It is evident that

contemporary scripted

reality shows seek to characterize the image and values of a more tradition pre-modern society.

Popular shows such as ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’ and The Real Housewives franchise place

an emphasis on portraying the rhythm of daily life, family life and traditional community which is

hugely appealing amidst the emergence of the distinctive anonymity of urban life. A more specific

symptom of this lost sense of connectedness that is evident in this genre, is dominant discourse of

trauma and personal pain and the narrativization traumatic events or experiences in the subject’s

life. Implicit in this representation is the acknowledgement of trauma and psychological /emotional

damage as core concepts circulating in contemporary culture. The genres attentiveness to trauma,

personal pain, injury and loss point to the broader social preoccupation with therapeutic culture

(Biressi & Nunn, 2005, pp. 70-78). In ‘The Dream Method’ we approached these prevalent concepts

of personal pain, anxiety and disillusionment, as a result of the losses incurred by digitalised modern

culture, through the scripts the performers deliver on stage. We used a variety of material from the

internet to compile the scripts for ‘The Dream Method’ varying for self-help seminars and wiki-how

articles on the law of attraction to vegan smoothie recipes for a better sex life, these represent the
overwhelming theme of self-improvement that defines these cultural artefacts. Human experience

of pain, trauma and anxiety is largely glossed in favour of the use of narrative resolution in these

supposed real life situations.

2.3

In season 2 episode 13 of the popular scripted reality show ‘Keeping up with the

Kardashians’, executive producer and star Kim Kardashian dedicates an hour long special to

the aftermath and trauma of a violent robbery during which she was robbed of almost $10

million worth of jewellery at gunpoint inside her hotel room (Seal, 2016). This is a testament

to reality televisions unique modes of expression through confessionals, video diary,

interviews and observational techniques to narrativize personal trauma. Kardashian gives a

genuinely emotional and frightening account of what she experienced on the night of the

robbery. The context for the revelation is a domestic scene in which the visibly distressed

Kardashians recalls the entire events of the night while sitting on a couch with her sisters

Kourtney and Khloe:

He duct taped my face to get me not to yell and then he grabs my legs and I had no

clothes on under, so he pulled me towards him at the front of the bed, and I thought

‘okay, this is the moment they’re going to rape me’, then he had the gun up to me

and I just knew that was the moment, they’re totally going to shoot me in the head. I

just prayed that Kourtney is going to have a normal life after she sees my dead body

on the bed. (Entertainment, 2017).

 This footage is intercut with confessional footage, interview, news reel footage and footage

from the sister’s social media sites captured on the night (see figures 3 & 4). In this scene,

the conventional process of documentary representation is undermined with an emphasis

on subjective perspective and personal accounts in which Kardashian recalls the trauma in

an increasingly distressed manner. The scene is charged with real emotion however is also

presents the pathology of the subject in a form that represents intensely traumatic events

with representational strategies that merge her intimate account with our own broader

popular cultural myths of trauma e.g. Damsel in Distress, Hostage situations, trauma button

etc. This moment of catharsis in the

show becomes a space in which

viewers can confront not only the

subject’s personal ordeal but also our

own personal anxieties. This account

Figure 5, Kim Kardashian West, Twitter (@KimKardashian),2017 can be read as a contradictory

discourse of private distress, public

crime story, personal memory and

public persona (Biressi & Nunn, 2005, pp. 77-79). This documentation is Kardashian’s

navigation of a personal trauma and her media personality the scene infuses moments of

real personal revelation with effective film making and narrative story telling techniques.

Kardashian resolves by the end of the episode that the love and support of her family has

helped her overcome her ordeal and the experience made her a better person, and in

conjunction with the airing of the episode posted the following statements to her Twitter

account (figure 5).

The true extent of Kardashians trauma we will never know, but the audience cannot be left with

matters unresolved, Kardashian provides viewers with revelatory filmic moments of resolution and is

consistent across her social media accounts with a favourable narrative of over-coming personal

strife. Kardashian addressed her narrative savvy in a recent interview, ‘I felt really comfortable to tell

my story on my show. I’m very aware of what fans want to see. I think if you ask the crew, I probably

produce the most.’ (Bruce, 2017).

The self-improvement theme of the script the performers read from in the dream method is

conceptually derived from the predilection of these forms of media to conceal the true nature of

human pain and trauma favouring instead a mediatised narrative. The performers on stage enact

this desire for holistic narrativized resolution to real suffering through the three-act structure

enforced on the live improvisation.

The work of online performance artist Amalia Ulman was highly influential to ‘The Dream

Method’. Similarly, to the odyssey of Kardashian’s narrativization of her trauma through her

reality show and social media presence, Ullman, in ‘Excellences & Perfections’ (2014),

enacts a scripted online performance in real time. Ulman, via her Instagram and Facebook

profiles portrays a fictionalised extreme physical and lifestyle overhaul. Throughout the

duration of the performance Ullman carefully constructs the narrative of transforming

herself from a naïve aspiring model, to a self-destructive socialite and finally a reformed,

pseudo new age health blogger. Ulman describes these phases as three distinctive

‘episodes’ a ‘beginning, a climax and an end’ . In ‘Excellences and Perfections’, as in ‘Keeping

up with The Kardashians’ the discourse of trauma and personal revelation is always to the

fore. Ulman divulges intimate details of her personal life with her followers projecting her

anti-heroine self “acting crazy and posting bad photos online”. She “gets a boob job, takes
drugs, has a breakdown, and goes to rehab” (Sooke, 2016), before absolving herself by

devoting herself to ‘recovery’ which consists of uploading pictures inspired by Gwyneth

Paltrow’s life style blog, Goop, “Kind of girl next door,” Ulman explains. “I liked yoga and

juices. That was the end.” (Sooke, 2016). Through her use of sets, prop and locations in

various selfies, she meticulously duplicates the narrative conventions of social media feeds

(figures 6 & 7). Ulman performs the limited tropes of feminine expression available on

Instagram in order dismantle the retrograde undercurrent of social pressures placed on

women and how they portray themselves online. She carefully duplicates the conventions

of social media presence, so much so that at first glance her online profile is banal, however

Ulman possesses the navigation skills to function optimally in this environment, she uses

this knowledge to integrate herself and also subtly undermine its values and comment on

Figure 6 & 7, ‘Excellences and Perfections’, Amalia Ulman, Instagram (@AmaliaUlman), 2014

the nature of its modes of representing reality.

2.4

The self-revelatory tendencies of these mode of representation were important in the

characterisation of ‘The Dream Method’, the performers were fed lines and actions directly from
the scripted reality genre and from their our own personal interactions with each other to simulate

moments of emotional intensity and conflict which are frequently fetishized in the media as a ‘car

crash/hot mess’ narrative trope .The scripted reality genre and both Kardashian and Ullmans

manipulation of reality and representation where extremely influential in the game play developed

at the centre of the performance. It was important to have sense of liveness and improvisation but

also a structure within this that represented the narrative expectations of the mediated audience.

Auslander’s discourse on mediatisation clearly documents the power of televisual immediacy,

where once television was a medium primary dedicated to the transmission of live events and the

reproduction of the theatrical live image, as technology got more sophisticated television sought to

represent itself as theatre through the appropriation of dramatic convention rather than through

the use of technology in order to record and replicate the perceptual experience of the theatre

spectator. Both Ulman and Kardashian embody this dramatic convention in their constructions of

reality, for satirical and commercial reasons respectfully. Both expose the limited modes of

representations of reality available to social media users, as simply remediated dramatic

conventions inherited from theatre to television, and now condensed further for social media. In

‘The Dream Method’ we endeavoured to remediate a cross contaminated version of these dramatic

forms back into live performance and lay that process of mediation bare. Arguable this over

simplified approach to representations of reality in the media and online social behaviour and the

specific viewing pleasure derived from viewing and imitating this fixation on trauma and personal

suffering it is symptomatic of society struggling with the alienation of the modern accelerated pace

of life.
Social media sites have become the threshold for modes of representing mediatized

realism, consumption and labour in the post-industrial age of communication. For media

personalities like Kardashian, her show and supplementary online presence in various social

medias is essential to her own ends of achieving celebrity and a platform for the promotions

of various commodified objects, her labour is inhabiting an enforced paradoxical public

sphere of domesticity and therapeutic confession. This labour signifies a late-modern

employment rooted in the post-industrial word of information, communication and media

economies. This mediatised realism perpetuated by lifestyle gurus, bloggers and Instagram

personalities are skewed by commercial interests and this affects our behaviour online. Guy

Debord’s text Society of the Spectacle (1967) applies explicitly today to representation and

interaction in online social spaces. The text was a response to post war consumerism and

capitalism, as it became more rampant and expansive by use of new medias and marketing

strategies. It described a new phase of capitalism, that shifted its focus from the materiality

of the commodity to pervading the consciousness of the consumer by infiltrated all aspects

of our lives so that we now live a representation of life. We do not interact with each other

we only interact with the ‘spectacle’ or the capitalist system (Merrifield, 2005, pp. 56-59),

‘All that was directly lived has become mere representation’ (Debord, 1999, p. 12), Debord’s

concerns have been amplified by hyper-connected accelerated capitalism. Our interactions

are mediated and hugely influenced by the labour of social media personalities in there

highly constructed, narrativised and mediatised constructions of online identity. The

performative trends that these personalities set in how these online spaces can be used to

construct identity and narrative, dismantles the division between labour and leisure in

contemporary society. Encouraging the commodification of free time and transforming it

into time that can be monitored, recorded, repackaged and sold. It is through these highly
produced narratives and mediatised reality that online celebrity personas create powerful

para-social relationships with audiences (Rojek, 2016), The normalisation of para-social

activity through social media websites means that it is common for commercial interests to

influence individuals behaviour online. (Davis, 2013, p. 113)The way we portray ourselves is

mediated heavily narratives of success we are feed through the media.

This results in social alienation:

Spectators are linked only by a one-way relationship to the very centre that maintains their

isolation from one another. The spectacle thus unites what is separate, but it unites it only in

its separateness. (Debord, 1999, p. 22).

This applies today; we are united in the consumerist spectacle, but this does not mean we are

united with each other. These commercial form an explicit representation of the consumerist

spectacle that Debord speaks of, However, as I mentioned earlier, they also seem to serve as a

form of catharsis for the epidemic of alienation incurred by accelerated modernity. The para-social

relationship they foster through there self-revelatory depictions of the human condition, appeal to

a broader social preoccupation with therapeutic culture and self-improvement. This enclosed

relationship with the capitalist spectacle defines accelerated modernity. In his book of essays ‘No

Speed Limit’ cultural critic and film theorist Steven Shaviro defines accelerationism as the argument

that ‘the only way out is through’ and the hope that ‘by exacerbating our current conditions of

existence, we will finally be able to make them explode, and thereby move beyond them’ (Shaviro,

2014). In our approaches to narrative, characterisation and performance in ‘The Dream Method’

we appropriated the characteristics of these spectacles and created an accelerationist live

performance that both satirises and seeks examine the adaptions the modern millennial brain

makes to this consistent stream of information. While extrapolating how these new cognitive

habits, such as partial continuous attention and other impaired attention abilities could potentially

redefine mainstream modern culture, both in how it is made and received by audiences.
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