SOUND #6 - PRAYING FOR MY HATERS
Lauren Huret, Praying for my haters, 2019, Soundtrack, 15 min.
In French, with German and English available text online
June 2018, Lauren Huret went to Manila, Philippines, to investigate the work of content moderators, exposed to thousands of traumatic images every day. The employees, hired by social media companies such as Meta, relentlessly sort through the “user content” that can circulate on online platforms and determine its free circulation. Lauren Huret questions the psychic and physical consequences of this work through the concept of “cursed images”, as well as its long-term effects on our societies. She also evokes the physicality of people and their workplaces, hidden behind our screens, that embody our collective lack of awareness of the social and environmental impacts of our smart devices uses.
The soundtrack Praying for my haters was made by the artist Lauren Huret combined to her 2019 video collage of the same name. The work is a commentary on the lives of social media content moderators. The video begins with an image of an office tower in Manila, which belongs to a subcontracting company that employs social media content moderators. It uses text and visuals to comment on the moderators’ experiences and unacknowledged suffering. Recent political interferences, lack of regulation and algorithmic preferences have changed the framework for content moderation, though working conditions remain deplorable and unseen. By proposing today only the soundtrack of this work, Lauren Huret not only invites us to an attentive listening conducive to individual projections, she also questions the contrasted relationship between the images produced and subject to content moderation with the lack of representation and awareness of the moderators’ working conditions.
Lauren Huret (*1984, Geneva, Switzerland) works mainly with video, installation, performance and collage, and seeks to shed light on the belief systems produced by our technical and media devices. She collaborated regularly with artist Maria Guta until 2024 (Swiss art award 2023). Her work has been shown at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, transmediale Berlin, Centre d’art Neuchâtel CAN, Kunsthaus Langenthal, La Panacée Montpellier, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Museum, Centre d’art contemporain Genève, Centre Culturel Suisse Paris, Fondation Ricard, Haus der Elektronischen Künste Basel, Jeu de Paume Paris, Red Brick Museum Beijing and many independent art spaces. Her performances have been shown at the Prix Suisse pour la performance at the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne, at the FRAC Grand Large Dunkerque, at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, at the Théâtre de l’Usine in Geneva, at the festival Les Urbaines at the Arsenic in Lausanne, and for the international organization ICRC in Antalya (Turkey) and London. Lauren Huret has published five books to date, including Praying for my haters (ed. CCS Paris, February 2019), L’âge des techniciens, with Pacôme Thiellement (ed. Clinamen, June 2017), and Artificial fear, Intelligence of Death (ed. Link, co-pub. Kunsthaus Langenthal, April 2016.